As a Pitt fan, everything that you said relates to Pitt and it's fans, as well. We have lived through the same frustrating issues over the last several years. You also stated correctly, to say that true Pitt fans DID NOT take the game against Cal lightly. We knew that you were coming to play and win. What was disappointing for us season ticket holders and true Pitt faithful was to be undefeated,
ranked, and have so many empty seats at the stadium.
Hang in there and stay behind your team. We also cheered for Cal during the your game against Miami.
I agree, Pitt fan, there were too many empty seats on “Pittsburgh Day.” Not supporting an undefeated team on national TV? Your fans should be soooo excited about your team this year. I hope you enjoy a magical year.
The players are good enough but the coaching is not. Time after time these losses are coming down to poor coaching decisions especially with play calling, time management and a mentality to play not to lose rather than playing and trying to win at crucial points of the game. Sadly, this team will end up where every other Wilcox team as gone. Lots of potential but as usual maybe .500 at best. The crowds will diminish and the excitement will fade once again in Berkeley. One of these years, it will get turned around. Hope it’s in my lifetime, I won’t hold my breath.
"It’s important to be hurt rather than apathetic." Well said, Avinash. I believe there are two ways to be disengaged right now. One is because you don't much care and are a fair weather fan. The other, is that you care so very much and deeply that it painfully hurts to see your team play poorly again and again. That's me. It's truly a matter of my emotional and psychological health to allow disengagement from Cal football at times like this.
But no one should mistake my choice to not build my life around a Saturday game with being apathetic. Given even the slightest reason to believe that real optimism is warranted, and I ride my skinny butt 750 miles down to see the damn game. I'm in rarified air in terms of Cal football support. There may be a few thousand of us, a few tens of thousands of us, who feel so strongly that it hurts so much to see us make stupid choices. I can't stomach seeing Cal make dumb coaching calls and show poor team management, as it goes against my deep belief in Cal being a place of high achievement. We can get our asses kicked, fine, but not for being unprepared or dumb or making consistently bad choices. Wilcox having consistently made bad choices with offense is just inexcusable.
And yet, I agree that I will put my heart and wallet into the effort to replace Wilcox or force him to hire strong offensive staff. I'll be bleeding Blue and Gold until the day I die.
It's because we care so deeply that he must go. It's antithetical to our belief in Cals greatness and potential to continue to ascend. The schools football team is an anchor.around it's neck imo
As usual Avi, you nail it. I've had to step away from the last two weeks after the utter elation of the feelings Saturday morning on College Game Day, for which you deserve a huge amount of credit. The two losses totally suck, but this team does not. I remain 100% behind them and will cheer and pump sunshine with abandon. Let' book mark today, and come back at the end of the season...we can still have a great year and a good bowl. If not, we can discuss what to do then. Go Bears!!!
Watching some of the other P5 games this weekend, I paid particular attention to the kickers. Not only whether they made or missed but also how they struck the ball. It was very upsetting to see almost every other kicker consistently strike the ball well with lift and force and competence, even if they missed. Every other kick by Coe is a fucking wounded duck—his last one on Saturday being the prime example. Pathetic. #WeWantDaniel
His last one looked like he kicked the ground before the ball. Similar to our game @$C back in 90(?) where in a tie game the kicker (Robbie Keen maybe) kicked the ground on a short FG and missed.
I vividly remember watching that that dirt kick from the USC stands- stunning from a pre-season All-American and otherwise excellent kicker. At least the Beach Boys came on afterwards...
Bingo. If you're going to be a defensive team, you need to have good special teams. They go hand in hand. (Think Virginia Tech in their glory days). Why special teams has apparently never been a priority to Wilcox is baffling. At least we do manage to still get good punters. Some of it is luck getting a good FG kicker, but an 8 year tenure entirely marked by inconsistent-to-awful FG kicking speaks to a bigger problem.
I like the optimism but I feel that the reason this team isn't 6-0 or 5-1 and instead 3-3 is because of coaching mistakes that have been happening for 8 years now. Wilcox is losing in the exact same ways but yet it is all going to change without his approach or philosophy changing. The thing that frustrated me the most from the Pitt game was all the penalties. You can't be a coach in year 8 and have over 100 yards of penalties in a game. If you look at all the other stats from that game Cal should have easily won the game, win the turnover battle by 2, win time of possession 2 to 1, out gain the other team by 60 yards. Penalties and whatever happened on the fourth down run are the two main reasons Cal didn't leave Pitt with a win.
I think some of Wilcox's decisions on playing time and who gets snaps are very confusing. I agree about supporting players and this team so I won't be naming anybody specifically but there is one DB that is BAD, and anytime he is on the field the other team realizes and decides to go his way until he makes his way back to the bench.
Nothing but love to the kicker but he should not attempt another field goal on the season. Again don't even blame him, his abilities are his abilities, but why does Wilcox continue to go back to something that isn't working.
One thing I found surprising from being at the Pitt game was that players didn't get taken out after giving minimum effort on a play. I think this is a coaching issue as clearly players know they can take certain plays off without getting taken out, so it should be on the coaches to set a standard where player give 100 percent effort on all play and can be subbed out when the need to catch their breathe. I believe every single player on the roster cares, this is more about coaching.
There are countless other things for me to nitpick and complain about but at the end of the day I just want a better product on the field. I believe we have the talent on the roster to have a better record. This roster is filled with top end talent and it is just on the coaches to maximize it for a better on field results. These losses fall mainly on the shoulders of Justin Wilcox and his continued flawed decision making in the moments that matter most. Unless Cal goes 6-0 or 5-1 over these next 6 games I personally would like a change at head coach. I would love to be proven wrong but I don't currently believe Wilcox can succeed at Cal. It is a tough job and maybe the next coach won't either, but at some point a change needs to be made.
If Wilcox is fired, I feel it goes without saying that Jim Knowlton also needs to be fired. If that does not happen we will just get college football's equivalent to Mark Fox.
Wilcox or no Wilcox, I really hope we can invest in two more assistant coaches next year. The lack of a FT special teams coach has probably cost us at least a few games over the past two years. We need to double down on investing in this program and stop cutting corners if we want to make it into the next iteration of whatever big time college football and athletics is to become.
Probably bc.wilcox's compensation is eating up the pool of money we have. More.coaches would probably.have to come out of his comp, so he'd rather have a keep the money.. Lol half joking here
Good to read a balanced view of the coaching. The team is good. Be of good cheer. Relax and enjoy the team doing some really good things. Some bad, some ugly, but lots of good.
Usual rule of thumb is a lot of on field non-soft tissue injuries like ankle sprains, broken bones, sprains, knee, so on is of the moment in the game. Not much you can do in that regard. It’s a violent and physical sport it happens. But soft tissue ones like hamstrings, muscle tears, things of that sort you can sort of point back to long term training. But in the end this is a physical activity with contact. It’s hard to gauge when any persons body won’t be able to snap back to the pressure that’s exerted on it. Staff could do everything right but they can’t foresee how a person’s body will be affected in that moment.
This game put me over the line with Wilcox. We won the turnover battle, time of possession and had more total yards - exactly the kind of game the he wants to play. And we lost.
He always says how close games are, and how a small handful of plays is the difference between winning and losing. (But he never mentions that a small number of coaching decisions has the same effect.) And I think that attitude - playing not to lose - makes players tentative, scared, and tight, leading to exactly the execution issues we've seen the last 3 games. Much better to relax, go out there, have some fun and kick your opponents ass.
If we had traded head coaches with Pitt on Aug 30, I think we're 6-0. It's especially frustrating because in 8 days we've pissed away all the excitement and good will that we had after GameDay.
If that College Game Day enthusiasm wanes, it becomes a spiral of self-fulfilling prophecies. We lose faith and enthusiasm when we lose, then we lose because of lost faith and enthusiasm. Imagine how the players feel reading negative fan comments. No wonder most of us were never on the Spirit committee or yell leaders. LOL
Is this how we acted when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? No, we fight!
Enough with grieving the close upsets, let's let these guys know we see and appreciate what they do!
Same injury excuse year in year out; consistently bottom of the pack in penalties (125 of 134 this year); something like 9-25 in 1 score games over the last 5 years; number 18 in defense despite being number 97 in 4th quarter defense; and also the eye test on playcalling; etc; etc
These are hallmarks of bad coaching. We are not anywhere near “close” so long as Justin Draper Wilcox is our coach.
He’s a bad playcaller, a bad recruiter, bad at getting his guys in football shape (*see injury history), bad at teaching them university history and traditions, is literally building a mansion in Idaho to leave the area, is bad at leadershipi (*see repeatedly referring to individual mistakes and not owning his own; not showing any spine in the face of egregious officiating)…
I get that you guys have credentials you want to keep but personally I vote with my wallet and I suspect many others do as well. Until a change is made I strongly suspect memorial will be back to 15-20k cal people a game and NIL will probably take a dip.
Just sayin.
Literally every single metric for coaching ability he is failing on. This isn’t like it’s a new thing either it’s been going on since the Cheezit bowl
I’m not entertained I don’t want a heart attack in my 40s
This is as bad as the holmoecaust and I would argue worse due to the fact that we have more eyes on us in this day and age of streaming, internet, message boards, blogs, etc.
While we all know our fanbase is currently dominated by apathy the rest of the world will know as well.
Not showing bravado and gusto and doing what needs to be done will be engrained not only in our own minds but in the eyes of outside observers. At that point it will become reality when it didn’t really need to.
From my perspective the damage done to the program incurred by sticking with Wilcox even through the end of the season will be irreparable. It is going to result in more financial woes will inevitably bring us one step closer to relegation.
Nobody wants to watch bad football besides fellow alums.
I can go to all the games I want but I’m not changing anything. We need fans beyond alumni and that won’t happen without winning football.
Wilcox has proven he isn’t capable of winning football. I really don’t understand what is being debated here.
Stick with Wilcox and Knowlton and we crater the football program and possibly the larger athletic department.
Ditch them and we have a chance to right the ship.
“When someone shows you who they are believe them…when someone shows you who they are 8 times go see a therapist because you’re a co dependent”
It’s frustrating, but it’s not as bad as the Holmoecaust. Watching your inept team gets their asses handed to them by like 50 points in the pouring rain by $C is infinitely worse than anything I’ve seen under Wilcox.
Wilcox's record in one-score games is 14-23. That isn't very good, but if you change it to 18-17 that's only an extra half a win per year and it doesn't fundamentally change anything about his tenure.
The big differences in the records of successful and unsuccessful coaches are in the multi-score games. Nick Saban's Alabama teams had a mediocre record in one-score games but they had a lot more blowout wins than blowout losses.
Only constant during that time is Wilcox - Fire that man! In this NIL era, a good coach only needs 1-2 seasons to completely turn around a program. I have faith Lyons will empower the right people (AD & HC) to change cal football.
Avi, thanks for the write up. The list of reasons/excuses for some of the failures is lengthy and many are valid. I think most of us are just tired of the excuses in year 8. The coaching flubs are holding us back. And regarding the injuries, we’ve always been just a couple injuries away from doom under Wilcox. That lack of depth is on the coaches. Now with all of that said, Wilcox has a habit of winning after he’s lost the fanbase, so maybe he rattles off a bunch in a row to finish out 5-1 or 6-0. I’m just not gonna get my hopes up. The fact that we’ve seen this story so many times and the pitchforks haven’t finally come out til year 8 speaks to the patience of this fanbase.
As a Pitt fan, everything that you said relates to Pitt and it's fans, as well. We have lived through the same frustrating issues over the last several years. You also stated correctly, to say that true Pitt fans DID NOT take the game against Cal lightly. We knew that you were coming to play and win. What was disappointing for us season ticket holders and true Pitt faithful was to be undefeated,
ranked, and have so many empty seats at the stadium.
Hang in there and stay behind your team. We also cheered for Cal during the your game against Miami.
I agree, Pitt fan, there were too many empty seats on “Pittsburgh Day.” Not supporting an undefeated team on national TV? Your fans should be soooo excited about your team this year. I hope you enjoy a magical year.
Thanks for supporting Cal in our 1st ACC year.
Awesome take, Don. Appreciate your insight and support. I’ll be rooting for the Panthers
Thanks for the perspective Don…
All Pitt fans were so incredibly nice and very sympathetic to us. Outside of the city, in many ways we are the same fanbase haha
Thank you , Pitt fan!
The players are good enough but the coaching is not. Time after time these losses are coming down to poor coaching decisions especially with play calling, time management and a mentality to play not to lose rather than playing and trying to win at crucial points of the game. Sadly, this team will end up where every other Wilcox team as gone. Lots of potential but as usual maybe .500 at best. The crowds will diminish and the excitement will fade once again in Berkeley. One of these years, it will get turned around. Hope it’s in my lifetime, I won’t hold my breath.
"It’s important to be hurt rather than apathetic." Well said, Avinash. I believe there are two ways to be disengaged right now. One is because you don't much care and are a fair weather fan. The other, is that you care so very much and deeply that it painfully hurts to see your team play poorly again and again. That's me. It's truly a matter of my emotional and psychological health to allow disengagement from Cal football at times like this.
But no one should mistake my choice to not build my life around a Saturday game with being apathetic. Given even the slightest reason to believe that real optimism is warranted, and I ride my skinny butt 750 miles down to see the damn game. I'm in rarified air in terms of Cal football support. There may be a few thousand of us, a few tens of thousands of us, who feel so strongly that it hurts so much to see us make stupid choices. I can't stomach seeing Cal make dumb coaching calls and show poor team management, as it goes against my deep belief in Cal being a place of high achievement. We can get our asses kicked, fine, but not for being unprepared or dumb or making consistently bad choices. Wilcox having consistently made bad choices with offense is just inexcusable.
And yet, I agree that I will put my heart and wallet into the effort to replace Wilcox or force him to hire strong offensive staff. I'll be bleeding Blue and Gold until the day I die.
It's because we care so deeply that he must go. It's antithetical to our belief in Cals greatness and potential to continue to ascend. The schools football team is an anchor.around it's neck imo
As usual Avi, you nail it. I've had to step away from the last two weeks after the utter elation of the feelings Saturday morning on College Game Day, for which you deserve a huge amount of credit. The two losses totally suck, but this team does not. I remain 100% behind them and will cheer and pump sunshine with abandon. Let' book mark today, and come back at the end of the season...we can still have a great year and a good bowl. If not, we can discuss what to do then. Go Bears!!!
If you’re going to keep the games this close at least get a consistent kicker
Watching some of the other P5 games this weekend, I paid particular attention to the kickers. Not only whether they made or missed but also how they struck the ball. It was very upsetting to see almost every other kicker consistently strike the ball well with lift and force and competence, even if they missed. Every other kick by Coe is a fucking wounded duck—his last one on Saturday being the prime example. Pathetic. #WeWantDaniel
His last one looked like he kicked the ground before the ball. Similar to our game @$C back in 90(?) where in a tie game the kicker (Robbie Keen maybe) kicked the ground on a short FG and missed.
I vividly remember watching that that dirt kick from the USC stands- stunning from a pre-season All-American and otherwise excellent kicker. At least the Beach Boys came on afterwards...
We didn't even stick around for the Beach Boys.
Bingo. If you're going to be a defensive team, you need to have good special teams. They go hand in hand. (Think Virginia Tech in their glory days). Why special teams has apparently never been a priority to Wilcox is baffling. At least we do manage to still get good punters. Some of it is luck getting a good FG kicker, but an 8 year tenure entirely marked by inconsistent-to-awful FG kicking speaks to a bigger problem.
Agree on the kicker. His misses are, generally, makable kicks for a player at this level. We could easily be 5-1 if he makes his kicks.
I like the optimism but I feel that the reason this team isn't 6-0 or 5-1 and instead 3-3 is because of coaching mistakes that have been happening for 8 years now. Wilcox is losing in the exact same ways but yet it is all going to change without his approach or philosophy changing. The thing that frustrated me the most from the Pitt game was all the penalties. You can't be a coach in year 8 and have over 100 yards of penalties in a game. If you look at all the other stats from that game Cal should have easily won the game, win the turnover battle by 2, win time of possession 2 to 1, out gain the other team by 60 yards. Penalties and whatever happened on the fourth down run are the two main reasons Cal didn't leave Pitt with a win.
I think some of Wilcox's decisions on playing time and who gets snaps are very confusing. I agree about supporting players and this team so I won't be naming anybody specifically but there is one DB that is BAD, and anytime he is on the field the other team realizes and decides to go his way until he makes his way back to the bench.
Nothing but love to the kicker but he should not attempt another field goal on the season. Again don't even blame him, his abilities are his abilities, but why does Wilcox continue to go back to something that isn't working.
One thing I found surprising from being at the Pitt game was that players didn't get taken out after giving minimum effort on a play. I think this is a coaching issue as clearly players know they can take certain plays off without getting taken out, so it should be on the coaches to set a standard where player give 100 percent effort on all play and can be subbed out when the need to catch their breathe. I believe every single player on the roster cares, this is more about coaching.
There are countless other things for me to nitpick and complain about but at the end of the day I just want a better product on the field. I believe we have the talent on the roster to have a better record. This roster is filled with top end talent and it is just on the coaches to maximize it for a better on field results. These losses fall mainly on the shoulders of Justin Wilcox and his continued flawed decision making in the moments that matter most. Unless Cal goes 6-0 or 5-1 over these next 6 games I personally would like a change at head coach. I would love to be proven wrong but I don't currently believe Wilcox can succeed at Cal. It is a tough job and maybe the next coach won't either, but at some point a change needs to be made.
If Wilcox is fired, I feel it goes without saying that Jim Knowlton also needs to be fired. If that does not happen we will just get college football's equivalent to Mark Fox.
9-3 is still a mathematical possibility. We will be ecstatic if we get there.
GO BEARS! You’ve got this!!
You actually think that we’ll go 9-3? You’re out of your mind
I am indeed!
https://x.com/accbarstool/status/1845582965285278153?s=46
We lost to the team that is ranked as "ASS".
Wilcox or no Wilcox, I really hope we can invest in two more assistant coaches next year. The lack of a FT special teams coach has probably cost us at least a few games over the past two years. We need to double down on investing in this program and stop cutting corners if we want to make it into the next iteration of whatever big time college football and athletics is to become.
Hear, hear!
Probably bc.wilcox's compensation is eating up the pool of money we have. More.coaches would probably.have to come out of his comp, so he'd rather have a keep the money.. Lol half joking here
Keep the faith!! We need to let the team know that we appreciate their effort and support them.. THE BEAR WILL NOT DIE!!!!!!
Thoughtful perspective. Much appreciated.
100%
Good to read a balanced view of the coaching. The team is good. Be of good cheer. Relax and enjoy the team doing some really good things. Some bad, some ugly, but lots of good.
After reading this article, I'm now forced to ask: "Why have there been so many injuries?"
Usual rule of thumb is a lot of on field non-soft tissue injuries like ankle sprains, broken bones, sprains, knee, so on is of the moment in the game. Not much you can do in that regard. It’s a violent and physical sport it happens. But soft tissue ones like hamstrings, muscle tears, things of that sort you can sort of point back to long term training. But in the end this is a physical activity with contact. It’s hard to gauge when any persons body won’t be able to snap back to the pressure that’s exerted on it. Staff could do everything right but they can’t foresee how a person’s body will be affected in that moment.
I also wonder about this…This is a great question and I would like to know.
I am a diehard Cal football fan.
Maybe the S+C staff should make some changes.
This game put me over the line with Wilcox. We won the turnover battle, time of possession and had more total yards - exactly the kind of game the he wants to play. And we lost.
He always says how close games are, and how a small handful of plays is the difference between winning and losing. (But he never mentions that a small number of coaching decisions has the same effect.) And I think that attitude - playing not to lose - makes players tentative, scared, and tight, leading to exactly the execution issues we've seen the last 3 games. Much better to relax, go out there, have some fun and kick your opponents ass.
If we had traded head coaches with Pitt on Aug 30, I think we're 6-0. It's especially frustrating because in 8 days we've pissed away all the excitement and good will that we had after GameDay.
If that College Game Day enthusiasm wanes, it becomes a spiral of self-fulfilling prophecies. We lose faith and enthusiasm when we lose, then we lose because of lost faith and enthusiasm. Imagine how the players feel reading negative fan comments. No wonder most of us were never on the Spirit committee or yell leaders. LOL
Is this how we acted when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? No, we fight!
Enough with grieving the close upsets, let's let these guys know we see and appreciate what they do!
Lets sunshine pump our way to prosperity!
I like it!
Another convert!
Welcome Brother Bear of the Unfounded Optimism and Woeful Countenance
We're doing these kids a disservice by leaving wilcox in. They're playing to win, but they keep.getting coached out of their deserved wins
Shouldn’t we ask then how they feel about their coach?
Same injury excuse year in year out; consistently bottom of the pack in penalties (125 of 134 this year); something like 9-25 in 1 score games over the last 5 years; number 18 in defense despite being number 97 in 4th quarter defense; and also the eye test on playcalling; etc; etc
These are hallmarks of bad coaching. We are not anywhere near “close” so long as Justin Draper Wilcox is our coach.
He’s a bad playcaller, a bad recruiter, bad at getting his guys in football shape (*see injury history), bad at teaching them university history and traditions, is literally building a mansion in Idaho to leave the area, is bad at leadershipi (*see repeatedly referring to individual mistakes and not owning his own; not showing any spine in the face of egregious officiating)…
I get that you guys have credentials you want to keep but personally I vote with my wallet and I suspect many others do as well. Until a change is made I strongly suspect memorial will be back to 15-20k cal people a game and NIL will probably take a dip.
Just sayin.
Literally every single metric for coaching ability he is failing on. This isn’t like it’s a new thing either it’s been going on since the Cheezit bowl
Haven't injuries been a thing for quite a while, now? I think the Dykes seasons had loads of injuries.
Punishing players with waning support, because you're angry with the coaches is what happens when I vote negatively with my wallet.
It really makes it more of a gladiator blood sport than a celebration of school pride.
Are we not entertained?
I’m not entertained I don’t want a heart attack in my 40s
This is as bad as the holmoecaust and I would argue worse due to the fact that we have more eyes on us in this day and age of streaming, internet, message boards, blogs, etc.
While we all know our fanbase is currently dominated by apathy the rest of the world will know as well.
Not showing bravado and gusto and doing what needs to be done will be engrained not only in our own minds but in the eyes of outside observers. At that point it will become reality when it didn’t really need to.
From my perspective the damage done to the program incurred by sticking with Wilcox even through the end of the season will be irreparable. It is going to result in more financial woes will inevitably bring us one step closer to relegation.
Nobody wants to watch bad football besides fellow alums.
I can go to all the games I want but I’m not changing anything. We need fans beyond alumni and that won’t happen without winning football.
Wilcox has proven he isn’t capable of winning football. I really don’t understand what is being debated here.
Stick with Wilcox and Knowlton and we crater the football program and possibly the larger athletic department.
Ditch them and we have a chance to right the ship.
“When someone shows you who they are believe them…when someone shows you who they are 8 times go see a therapist because you’re a co dependent”
-Oski Angelou
> This is as bad as the holmoecaust
Oh come on
I for one was much younger then than now, and I figured at the time it would pass soon which it did in comparison.
It’s frustrating, but it’s not as bad as the Holmoecaust. Watching your inept team gets their asses handed to them by like 50 points in the pouring rain by $C is infinitely worse than anything I’ve seen under Wilcox.
"I Fiat Lux,
I Fiat Lux."
-Oski Angelou
BTW- I can't help, but agree with you about mist of what you wrote.
Wilcox's record in one-score games is 14-23. That isn't very good, but if you change it to 18-17 that's only an extra half a win per year and it doesn't fundamentally change anything about his tenure.
The big differences in the records of successful and unsuccessful coaches are in the multi-score games. Nick Saban's Alabama teams had a mediocre record in one-score games but they had a lot more blowout wins than blowout losses.
5-20 in one score games over the past 4 seasons.
Only constant during that time is Wilcox - Fire that man! In this NIL era, a good coach only needs 1-2 seasons to completely turn around a program. I have faith Lyons will empower the right people (AD & HC) to change cal football.
Avi, thanks for the write up. The list of reasons/excuses for some of the failures is lengthy and many are valid. I think most of us are just tired of the excuses in year 8. The coaching flubs are holding us back. And regarding the injuries, we’ve always been just a couple injuries away from doom under Wilcox. That lack of depth is on the coaches. Now with all of that said, Wilcox has a habit of winning after he’s lost the fanbase, so maybe he rattles off a bunch in a row to finish out 5-1 or 6-0. I’m just not gonna get my hopes up. The fact that we’ve seen this story so many times and the pitchforks haven’t finally come out til year 8 speaks to the patience of this fanbase.