Cal football is still many steps away from being a program like Washington

The California Golden Bears just don't have the juice to compete against a national title contender, as the issues are structural.

Barring a drastic acceleration in player development, the California Golden Bears are likely going to lose several more football games this year.

This isn’t all on Cal. The Pac-12 is monstrous.

For starters, the Washington Huskies are a national title contender, and are by all accounts playing the best football of any team in this country. They pass the eye test. They pass all statistical markers. They pass the box score marks.

They have a top 5 quarterback in the nation, as Michael Penix Jr. gets the ball out to his playmakers fast. They have the best receiving corps in the nation (Washington didn’t even need Jalen McMillan on Saturday, as Rome Odunze and Ja’Lynn Polk torched a solid Cal secondary).

They have an offensive line that allows Penix hours to survey and fire. They have a dynamite offensive coordinator in Ryan Grubb that utilize his skill advantage, finds every defensive weakness and relentlessly targets it. They have an opportunistic defense that pounces on turnovers. Their coaching is top notch, they’ve recruited well, they have a healthy NIL program, and they put their players in great positions to win.

The Bears are playing a team that is playing at the upper echelon of college football, are peaking at the right time, and Cal simply is not on their level right now.

The sad part is you could say this about many of Cal’s remaining foes. Oregon and USC are performing at a similar level as Washington. Utah, Oregon State, UCLA, Washington State are all a rung below, but should make noise.

So talking about this performance isn’t terribly interesting, as it was essentially over in about 15 minutes. Let’s look bigger.

Why is Cal where they are relative to the best of their departing Pac-12 peers, and how can we learn from them?

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Transfer portal quarterbacks

Five of the seven Pac-12 contenders (and a rebuilding squad in Colorado) all invested heavily in finding the best quarterback possible in the transfer portal.

Three are Heisman Trophy contenders in Penix Jr., Bo Nix and Caleb Williams.

One is probably the most underrated quarterback in the nation in Cam Ward.

One is still a question mark in DJ Uiagalelei, but he is certainly an upgrade over at Oregon State.

Cal has landed three in the last two years. Jack Plummer proved to be capable last year, but unfortunately after the change in offensive coordinator, Cal could not sell him on staying. Now he is doing very well at Louisville. While I doubt he would’ve made the difference against Washington, it would’ve been an improved situation for the Bears to have him around.

Cal currently has two transfer portal quarterbacks in Sam Jackson V and Ben Finley. Finley got the call today. Although he could move the football on occasion to Jeremiah Hunter and Taj Davis, his three disastrous first half mistakes turned what could’ve been a competitive shootout into a rout.

Jackson V has talent and showed it in garbage time, but has had significant struggles in the first three games. Hopefully, his performance against the Husky backups is a good sign of things to come, but it certainly will invite questions as to why Jackson lost the job after he seemed to steady himself against Idaho.

Sadly, at the moment, the quarterback gap is the biggest difference between Cal being even mildly successful this season or another disappointing campaign. The gap between Penix and Finley’s performances in the competitive part of the game was worth at least 28 to 35 points.

Justin Wilcox mentioned in the press availability post-game that the battle between the two quarterbacks remains ongoing. This is simply not a good place to be if the Bears expect to spring an upset in Pac-12 play.

Cal needs to lock its starter in soon. This isn’t 2018. The Bears can’t rotate their offensive leader and expect to keep up with their opponents.

Recruiting

Washington has built their program off of strong recruiting from the Jimmy Lake years. While he had no business being a coach, Lake brought talent in and it has laid the foundation for Kalen DeBoer and company to thrive. 19 of 22 Washington’s starters are all recruiting commits. Compare that to Cal, where about 50% are from other programs. There is a level of continuity and development for the Huskies that isn’t present in the majority of other programs.

Washington has fallen back to the pack recruiting-wise in the first few years of Kalen DeBoer, so it’s unclear how long they can keep this up. But that base has given them the foundation of success that will give them time to build up portal momentum as well.

Cal’s high school recruiting has been lacking in recent cycles (although there have been bright spots this season, like Jeremiah Hunter and Kaleb Elarms-Orr), and it’s made their portal investments all that important to get established players in the door. But it takes years of building to get Cal to where they need to be.

Washington’s NIL programs are fully setup now, with a strong alumni network and a devoted following of former Husky football players to support them year over year. Although Cal has made good progress in the last year to catch up, Washington is definitely high up in terms of active NILs that support their players.

Until Cal’s NIL efforts are fully setup to support both recruiting to land major stars in high school and the portal, we will still be a step behind in the college football arms race.

Coaching

Because of these limitations, it’s important for Cal’s coaches to really floor raise, and find ways to make the most with the players they have. In their two major opportunities, they’ve come up short.

Peter Sirmon has had occasionally good performances, like Auburn two weeks ago, but Washington was a tough time. He could never seem to find the right coverage or scheme to slow down Washington’s vertical attack. It’s a talent issue to be sure, but the Huskies neutralized the outside rush and Penix was able to improvise and put this out of reach.

Spavital obviously went with Finley in this one, and it didn’t pan out. Jaydn Ott couldn’t make plays to really change up the dynamic as the Huskies keyed in on him. There was some success downfield with Taj Davis and Hunter in the vertical game, and Trond Grizzell and Jack Endries got going as well. Spavital is only in his fourth game back so it might require some time to get the new unit gelling and fully meshing, but a commitment to the quarterback he feels can run the offense best is essential.

And special teams, oh, special teams. Vic So’oto handling double duty has just not worked out. It has cost Cal one win. It was a factor to blowing open the Washington game. That sort of decision-making falls on the head man, and we will likely see ramifications all season.

On the flip side, for a program like Washington to have an elite-level coach like DeBoer, in his prime, is really unfair. The vertical spacing that Grubb schemes out makes the Huskies an elite college offense, not just this year, but historically.

Great coaching + great program infrastructure = elite team. Sometimes, it’s that simple. In Year 2, everything is clicking, and Washington will be making major noise to round out 2023.

Meanwhile, Justin Wilcox at Cal still has yet to prove he can floor raise. We have, at best, average to mediocre coaching yielding average to mediocre execution on-the-field. Couple that with developing but average program infrastructure, and those sort of deficiencies can add up to results like Saturday night.

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Cal has a long way to go to return to a top 25 standard of play. There are a lot of things that need to get better.

• Larger NIL investments to improve recruiting and portal efforts. A small example: The Bears were better than last year, but still generally outclassed on the lines, and they just need to recruit better long-term to improve the talent there. Cal needs to create a level of institutional support from their huge alumni base that hasn’t existed for decades—it is essential to long-term program survival, especially with the ACC move looming.

• Either one of our current quarterbacks needs to make a significant leap in the coming weeks. Otherwise, it needs to be an absolute priority to dip back into the portal in 2024 for a top prospect to improve the QB competition.

• Significant coaching strategic changes. The special teams approach has to be different. There needs to be additional lean in somewhere, because that unit is actively costing the Bears. Sirmon has to adjust his defensive schemes somehow to make life a little more difficult for very good Pac-12 QBs. And Spavital has to figure out how to get Ott playmaking—that is the difference between an average offense and a potentially good one.

Nothing I saw yesterday is a great indicator for the rest of the season. Things went bad early and snowballed and you just can’t let that happen against a team like Washington. There are still ways for Cal to adapt and make the most of a very final, formidable Pac-12 campaign.

But for Cal fans to get the team back to where we want to, to be at the level that even sometimes resembles a Washington, rather than treading .500? It’s going to take time.