Good article that's on the money. Just watched the NCSt game and the O-line was obviously the weakest link, again. Their Inability to protect Mendoza, even when obviously holding, is painful to him and Cal fans. Compound that with the illegal procedure penalties and it becomes clear that the problem rests with the O-line coach
1 It looked to me that Coe may have missed that 40 yard attempt because the ground appeared to give way where he planted his left foot.
2 I would not expect Ott to try the draft after this disaster of a year for him, although maybe he might try the portal.
3 In regards to the comment about the 2004 sc game, my son and I went to it. I think that Cal had about twice as many yards as sc. Cal was again snakebit at that game. I think that we had a punt blocked and a punt dropped by our return man. There may have been more screwups by us. I still cannot understand why Tedford put all (?) of the emphasis on passing on that last series when we had first and goal. We had the nation's top rusher (JJ Arrington, over 2000 yards) and I don't recall him being used then. Except for the screwups (part of the game), I think that we had the better team that day. We saw the future Hall of Fame Rogers that day and the NFL bust that Leinart was.
I do think the first point does revolve back to Wilcox. You run out a 7/13 kicker on a 40 yard kick that has been anything but a gimme this season, that's a problem. You're asking for variance and while maybe the snap or food placement wasn't good, you maybe get away with it on a 20-25 yarder, not a 40 yarder when its clear what distinct possibility is in play
Ott's an interesting one. His health has been tough and the offensive line is making his pre combine eval tougher. I still think he straight up goes to the draft because then he maybe works his way to a mid Day 2 guy as opposed to another year of CFB with injury risk despite a hefty NIL sum
what a joke thx to wlicox. we are going tobe the sad doormat of this conference. his decision-making and sequence of play calling is absurd. I'm done watching cal. Sadly he will prob coach in 2025 thx knowltons bright idea stupid contract extension. both are horrible
Wake me up when Wilcox is fired, I’ll be in my den hibernating. But really I’ll continue to go to the games but only to support the players as I have for my entire life.
I always lose my voice cheering but won’t be expending any of that type of energy under Wilcox anymore. We have some awesome talent that’s fun to watch. I’m excited to see what The Jet can do, continuing to get better. Nohl Williams on track to break the Cal season record for interceptions. Mendoza’s resilience. I could go on. The individual talent is there (weren’t we #17 in transfer class?). It will be fun watching the games for the individual players but as an elder said to me during spring game, don’t expect much as a team under Wilcox.
When watching the Cal’s sequence leading up to the missed field goal, I was asking myself is this really the right decision to play for the field goal? Not only is it a dice throw with Cal’s kicker but you were giving Pitt a lot of time to come back. It felt like a poor decision and disheartening for someone previously in the Wilcox camp. Anyway you can lose close games because of bad luck or the other team was more talented but sometime if it happens too regularly you might conclude that it is coaching. So question should be is the problem really Wilcox or is problem Cal’s financial disadvantage where they cannot hire top grade assistants? Also I question whether Knowlton is capable of answering these questions.
That’s it for me on the Wilcox Regime. I’ve been contributing to the NIL, but until they’re ready to move on, I’m only interested in the Wilcox buyout fund.
Sad to agree but I do. I had written before the season that I considered this year 8 wins or bust. I can see maybe getting that number and still wanting WIlcox fired. I've said it for a few years but I have no power so all I had was hope... accent on the 'had'... even a winning record would feel like failure.
I don’t blame Bloesch for taking the promotion and pay raise. The blame rest on Wilcox for the promotion. As far as I know, no one was trying to poach Bloesch from us as their OC. It was a completely unforced error by Wilcox.
Wilcox has shown he can’t hire a good OC, why would we give Wilcox a 5th chance to hire a new OC?
I’ve had my beef with various O coordinators over the years but I’m honestly not sure how much more Bloesch can do with an offensive line that can’t get any push in the run game or hold blocks in the pass game. That along with the O line penalties makes it almost impossible to design an effective scheme.
Finally someone who can see the most glaring problem with the Bears. O line talent. Of course most people watch the ball and not the O line or LB's or D line Or DB's and what cover their in, etc. If they did they'd see the O line deficiency and the FG kicker. Those two positions are why we are not 5-1.
See I actually disagree. A good O coordinator can scheme and plan around that particular year’s deficiencies. Spav scored points with the players he had. Could he run everything he wanted to? Probably not, but if we had a fraction of last year’s offensive scoring ability we’re 6-0. The more glaring question I had is why he bailed. It’s not like it was some prestigious position. Why was he so motivated to bail before the season was even over?
Was this was happened? I was curious beforehand, and now even more so, considering how clear it was that Wilcox needed to make a good decision on his fourth O coordinator. Going with an internal basically unproven choice seemed, odd, to put it mildly.
Cal will be favored the rest of the way, excluding the SMU game. Cal should (key word: should) win the next 5 games, but I have also lost faith in the program doing so and wouldn't be surprised if Cal dropped another 1-2 winnable games. NC State opened as 7.5-point underdogs, and they are probably one of the tougher games remaining. Oregon State lost a lot of talent when the Pac-12 fell apart (and also lost their coach), but they're always tough regardless of their record. Wake Forest is just straight-up bad, which is why I predicted a loss to them in our preseason predictions. Syracuse is one-dimensional, and I think Cal's secondary shuts down Kyle McCord. Then there's the Big Game, and anything can happen in a rivalry game. Even though Stanford is also straight-up bad, they hung around a vastly superior Clemson team for longer than they should have, so I am not taking that one for granted either. Cal is in a weaker conference, and still going to somehow struggle to find that 6th win for bowl eligibility.
I still think Cal was the better team than Pitt on Saturday, and that Cal lost that game more than Pitt won it.
This is getting hard to watch, and I’ve been a Cal fan since the 70s…..
I love Coach W, but there are times I wish he HAD taken the Oregon job so we’d be forced (with the benefit of a payout instead of the burden of a payout) to switch things up. Not that we would have landed a Dan Lanning-esque coach, but a change of SOME sort is needed….
There are those that are ok with 4-6 wins a season along with our graduation rates. This is just another version of turtling and just not good enough if we want the program to survive in this day and age.
We HAVE to take a chance (and it is a risk) on getting a better Coach.
I’d rather go down swinging than curl up in a corner and hope next year Wilcox will turn it around.
Wilcox came to Cal wanting to make it a run oriented, ball control, and defensive oriented team. He wanted to make us like Wisconsin or Stanford. Which is fine but in order to do that you better have a strong OL and a great FG kicker who can make critical FGs because most of your games will be low scoring and points will be at a premium.
Wilcox has 8 years to implement this and he has failed completely. Our OL has never been great, let alone good. It is often average to below average. He has made terrible OC hires (Bill Musgrove) and terrible OL hires (Angus McClure) and this year he came to the puzzling conclusion that our OL, with years of struggling as a unit, did not need a dedicated and full time position coach. I wish someone would ask Wilcox why he felt our OL was good enough that it didn’t need its own dedicated position coach. Why when we play low scoring games, Wilcox can’t find a consistent FG kicker that can make 90% of their FGs within 40 yards? You would think a coach who believes in ball control and defense would also make special teams a priority but he hasn’t. Under Wilcox, only 1/3 of our team has been functional.
This is why Wilcox needs to be fired. He can’t even create the type of team he wants.
To be honest, getting close but not getting it done has been a curse for decades. Even the great Aaron Rogers fell victim to this curse when he threw 3 incomplete passes into the USC end zone after driving down inside the 10. I happened to be sitting in the end zone at USC that day. Cal’s ranking would have gone to #1 if we beat #1. Then there was that no think scramble by our QB (with no time outs) against a mediocre Oregon Stste team that cost us the #1 ranking. These occurred during the great Tedford years. For the #1 public university we make a lot of bad decisions in crunch time……and we have a history of bad luck. The solution is not to “fire” anyone. Just keep on fighting…..after all don’t forget “the Bear never dies”. Go Bears!
Can you imagine hearing that attitude from a high-paid CEO? Or a politician? “We just have a history of bad luck. There shouldn’t be any consequences for me. Just keep watching/voting/investing and accept the results no matter what they are.”
The difference is that the Rodgers team was legitimately going up against one of the greatest college teams of all time. That’s actual bad luck; in any other era 2004 Cal is a conference championship team for sure. Tedford had actually built a strong, winning program in just three years.
FSU, Miami, and Pitt this year are not that. Very beatable teams and we blow it because of our own mistakes. And Wilcox is in his 8th year.
So, I’ve never been able to ask this in a forum with people who had a good perspective on it. Why did Tedford ultimately fail and not sustain what he did earlier? I had to basically duck out of football obsession for a few years due to the stage of life I was in (newlywed/parent ect). That period basically coincided with Tedford’s demise and beginning of Sonny Dykes and I never really understood what the hell happened other than the academics going to shit.
This probably gets complicated, but I think the core of his downfall was the team falling behind on academics and almost putting the program on probation.
Is that on Tedford? Kind of, but I also think it boils down to how Cal ran its program and also how it generally does everything: the administration offers zero help to student-athletes trying to pass their classes, and it fell on the football coach way more than it would at other major programs. Eventually the burnout got to him.
This, by the way, is another thing that really needs to be fixed above and beyond just replacing an underperforming coach. Cal needs to take revenue sports seriously if it wants to remain a "major" athletic program, and that includes administrative support for football players. Hopefully the recent realignment, NIL collective performance, GameDay turnout, etc., is pointing the way.
Such a disappointment. My two years as a student were in 2004/2005, but I had basically been going to games forever. I knew the early Tedford era was special, probably better than a lot of my classmates did. That and the young alum years in Section Q were an absolute blast. Tennessee 07 and Oregon 06 were probably my favorite football games I’ve ever seen at Memorial in person. 03 SC was pretty fun too, but the energy level was different. I always thought he was going to be a Bill Snyder with Kansas State situation, but clearly that wasn’t the case.
I think Tedford later years had a few reasons that all contributed to his failures later on:
1. His health issues
2. Better and more successful coaches in the Pac12. His later years he had to compete against Harbaugh, Leach, Whittingham and Chip Kelly
3. Locker room issues, players failing academically and becoming ineligible, other highly rated players not reaching their potential, recruiting misses or bust.
4. He was a little slow to adapt to the changing CFB landscape and offensive trends.
That SC game was analogous to the one we played against UW in 1991. We played about as well as we could have and still lost by a hair to a generational squad. I didn’t see either of those losses as bad luck or failures.
05 was the Ayoob year. I think you meant 04. I do wonder what 05 could have been like if Rodgers had come back, or Longshore hadn’t gotten hurt against Sac State.
This comment and ones like it ignore the reality of major college football in this era. You cannot afford to be stuck in perpetual mediocrity. There is no such thing as curses - they are not real. Just good coaches and bad coaches. Well prepared and well coached teams and poorly prepared and poorly coached teams. Teams that can win tight, program changing games, and teams that can never get over the hump. What return are we getting on our $5 million/year investment into Wilcox? Demand better.
Not necessarily disagreeing with you or anyone else on the anti Wilcox train, but just curious how you might feel if this turns into an 8-4 or 9-3 season? Do we actually fire him after such a season?? Also, who do we replace him with given our budgetary constraints? We’d have to take a flyer on a young coordinator most likely a la Wilcox 8 yrs ago. Maybe better maybe worse…
Perhaps our real frustration is with his lack of recruiting on the offensive line and that our limited budget is better invested in NIL to get some big uglies?? I question whether or not we have an XO problem vs a recruiting problem, and, recruiting has become more about money than anything else these days. Not saying the coaching staff couldn’t be better strategically…they could. But, given limited resources, where shall we find realistic solutions vs reflexively and angrily calling to wire filcox??
I think the issue is it’s not just recruiting, it’s what’s being done with the recruits. I forget if it’s this post or another, but Rugbear commented on how he watched the game and focused solely on the O-line and their technique was consistently bad, which shouldn’t be happening by Week 6. I didn’t play offensive line, or football for that matter like he did, so I respect his observations. We are not the only school that doesn’t get the best O-line recruits. Army and Navy are limited in who they can put on the field by default and have had to rely on out-scheming and out technique-ing their opponents forever. They’re both undefeated, ranked, and scoring 30+ points a game. We would also be undefeated with that kind of offensive production. If it was just about O-line talent or lack of it, FCS schools would never pull off upsets against physically superior FBS opponents. He also pointed out we have athletes capable of moving the ball. We were better than Pitt in all offensive statistics other than points. We didn’t score when we had opportunities. That’s on in game decision-making and situational strategy.
No offense and I hear you but Army has beaten exactly no one this year: UAB, Tulsa, Holy Cross (!!), Rice, FL Atlantic, and Temple. We would be undefeated against such teams and our O line would have looked like the 9ers. It’s just not a valid comparison. That said, I genuinely agree that our O line schemes and techniques are poor and could be vastly improved with better coaching…that we can’t afford. The reality is that our O line is a patchwork of transfers, low 3*s and converted TEs and we used to have legit talent in the Tedford days when we were a much more consistent program in terms of running and blocking in the trenches.
Great questions. For me, 8 wins would be the absolute floor, meaning he goes a minimum of 5-1 from here on out. That’s certainly possible. Every game is winnable (with the exception of maybe SMU), but every game is also loseable. If I were betting, I think this is another 6-7 win team. Classic Wilcox - barely scrape to .500 and have a losing conference record for the 8th year in a row.
The question of who we replace him with is not a fan problem. This constantly gets brought up on these threads, and we have an AD making over a mil a year, who will undoubtedly employ a high dollar search firm to do his job for him and solve that problem. This coaching staff is failing to get the job done - it’s not up to fans to find the new guy. If someone wants to start sending me jim knowlton’s paycheck, then I’ll get right to work on solving that problem.
As far as recruiting, do I think he could recruit better? Yeah - look at some of the teams ahead of us on the recruiting rankings. He’s underperforming IMO. We also had the talent to win the last three games and could potentially be 6-0 right now, and we shit away every opportunity. The last two games we scored the same number of touchdowns and field goals as our opponents and still managed to lose due to mind-bogglingly bad decision making by the coaching staff. This is a trend. They are not getting the job done. We’re not reflexively calling for a firing. THIS IS YEAR 8. How much more evidence should we require?
The offense is a mess. It hasn't gotten better. Our play calling runs from predictable, to too much trickery and our execution sucks. I don't understand our O-lines inability to execute. It's either because they aren't coached up well (I see a lot of bad technique), the blocking schemes are poorly drawn up, they ask guys who are not that athletic to do things that require them to be athletic, or a combination of any and all of the preceding. I think its a combo of all of the preceding.
One of the other things I see is a lack of attention to fundamentals. Any good coach will watch a team in practice and call out the little things. There will be constant reminders to reinforce 'No Holding' and 'No Prestart Penatlies' and no 'Stupid Selfish Penalties'. Great coaches get their players incredibly fired up, but in a controlled way. Guys losing it on the field, to me, is a reflection of coaches that have not done an appropriate job of reinforcing a culture that is disciplined and responsible. And that's what I see with CAL's offense right now, lack of discipline and responsibility and a team that has neglected the basics.
After watching our offense for six weeks, I no longer believe Bloesch is the guy that can succeed as a P$ OC. Sadly, he can't even get his o-line to perform with any consistency.
It's too late to make a difference, so Coach Wilcox may have to ride the horse he bought to the finish, but it may very well cost him his job. If I were him, I would not hire any coach in the future without successful proven P4 experience. Talking about X's and O's and philosophy is easy, actually implementing a system and being successful is a whole different skill set.
Your assessment of the discipline lacking in the O line is on the button. And that is coaching. Either by instilling the right mental attitude, or picking the right personnel. Or … maybe recruiting …
All of which Wilcox is responsible for. Wilcox was the one who decided we didn’t need to hire a full time and dedicated OL coach. Wilcox is the one who decides who we offer a scholarship to and recruit.
Good article that's on the money. Just watched the NCSt game and the O-line was obviously the weakest link, again. Their Inability to protect Mendoza, even when obviously holding, is painful to him and Cal fans. Compound that with the illegal procedure penalties and it becomes clear that the problem rests with the O-line coach
Who should we email to ask them to fire people?
That’s way beyond our pay grade. The power donors make that call; it’s their money. We’re just here to post in lieu of therapy.
I think Knowlton is a bigger problem than Wilcox tbh
At least inextricable. The contract extension is his version of deciding to go for 2 prematurely after the opening touchdown.
A few non-Wilcox comments.
1 It looked to me that Coe may have missed that 40 yard attempt because the ground appeared to give way where he planted his left foot.
2 I would not expect Ott to try the draft after this disaster of a year for him, although maybe he might try the portal.
3 In regards to the comment about the 2004 sc game, my son and I went to it. I think that Cal had about twice as many yards as sc. Cal was again snakebit at that game. I think that we had a punt blocked and a punt dropped by our return man. There may have been more screwups by us. I still cannot understand why Tedford put all (?) of the emphasis on passing on that last series when we had first and goal. We had the nation's top rusher (JJ Arrington, over 2000 yards) and I don't recall him being used then. Except for the screwups (part of the game), I think that we had the better team that day. We saw the future Hall of Fame Rogers that day and the NFL bust that Leinart was.
I do think the first point does revolve back to Wilcox. You run out a 7/13 kicker on a 40 yard kick that has been anything but a gimme this season, that's a problem. You're asking for variance and while maybe the snap or food placement wasn't good, you maybe get away with it on a 20-25 yarder, not a 40 yarder when its clear what distinct possibility is in play
Ott's an interesting one. His health has been tough and the offensive line is making his pre combine eval tougher. I still think he straight up goes to the draft because then he maybe works his way to a mid Day 2 guy as opposed to another year of CFB with injury risk despite a hefty NIL sum
At this point, why not give play calling duties to passing coordinator/quarterback coach Sterling Gilbert? Can’t be worse.
what a joke thx to wlicox. we are going tobe the sad doormat of this conference. his decision-making and sequence of play calling is absurd. I'm done watching cal. Sadly he will prob coach in 2025 thx knowltons bright idea stupid contract extension. both are horrible
Wake me up when Wilcox is fired, I’ll be in my den hibernating. But really I’ll continue to go to the games but only to support the players as I have for my entire life.
I always lose my voice cheering but won’t be expending any of that type of energy under Wilcox anymore. We have some awesome talent that’s fun to watch. I’m excited to see what The Jet can do, continuing to get better. Nohl Williams on track to break the Cal season record for interceptions. Mendoza’s resilience. I could go on. The individual talent is there (weren’t we #17 in transfer class?). It will be fun watching the games for the individual players but as an elder said to me during spring game, don’t expect much as a team under Wilcox.
This. The players are still playing their assess off which is why I suck up the five hours in the car from Lincoln to Berkeley and back.
When watching the Cal’s sequence leading up to the missed field goal, I was asking myself is this really the right decision to play for the field goal? Not only is it a dice throw with Cal’s kicker but you were giving Pitt a lot of time to come back. It felt like a poor decision and disheartening for someone previously in the Wilcox camp. Anyway you can lose close games because of bad luck or the other team was more talented but sometime if it happens too regularly you might conclude that it is coaching. So question should be is the problem really Wilcox or is problem Cal’s financial disadvantage where they cannot hire top grade assistants? Also I question whether Knowlton is capable of answering these questions.
Brutal but true. Should've hired Brennan Marion when we had the chance.
That’s it for me on the Wilcox Regime. I’ve been contributing to the NIL, but until they’re ready to move on, I’m only interested in the Wilcox buyout fund.
Sad to agree but I do. I had written before the season that I considered this year 8 wins or bust. I can see maybe getting that number and still wanting WIlcox fired. I've said it for a few years but I have no power so all I had was hope... accent on the 'had'... even a winning record would feel like failure.
On the two point conversion attempt: Why use the punter and the long snapper to try to execute?
Bloesch’s play calling ability was previewed in the 2023 Independence Bowl and was abysmal - then he gets promoted.
I don’t blame Bloesch for taking the promotion and pay raise. The blame rest on Wilcox for the promotion. As far as I know, no one was trying to poach Bloesch from us as their OC. It was a completely unforced error by Wilcox.
Wilcox has shown he can’t hire a good OC, why would we give Wilcox a 5th chance to hire a new OC?
I’ve had my beef with various O coordinators over the years but I’m honestly not sure how much more Bloesch can do with an offensive line that can’t get any push in the run game or hold blocks in the pass game. That along with the O line penalties makes it almost impossible to design an effective scheme.
Finally someone who can see the most glaring problem with the Bears. O line talent. Of course most people watch the ball and not the O line or LB's or D line Or DB's and what cover their in, etc. If they did they'd see the O line deficiency and the FG kicker. Those two positions are why we are not 5-1.
See I actually disagree. A good O coordinator can scheme and plan around that particular year’s deficiencies. Spav scored points with the players he had. Could he run everything he wanted to? Probably not, but if we had a fraction of last year’s offensive scoring ability we’re 6-0. The more glaring question I had is why he bailed. It’s not like it was some prestigious position. Why was he so motivated to bail before the season was even over?
Yeah and I agree but the problem is Bloesch is also the OL coach so he still has to point the finger at himself.
He’s also the O Line Coach and responsible for that hot mess.
Forcing Spav out too along the way.
Was this was happened? I was curious beforehand, and now even more so, considering how clear it was that Wilcox needed to make a good decision on his fourth O coordinator. Going with an internal basically unproven choice seemed, odd, to put it mildly.
If you kept Spavital, we'd have never ended up with Mendoza. Spav was for SJV/Finley only.
Then that’s also on Wilcox, for hiring Spavital in the first place.
Interested in getting your take on the program now after your prediction for the Pitt game.
Cal will be favored the rest of the way, excluding the SMU game. Cal should (key word: should) win the next 5 games, but I have also lost faith in the program doing so and wouldn't be surprised if Cal dropped another 1-2 winnable games. NC State opened as 7.5-point underdogs, and they are probably one of the tougher games remaining. Oregon State lost a lot of talent when the Pac-12 fell apart (and also lost their coach), but they're always tough regardless of their record. Wake Forest is just straight-up bad, which is why I predicted a loss to them in our preseason predictions. Syracuse is one-dimensional, and I think Cal's secondary shuts down Kyle McCord. Then there's the Big Game, and anything can happen in a rivalry game. Even though Stanford is also straight-up bad, they hung around a vastly superior Clemson team for longer than they should have, so I am not taking that one for granted either. Cal is in a weaker conference, and still going to somehow struggle to find that 6th win for bowl eligibility.
I still think Cal was the better team than Pitt on Saturday, and that Cal lost that game more than Pitt won it.
Dead on.
This is getting hard to watch, and I’ve been a Cal fan since the 70s…..
I love Coach W, but there are times I wish he HAD taken the Oregon job so we’d be forced (with the benefit of a payout instead of the burden of a payout) to switch things up. Not that we would have landed a Dan Lanning-esque coach, but a change of SOME sort is needed….
There are those that are ok with 4-6 wins a season along with our graduation rates. This is just another version of turtling and just not good enough if we want the program to survive in this day and age.
We HAVE to take a chance (and it is a risk) on getting a better Coach.
I’d rather go down swinging than curl up in a corner and hope next year Wilcox will turn it around.
And to be honest, with CFB season being 12 games now and Cal having 4 OOC games, winning 4-6 games a season is not that difficult anymore.
Wilcox came to Cal wanting to make it a run oriented, ball control, and defensive oriented team. He wanted to make us like Wisconsin or Stanford. Which is fine but in order to do that you better have a strong OL and a great FG kicker who can make critical FGs because most of your games will be low scoring and points will be at a premium.
Wilcox has 8 years to implement this and he has failed completely. Our OL has never been great, let alone good. It is often average to below average. He has made terrible OC hires (Bill Musgrove) and terrible OL hires (Angus McClure) and this year he came to the puzzling conclusion that our OL, with years of struggling as a unit, did not need a dedicated and full time position coach. I wish someone would ask Wilcox why he felt our OL was good enough that it didn’t need its own dedicated position coach. Why when we play low scoring games, Wilcox can’t find a consistent FG kicker that can make 90% of their FGs within 40 yards? You would think a coach who believes in ball control and defense would also make special teams a priority but he hasn’t. Under Wilcox, only 1/3 of our team has been functional.
This is why Wilcox needs to be fired. He can’t even create the type of team he wants.
Well put.
Yes. This.
To be honest, getting close but not getting it done has been a curse for decades. Even the great Aaron Rogers fell victim to this curse when he threw 3 incomplete passes into the USC end zone after driving down inside the 10. I happened to be sitting in the end zone at USC that day. Cal’s ranking would have gone to #1 if we beat #1. Then there was that no think scramble by our QB (with no time outs) against a mediocre Oregon Stste team that cost us the #1 ranking. These occurred during the great Tedford years. For the #1 public university we make a lot of bad decisions in crunch time……and we have a history of bad luck. The solution is not to “fire” anyone. Just keep on fighting…..after all don’t forget “the Bear never dies”. Go Bears!
Can you imagine hearing that attitude from a high-paid CEO? Or a politician? “We just have a history of bad luck. There shouldn’t be any consequences for me. Just keep watching/voting/investing and accept the results no matter what they are.”
I’d gladly take those 11 Tedford years (even the last year meltdown) Vs Wilcox’s 7+ years any day.
The difference is that the Rodgers team was legitimately going up against one of the greatest college teams of all time. That’s actual bad luck; in any other era 2004 Cal is a conference championship team for sure. Tedford had actually built a strong, winning program in just three years.
FSU, Miami, and Pitt this year are not that. Very beatable teams and we blow it because of our own mistakes. And Wilcox is in his 8th year.
So, I’ve never been able to ask this in a forum with people who had a good perspective on it. Why did Tedford ultimately fail and not sustain what he did earlier? I had to basically duck out of football obsession for a few years due to the stage of life I was in (newlywed/parent ect). That period basically coincided with Tedford’s demise and beginning of Sonny Dykes and I never really understood what the hell happened other than the academics going to shit.
This probably gets complicated, but I think the core of his downfall was the team falling behind on academics and almost putting the program on probation.
Is that on Tedford? Kind of, but I also think it boils down to how Cal ran its program and also how it generally does everything: the administration offers zero help to student-athletes trying to pass their classes, and it fell on the football coach way more than it would at other major programs. Eventually the burnout got to him.
This, by the way, is another thing that really needs to be fixed above and beyond just replacing an underperforming coach. Cal needs to take revenue sports seriously if it wants to remain a "major" athletic program, and that includes administrative support for football players. Hopefully the recent realignment, NIL collective performance, GameDay turnout, etc., is pointing the way.
Such a disappointment. My two years as a student were in 2004/2005, but I had basically been going to games forever. I knew the early Tedford era was special, probably better than a lot of my classmates did. That and the young alum years in Section Q were an absolute blast. Tennessee 07 and Oregon 06 were probably my favorite football games I’ve ever seen at Memorial in person. 03 SC was pretty fun too, but the energy level was different. I always thought he was going to be a Bill Snyder with Kansas State situation, but clearly that wasn’t the case.
I think Tedford later years had a few reasons that all contributed to his failures later on:
1. His health issues
2. Better and more successful coaches in the Pac12. His later years he had to compete against Harbaugh, Leach, Whittingham and Chip Kelly
3. Locker room issues, players failing academically and becoming ineligible, other highly rated players not reaching their potential, recruiting misses or bust.
4. He was a little slow to adapt to the changing CFB landscape and offensive trends.
That playbook really became a hindrance. You can’t have a scheme that took guys at least a season to learn.
That SC game was analogous to the one we played against UW in 1991. We played about as well as we could have and still lost by a hair to a generational squad. I didn’t see either of those losses as bad luck or failures.
The games themselves were not bad luck so much as having those kinds of seasons while going against those kinds of generational teams.
For sure. I’ve thought about that often. If those ‘91 or ‘05 teams had played any virtually other seasons, we are playing in a couple Rose Bowls.
05 was the Ayoob year. I think you meant 04. I do wonder what 05 could have been like if Rodgers had come back, or Longshore hadn’t gotten hurt against Sac State.
Yep. My bad. '04.
USC was still pretty dominant in '05 so I'm not sure we beat them. But with a healthy Longshore that is a 10-win season for sure.
This comment and ones like it ignore the reality of major college football in this era. You cannot afford to be stuck in perpetual mediocrity. There is no such thing as curses - they are not real. Just good coaches and bad coaches. Well prepared and well coached teams and poorly prepared and poorly coached teams. Teams that can win tight, program changing games, and teams that can never get over the hump. What return are we getting on our $5 million/year investment into Wilcox? Demand better.
Not necessarily disagreeing with you or anyone else on the anti Wilcox train, but just curious how you might feel if this turns into an 8-4 or 9-3 season? Do we actually fire him after such a season?? Also, who do we replace him with given our budgetary constraints? We’d have to take a flyer on a young coordinator most likely a la Wilcox 8 yrs ago. Maybe better maybe worse…
Perhaps our real frustration is with his lack of recruiting on the offensive line and that our limited budget is better invested in NIL to get some big uglies?? I question whether or not we have an XO problem vs a recruiting problem, and, recruiting has become more about money than anything else these days. Not saying the coaching staff couldn’t be better strategically…they could. But, given limited resources, where shall we find realistic solutions vs reflexively and angrily calling to wire filcox??
I think the issue is it’s not just recruiting, it’s what’s being done with the recruits. I forget if it’s this post or another, but Rugbear commented on how he watched the game and focused solely on the O-line and their technique was consistently bad, which shouldn’t be happening by Week 6. I didn’t play offensive line, or football for that matter like he did, so I respect his observations. We are not the only school that doesn’t get the best O-line recruits. Army and Navy are limited in who they can put on the field by default and have had to rely on out-scheming and out technique-ing their opponents forever. They’re both undefeated, ranked, and scoring 30+ points a game. We would also be undefeated with that kind of offensive production. If it was just about O-line talent or lack of it, FCS schools would never pull off upsets against physically superior FBS opponents. He also pointed out we have athletes capable of moving the ball. We were better than Pitt in all offensive statistics other than points. We didn’t score when we had opportunities. That’s on in game decision-making and situational strategy.
No offense and I hear you but Army has beaten exactly no one this year: UAB, Tulsa, Holy Cross (!!), Rice, FL Atlantic, and Temple. We would be undefeated against such teams and our O line would have looked like the 9ers. It’s just not a valid comparison. That said, I genuinely agree that our O line schemes and techniques are poor and could be vastly improved with better coaching…that we can’t afford. The reality is that our O line is a patchwork of transfers, low 3*s and converted TEs and we used to have legit talent in the Tedford days when we were a much more consistent program in terms of running and blocking in the trenches.
Forgive me. I neglected to give Army proper credit for its season opening beat down of perennial juggernaut—Lehigh.
Great questions. For me, 8 wins would be the absolute floor, meaning he goes a minimum of 5-1 from here on out. That’s certainly possible. Every game is winnable (with the exception of maybe SMU), but every game is also loseable. If I were betting, I think this is another 6-7 win team. Classic Wilcox - barely scrape to .500 and have a losing conference record for the 8th year in a row.
The question of who we replace him with is not a fan problem. This constantly gets brought up on these threads, and we have an AD making over a mil a year, who will undoubtedly employ a high dollar search firm to do his job for him and solve that problem. This coaching staff is failing to get the job done - it’s not up to fans to find the new guy. If someone wants to start sending me jim knowlton’s paycheck, then I’ll get right to work on solving that problem.
As far as recruiting, do I think he could recruit better? Yeah - look at some of the teams ahead of us on the recruiting rankings. He’s underperforming IMO. We also had the talent to win the last three games and could potentially be 6-0 right now, and we shit away every opportunity. The last two games we scored the same number of touchdowns and field goals as our opponents and still managed to lose due to mind-bogglingly bad decision making by the coaching staff. This is a trend. They are not getting the job done. We’re not reflexively calling for a firing. THIS IS YEAR 8. How much more evidence should we require?
The press conference where he doubled down on multiple poor decisions is where he lost me.
He lost me at Colorado in 2022.
I agree, that Colorado team was one of the worst teams in the history of the Pac-12, losing to them was completely inexcusable.
Off a BYE no less. I’m still irritated with that game.
Wilcox: wins that feel like losses, and losses that should be wins. Sigh.
Me too.
That loss and the Arizona loss should have gotten him fired.
The offense is a mess. It hasn't gotten better. Our play calling runs from predictable, to too much trickery and our execution sucks. I don't understand our O-lines inability to execute. It's either because they aren't coached up well (I see a lot of bad technique), the blocking schemes are poorly drawn up, they ask guys who are not that athletic to do things that require them to be athletic, or a combination of any and all of the preceding. I think its a combo of all of the preceding.
One of the other things I see is a lack of attention to fundamentals. Any good coach will watch a team in practice and call out the little things. There will be constant reminders to reinforce 'No Holding' and 'No Prestart Penatlies' and no 'Stupid Selfish Penalties'. Great coaches get their players incredibly fired up, but in a controlled way. Guys losing it on the field, to me, is a reflection of coaches that have not done an appropriate job of reinforcing a culture that is disciplined and responsible. And that's what I see with CAL's offense right now, lack of discipline and responsibility and a team that has neglected the basics.
After watching our offense for six weeks, I no longer believe Bloesch is the guy that can succeed as a P$ OC. Sadly, he can't even get his o-line to perform with any consistency.
It's too late to make a difference, so Coach Wilcox may have to ride the horse he bought to the finish, but it may very well cost him his job. If I were him, I would not hire any coach in the future without successful proven P4 experience. Talking about X's and O's and philosophy is easy, actually implementing a system and being successful is a whole different skill set.
Your assessment of the discipline lacking in the O line is on the button. And that is coaching. Either by instilling the right mental attitude, or picking the right personnel. Or … maybe recruiting …
All of which Wilcox is responsible for. Wilcox was the one who decided we didn’t need to hire a full time and dedicated OL coach. Wilcox is the one who decides who we offer a scholarship to and recruit.