Oregon HC Mario Cristobal is officially gone and why we should care about Notre Dame's new coach
You spin me right 'round, baby.
Oh, you thought the Cal Football season was over? The coaching carousel stops for no woman and for no man.
Across the country and in the land no one cares about, Notre Dame is undergoing a makeover. After 12 seasons, head coach Brian Kelly has departed, heading to LSU to fake a Southern accent first and coach some players second. Kelly leaves behind a mind-boggling history with Notre Dame, including a 92–39 record (which does not include 21 vacated wins) and meeting or exceeding 10 wins in six of the past seven seasons.
Is it time for Notre Dame to enter a massive rebuild? Maybe not… Not only has an internal hire been made to promote defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman to head coach, but the Fighting Irish have reportedly managed to retain eight of ten coaches from their impressive 11–1 squad.
Why do we care? Because they’re one of our 2022 nonconference opponents. Can the Bears capitalize on the (lack of?) changes to snag the big win over this hallowed school? Notre Dame will play Oklahoma State in the Fiesta Bowl, so we’ll get a good chance to see what we’re up against.
But if we focus on things even more relevant to the Bears, there’s a change over in Eugene for our overlords over at Addicted to Quack.
It looks like for the second time in two coaches, the Oregon head coach will be leaving for his hometown/childhood team in the state of Florida. Mario Cristobal is reportedly leaving the Ducks to lead his alma mater and losers of the 2008 Emerald Bowl—Miami.
There’s a lot of crazy surrounding this hire, as is usually the case with the U.
Additionally, Miami doesn’t have an athletic director yet who would generally release Diaz and hire Cristobal—that hire is coming AFTER all this madness.
Also, Phil Knight reportedly had an extension on the table for Cristobal during the Pac-12 title game, and Cristobal refused to sign. The extension was then taken off the table.
Cristobal has been quite impressive with the Ducks since he took over for the Florida State–bound Willie Taggart, leading them to a 35–13 record (23–10 Pac-12) over the past four seasons (plus one bowl) with two Pac-12 North titles and two Pac-12 Championships in the last three years.
However, the last three weeks have shown signs of distraction, with two uncompetitive Oregon blowouts against Utah to get knocked down to the Alamo Bowl. With Oregon offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead off to Akron as well, the Ducks are going to begin a pretty important coaching search that could define the balance of power in the Pac-12 North.
Where will Oregon look to find Cristobal’s replacement? Well, I think it’s unavoidable for rumors to turn once again towards Justin Wilcox as an alumnus; however, I think that’s an unrealistic move given Cal’s struggles in the years since. If they do, he might turn them down since he reportedly did so the last time they came knocking. Due once again to their statuses as alumni, I wouldn’t be shocked if some sites or randos on the garbage barge Twitter float DC Peter Sirmon or OC Bill Musgrave as candidates, but I would be shocked if either name ends up as their coach because Oregon and Uncle Phil and Nike can afford proven quantities.
There’s going to be a lot of unknowns when it comes to scouting California’s 2022 opponents. We’ll be facing new coaches at not only Notre Dame and Oregon, but also Washington, Washington State, and USC—at five of our twelve opponents, nearly half of our schedule will be new coaches. Of the remaining seven teams, five are probably happy with their coaches or are in relatively new regimes (UC Davis, UNLV, Oregon State, Arizona, and Colorado), but maybe one of them will get poached or Stanfurd or UCLA will make changes to push us at the 50% mark or beyond? (Especially if we live in John Canzano’s lulzy world where Cristobal-to-Miami spurs Oregon to rehire UCLA’s Chip Kelly.)
I know there are rumors of Wilcox leaving for Oregon and that may not be a wild rumor. Wilcox made significant progress with our team his first three years at CAL and CAL is a tough place to run a program. COVID had a big impact on slowing progress down, especially when Wilcox brought in a new OC with a complicated system. We observed flashes of potential this year, but never seemed to put it all together. I do believe that next year, the continuity in Musgrave's system will pay dividends, whether Garbers comes back or one of the two younger QB's compete for the starting job. I would have to think if Milner is as sharp as Zach Johnson in running the offense and making the reads, that his talent gives him the edge in the competition. There are some unspoken things going on right now that NO ONE has articulated. Coach Wilcox's contract expires after the 2023 season. Without an extension for Wilcox recruits will not have a great sense of comfort with regards to Coach Wilcox's standing and future as the Head Coach of the CAL Football team. Bluntly, this will hurt our recruiting efforts. Thus, Knowlton needs to make a decision of whether to keep Wilcox and offer him an extension, or go a new direction with a new head coach. I'm sure Knowlton is in discussions right now with the wealthy alums, that underwrite the costs of the program, about what they want. Wilcox has not yet fully proven himself to be the savior of CAL football, but he has shown a real ability to motivate his kids and he has integrity that is hard to find today in the high stakes world of P5 coaches. My thinking is I would like to give him one more year at least, but put him in a position to recruit. Perhaps a contract extension with minimal penalties if he is fired and some performance based incentives would do the trick. The other thing is that despite what we think about his record at CAL, other schools understand what he has to deal with at CAL and many would hire him and give him a nice contract, maybe even Oregon. So, if we are going to keep him, we need to be competitive with our contract for him. Lastly, I think our problems started and ended with O-Line play this year. We have the horses up front to move bodies and protect the QB in passing situations. If I were Wilcox I would be reviewing the playbook with Musgrave to see if they can simplify the number of blocking techniques and schemes required with the goal of creating a friendlier system for Big Uglies who are not pro level talent. The second thing I would do is review film, in depth with Angus, and look at every player and the technique they were supposed to apply on every play. I would ask Angus how he plans to fix the problems. Without a solid plan from Angus, I would start looking for a new O-Line coach. Drawing x's and o's and determining blocking assignments is easy. Getting guys to be fundamentally sound in both technique and assignment responsibility is the hard part, and it's where we have been failing. These failures have kept our offense from playing up to it's potential and have to often meant our defense, as good as it was, spent way too much time on the field. That's my 2 cents.
i want TDR back