Hey Alpha1906, I'm trying to delude myself into happiness. Like, maybe after two drives Wilcox said OK the new playbook works, let's not open it any further so we don't give anything away.
I saw someone visited the school this past week and instantly I thought "overthinking - I sure hope 'overthinking' does NOT happen." This is a good program; throw the damn ball; don't be conservative; there are four quarters and this is the program that can make up the throws/can make up the time. Good athletes, good coaches . . . wtf. Better practice goodly Wed., Thurs., Fri.
Why Cal? No, not an advertisement - more like 'why, Cal?; Why do this? Don't do this to your longtime fans! You are supposed to be good; have a quarterback who doesn't lose games. Who cares if the opposing team has a top-talent QB - YOU are good! Don't make longtime admirers repeat the '00s . . . *sad face. #FillInTheEmoji
When is the last time that Cal fandom has been this down and cranky? I don't think we should give up on Garbers just yet, especially if the coaches don't think that his backups give us a better chance. But remember that Wilcox did bench Bowers basically after just a half of football, so he'll do it if he thinks he needs to.
We seem to be very cranky and down indeed. Part of it I think was the hope (that springs eternal with Cal fandom) that we would finally break through this season and also the long two years it has been since we have last been able to see games in person.
I sensed a palpable excitement in the stands as we punched Nevada in the mouth in the first quarter, controlled the ball and the clock in an absurdly successful fashion, and folks had visions of Roses dancing in their heads.
And then it all went poof. Stumbling so badly in year 5 of the era is hard to take. For me, I'm getting over the hangover feeling I had from last night's experience this morning. If you want to see even deeper existential suffering check out the UW Dawg Pound blog, with posters calling for Lake's (and the AD's) head.
UW needs to cut lake ASAP. It's not just the on field coaching, their recruiting has absolutely tanked and is one of the worse of the Pac-12. UW is one of the few programs that can be perennial contenders and they're about to become irrelevant.
Cal fans: I know that last night was an absolute shit-show on offense, but I still feel that Wilcox is the right man for our football program. DEFENSE is what wins football games and he knows his business on that side of the ball. He just needs to find an OC who can get him squared away on the other side of the ball. I know one thing after last night: I sure do miss Beau Baldwin.
Honestly, I think we'll win games, including some important ones. But I wish I saw speed or talent etc. on the offensive side of the ball. I think Moore is the real deal, but they strangely went away from him.
Perhaps last year’s 1 - 3 record was an apt record after all?
So much talk about the TE’s and yet only a handful of targets with only 1 reception.
Gamble gets a pass on his defending given it was his first meaningful experience against several guys who will likely be playing on Sundays. He looked tiny against those receivers however and U$C, among others, will exploit that.
Not taking the penalty and having UNR kick that field goal was the right decision. The distance was right at the kickers extreme, note he missed his next kick of similar (perhaps shorter) length. More importantly you did not want to give Strong another opportunity to improve field position or perhaps pick up a first down. I’m OK with the decision given the risk / reward ratio.
Garbers is who we thought he was. Marginal improvement but in the heat of the moment it is the same ole Garbers. Missing that outlet pass (overthrow) on third down is inexcusable at this point in his career. Buy hey, so was Dancy’s (??) drop to keep the last drive going, hit him right in the chest.
OL has improved a bit, but Daltoso has to go (yup, I know y’all have been hearing me say this for 2 years, but I don’t mind saying it again). Pass protection overall would get a C grade at best. Not sure what all the hype was about on Coleman, he didn’t look at all dominating albeit it is only the first game of the year.
Unfathomable why Cal only ran the ball 6 times in the 2nd and 3rd quarters. Unconscionable. Combination of both poor coaching and execution.
Can someone explain why Remigio called for a fair catch on the last two kick-off returns when 1) he has showed he can be explosive on kick-off returns, and 2) they were short kicks taken past the 10-yard-line when it looked like he had some room to run without too many, if any, defenders around him when he caught the ball.
He was so ready to take another job this past off season. For some reason he didn't take it. Or maybe the job went to someone else and he couldn't get that job.
Couldn't this team just tease us for a couple of weeks? That's all I can want or expect being a Cal fan. I'll give the defense a pass for a week, cause I think Strong is that good and this unit has earned the benefit of the doubt. But man we sure did concede the middle of the field to them. Our DBs seemed completely out matched. Offensively we haven't been this limited since the Holmoe years. We just have zero speed anywhere and our receivers are unable to get separation. Our margin for error is razor thin, which makes Musgrave's turning away from the running game in key moments malpractice. This was truly a team loss, but Musgrave gets the award for worse performance in a very competitive field.
He sees the writing on the wall. The season has started and I don’t think we can make enough adjustments to win 6 games. Best bet is to jettison this season and go young to see what we have on the bench. Try to rebuild from the roster up or else it’s a full rebuild from the coaching staff down.
Also, I love our team for what they are but I'm looking forward to next year when we have offensive talent on the field that's actually capable of competing at a P5 level.
We have 4* receivers with height and speed and a 4* QB waiting on the depth chart. Better chances with them than our current receivers who can't break free from G5 defenders.
I feel like Wilcox should play them but he is far too cautious to do so. Wilcox should just go full youth rebuild mode at this point and try to rebuild from the roster up but he won’t.
Hugely fugly. We started out so strong I actually had hope. Then the wheels fell off for our offense as their defensive coaching staff out adjusted our offensive coaching staff. There are no excuses for how our offensive performance utterly shit the bed after the first two successful long time burning drives. Defensively, considering how many 3 and outs we had and that we played a high octane high scoring offense, I am happy we only gave up 22 points. But our offense if completely fuckered up.
I agree with you about the defense. They weren’t elite or as good as years past and they benefitted from Nevada mistakes but considering how bad the offense was, they did more than enough for us to win the game. They have the offense multiple chances in the 4th quarter to win this game.
That doesn't speak well for Wilcox. He inherited a tire fire of a secondary (Dykes' recruits) and coached them up. Sadly he can't coach up his own recruits. Maybe that's because he is CEO of the team and is hands-off, leaving Sirmon that duty. I agree that he has reached his ceiling and when he gets fired he will have to go back to being a DC somewhere.
The two greatest coaches I have seen at Cal were Bruce Snyder and Jeff Teford. Both offensive minds. Tedford was the OC at Oregon, and Snyder the OC for the Rams. In some ways, Wilcox reminds me of Holmoe. Let's remember that Holmoe was a defensive guy who had some pretty good defenses at Cal. They just couldn't score. Holmoe's best team was 1998 when they beat Oklahoma and USC and scored a grand total of 3 points in the Big Game to miss out on a bowl opportunity. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of close games in Holmoe's tenure. Just like Wilcox.
My point is that the Pac 12 historically has been about the offense, baby. I would take Mike Leach's record at WSU any day. (BTW, Makai Polk had 10 catches for MSU yesterday.) I guess there have been some great defensive minds who succeeded as coaches in the conference. Dick Tomey and Pete Carroll come to mind. But at least in Carroll's case he found brilliant OC's to lead the way.
I agree with some other bloggers that Wilcox is married to Musgrave. There is no changing the path of this offense this year. There is no Polk to make the defenses respect the long ball, or even the wide receiver screen. (Did we see one of those plays yesterday?) It is glaringly clear that Clark, Remegio and Crawford are possession receivers who will struggle to get open. Opposing defenses are going to stack the box. Sigh.....
One of those throws actually hit Remigio in his bread basket. After securing the ball, he was a few easy steps to a first down along the sidelines to extend a drive. Instead, he was stripped by a Nevada defender. That led to one of the five straight punts. Most painful play of the game based on the obscenity count in my living room.
I can live with a defender making a good play occasionally and stripping the ball. Similarly, occasional missed throws happen. If we were to count drops VS misses, I'm fairly certain it would be fairly one-sided...
To your point on Nikko, on the flip side of that coin, Chase tossed a shovel/desparation pass at one point that by all means should have been intercepted, but Nikko came away with it. It is what it is..
It took Bruce Snyder three years to turn around the program from the sad sack mess he inherited from Joe Kapp. But even in those three losing years, his teams were fun to watch. I remember they beat Arizona State - the previous Rose Bowl winner - in the last game of 1987. Once he got his own players in there, his last two years were magnificent. I have little doubt that Cal would have been going to its first Rose Bowl if Bob Bockrath had not been so cheap in renewing Snyder's contract. I would take Snyder as my favorite coach - even over Tedford - because of the winning identity he transferred to his players.
Our RBs averaged 7.5 yards per carry. Garbers averaged 4.7 yards per pass attempt. I’m no NFL OC retread but I think I would have called more running plays.
If you’re going to have Garbers throw 38 times, you might as well ditch the pro style offense and go to an air raid at this point.
Admins...can I write a piece on how I'd transform Cal football?
Hey Alpha1906, I'm trying to delude myself into happiness. Like, maybe after two drives Wilcox said OK the new playbook works, let's not open it any further so we don't give anything away.
In my 18th year for cheering for cal, and I’m just feeling dread. It’s too familiar, but a coach gets fired every time I feel it.
I only think Wilcox would get fired if he wins four games or less, and I think he wouldn’t if they reached four.
I was just curious because I still had CGB in my bookmarks...that site is dead.
On the other hand, Excusemeformyvoice is starting another season.
See...I still like Joe.
Joe? Is Joe KenCraw's real name?
It has about much life as our offense, so yes, it is dead.
Nothing says it better than 'WTF.' WTF.
I saw someone visited the school this past week and instantly I thought "overthinking - I sure hope 'overthinking' does NOT happen." This is a good program; throw the damn ball; don't be conservative; there are four quarters and this is the program that can make up the throws/can make up the time. Good athletes, good coaches . . . wtf. Better practice goodly Wed., Thurs., Fri.
Smart peeps, dumb football.
Wow, you are really smart RyBru - Anonymous.
Why Cal? No, not an advertisement - more like 'why, Cal?; Why do this? Don't do this to your longtime fans! You are supposed to be good; have a quarterback who doesn't lose games. Who cares if the opposing team has a top-talent QB - YOU are good! Don't make longtime admirers repeat the '00s . . . *sad face. #FillInTheEmoji
When is the last time that Cal fandom has been this down and cranky? I don't think we should give up on Garbers just yet, especially if the coaches don't think that his backups give us a better chance. But remember that Wilcox did bench Bowers basically after just a half of football, so he'll do it if he thinks he needs to.
Probably the last season of Tedford when we weren’t competitive with WSU and OSU and got destroyed.
We seem to be very cranky and down indeed. Part of it I think was the hope (that springs eternal with Cal fandom) that we would finally break through this season and also the long two years it has been since we have last been able to see games in person.
I sensed a palpable excitement in the stands as we punched Nevada in the mouth in the first quarter, controlled the ball and the clock in an absurdly successful fashion, and folks had visions of Roses dancing in their heads.
And then it all went poof. Stumbling so badly in year 5 of the era is hard to take. For me, I'm getting over the hangover feeling I had from last night's experience this morning. If you want to see even deeper existential suffering check out the UW Dawg Pound blog, with posters calling for Lake's (and the AD's) head.
UW needs to cut lake ASAP. It's not just the on field coaching, their recruiting has absolutely tanked and is one of the worse of the Pac-12. UW is one of the few programs that can be perennial contenders and they're about to become irrelevant.
I can’t believe how bad Lake has been. Not only as a head coach but his recruiting seems to be equally disappointing.
after every loss
you put it better than I could, and without cussing!
Cal fans: I know that last night was an absolute shit-show on offense, but I still feel that Wilcox is the right man for our football program. DEFENSE is what wins football games and he knows his business on that side of the ball. He just needs to find an OC who can get him squared away on the other side of the ball. I know one thing after last night: I sure do miss Beau Baldwin.
Honestly, I think we'll win games, including some important ones. But I wish I saw speed or talent etc. on the offensive side of the ball. I think Moore is the real deal, but they strangely went away from him.
https://twitter.com/RedditCFB/status/1434567756272136192?s=20
Perhaps last year’s 1 - 3 record was an apt record after all?
So much talk about the TE’s and yet only a handful of targets with only 1 reception.
Gamble gets a pass on his defending given it was his first meaningful experience against several guys who will likely be playing on Sundays. He looked tiny against those receivers however and U$C, among others, will exploit that.
Not taking the penalty and having UNR kick that field goal was the right decision. The distance was right at the kickers extreme, note he missed his next kick of similar (perhaps shorter) length. More importantly you did not want to give Strong another opportunity to improve field position or perhaps pick up a first down. I’m OK with the decision given the risk / reward ratio.
Garbers is who we thought he was. Marginal improvement but in the heat of the moment it is the same ole Garbers. Missing that outlet pass (overthrow) on third down is inexcusable at this point in his career. Buy hey, so was Dancy’s (??) drop to keep the last drive going, hit him right in the chest.
OL has improved a bit, but Daltoso has to go (yup, I know y’all have been hearing me say this for 2 years, but I don’t mind saying it again). Pass protection overall would get a C grade at best. Not sure what all the hype was about on Coleman, he didn’t look at all dominating albeit it is only the first game of the year.
Unfathomable why Cal only ran the ball 6 times in the 2nd and 3rd quarters. Unconscionable. Combination of both poor coaching and execution.
Were there any bright spots at all?
Coaching - ZERO!
OLine - nope
DLine - meh
Linebackers - nope
DBs - nope
WR/TE - no idea, ball was never there
RB - what happened to Brooks?
IMHO, worst coached game I’ve ever seen by Cal. Every single coach should be ashamed of himself for such an embarrassing showing.
I’ve always been a Wilcox fan, but no more. Same mistakes (Garbers, Ragle, OC, poor choices with the ball), too conservative, bad game management.
Fix this!
DeCarlos or Christopher Brooks? They only had 5 carries combined.
They both played well. DeCarlos had one carry for 40 yards.
I thought Brooks played well.
He played great, but we never saw him in the 2nd half. I’m assuming he was injured, but there’s been no mention of it.
oh okay, you were asking in terms of why we didn't see him more? I couldn't see which RB was actually on the field because we kept passing.
Can someone explain why Remigio called for a fair catch on the last two kick-off returns when 1) he has showed he can be explosive on kick-off returns, and 2) they were short kicks taken past the 10-yard-line when it looked like he had some room to run without too many, if any, defenders around him when he caught the ball.
Ragle is our special teams coach, that should explain it.
He was so ready to take another job this past off season. For some reason he didn't take it. Or maybe the job went to someone else and he couldn't get that job.
Couldn't this team just tease us for a couple of weeks? That's all I can want or expect being a Cal fan. I'll give the defense a pass for a week, cause I think Strong is that good and this unit has earned the benefit of the doubt. But man we sure did concede the middle of the field to them. Our DBs seemed completely out matched. Offensively we haven't been this limited since the Holmoe years. We just have zero speed anywhere and our receivers are unable to get separation. Our margin for error is razor thin, which makes Musgrave's turning away from the running game in key moments malpractice. This was truly a team loss, but Musgrave gets the award for worse performance in a very competitive field.
We also conceded the middle of the field on offense. Did Garbers even throw to the tight end once?
The guy sitting behind me noted that Tonges was wide open several times in the middle of the field and Garbers could never find him.
He did, but only a few with typical Garbers [in]accuracy.
Without watching the film Wilcox is right on in his assessmant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N09goxIvBfM
“We didn’t see new fronts or coverages…”
“Wanted to run more but we went backward A COUPLE times “ then states a penalty and a mental error.
Low confidence drove that declined penalty where they kicked a FG.
He’s mad.
He sees the writing on the wall. The season has started and I don’t think we can make enough adjustments to win 6 games. Best bet is to jettison this season and go young to see what we have on the bench. Try to rebuild from the roster up or else it’s a full rebuild from the coaching staff down.
What an infuriating game. We should not have lost that game, but the offensive play-calling was absolutely atrocious quarters 2-4.
Also, I love our team for what they are but I'm looking forward to next year when we have offensive talent on the field that's actually capable of competing at a P5 level.
Where are you seeing this talent?
We have 4* receivers with height and speed and a 4* QB waiting on the depth chart. Better chances with them than our current receivers who can't break free from G5 defenders.
I feel like Wilcox should play them but he is far too cautious to do so. Wilcox should just go full youth rebuild mode at this point and try to rebuild from the roster up but he won’t.
Hugely fugly. We started out so strong I actually had hope. Then the wheels fell off for our offense as their defensive coaching staff out adjusted our offensive coaching staff. There are no excuses for how our offensive performance utterly shit the bed after the first two successful long time burning drives. Defensively, considering how many 3 and outs we had and that we played a high octane high scoring offense, I am happy we only gave up 22 points. But our offense if completely fuckered up.
I agree with you about the defense. They weren’t elite or as good as years past and they benefitted from Nevada mistakes but considering how bad the offense was, they did more than enough for us to win the game. They have the offense multiple chances in the 4th quarter to win this game.
That doesn't speak well for Wilcox. He inherited a tire fire of a secondary (Dykes' recruits) and coached them up. Sadly he can't coach up his own recruits. Maybe that's because he is CEO of the team and is hands-off, leaving Sirmon that duty. I agree that he has reached his ceiling and when he gets fired he will have to go back to being a DC somewhere.
Nothing is speaking well for Wilcox on this Sunday morning in year 5 of his tenure.
Upon further reflection, maybe Alexander should get the credit for that, not Wilcox.
He got his credit in the form of an NFL gig in the same position. The Miami Dolphins had the same uptick in play his first year that our Bears did.
Coach Alexander was amazing. I’m actually missing DeRuyter right now, too!
maybe?
The two greatest coaches I have seen at Cal were Bruce Snyder and Jeff Teford. Both offensive minds. Tedford was the OC at Oregon, and Snyder the OC for the Rams. In some ways, Wilcox reminds me of Holmoe. Let's remember that Holmoe was a defensive guy who had some pretty good defenses at Cal. They just couldn't score. Holmoe's best team was 1998 when they beat Oklahoma and USC and scored a grand total of 3 points in the Big Game to miss out on a bowl opportunity. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of close games in Holmoe's tenure. Just like Wilcox.
My point is that the Pac 12 historically has been about the offense, baby. I would take Mike Leach's record at WSU any day. (BTW, Makai Polk had 10 catches for MSU yesterday.) I guess there have been some great defensive minds who succeeded as coaches in the conference. Dick Tomey and Pete Carroll come to mind. But at least in Carroll's case he found brilliant OC's to lead the way.
I agree with some other bloggers that Wilcox is married to Musgrave. There is no changing the path of this offense this year. There is no Polk to make the defenses respect the long ball, or even the wide receiver screen. (Did we see one of those plays yesterday?) It is glaringly clear that Clark, Remegio and Crawford are possession receivers who will struggle to get open. Opposing defenses are going to stack the box. Sigh.....
Idk, they could spot us Keenan Allen and Marvin Jones Jr and those 3rd down balls-into-the-dirt would still be incompletes...
One of those throws actually hit Remigio in his bread basket. After securing the ball, he was a few easy steps to a first down along the sidelines to extend a drive. Instead, he was stripped by a Nevada defender. That led to one of the five straight punts. Most painful play of the game based on the obscenity count in my living room.
I can live with a defender making a good play occasionally and stripping the ball. Similarly, occasional missed throws happen. If we were to count drops VS misses, I'm fairly certain it would be fairly one-sided...
To your point on Nikko, on the flip side of that coin, Chase tossed a shovel/desparation pass at one point that by all means should have been intercepted, but Nikko came away with it. It is what it is..
Only if Polk had 10 catches for Cal last night
I understand why Polk transferred now. He wasn’t afraid of completion, he was afraid of wasting his time and talent at Cal.
Good point. Wilcox is closer to Holmoe 2.0 than he is to Tedford 2.0.
It took Bruce Snyder three years to turn around the program from the sad sack mess he inherited from Joe Kapp. But even in those three losing years, his teams were fun to watch. I remember they beat Arizona State - the previous Rose Bowl winner - in the last game of 1987. Once he got his own players in there, his last two years were magnificent. I have little doubt that Cal would have been going to its first Rose Bowl if Bob Bockrath had not been so cheap in renewing Snyder's contract. I would take Snyder as my favorite coach - even over Tedford - because of the winning identity he transferred to his players.
Oh yeah Troy Taylor...I've heard that a few times before - he's be better than Musgrave
I think I've heard of his name before too. Forgot where I heard it.
Lack-of-speed
Our RBs averaged 7.5 yards per carry. Garbers averaged 4.7 yards per pass attempt. I’m no NFL OC retread but I think I would have called more running plays.
If you’re going to have Garbers throw 38 times, you might as well ditch the pro style offense and go to an air raid at this point.
I wonder what overall NCAA win/loss percentage is for a team with 7.5 ypc. Does anyone have access to a database that would have this?