The Good, the Bad, and the Rock Fights: Cal at Florida State Football

Even the announcers called this one a rockfight

Ready for battle in Tallahassee

Over the first few years of the Wilcox Era, the Bears made a habit of winning rockfights and often making a big statement with those wins (see: wins over Washington in 2018 and 2019). For a few years the team seemed an offensive uptick away from being a consistently and legitimately good team. And then something strange happened…Cal stopped winning those rockfights. We’ve had no shortage of low-scoring, put-the-opposing-QB-in-a-headlock-for-60-minutes kinds of games, but Cal is riding a surprising losing streak in those games. After starting the 2019 season with three consecutive rockfight wins (UC Davis, at Washington, North Texas), this is how recent rockfights have unfolded: 2019 vs. Oregon State (L), 2020 Big Game (L), 2021 vs. Nevada (L), 2021 vs. Washington State (L), 2021 at Arizona (L), 2022 at Colorado (L), 2023 vs. Auburn (L), 2023 vs. Texas Tech (L), and now 2024 at FSU (L). That’s a 9-game losing streak. And, strangely, four of those losses were to then-winless teams (LSJU 2020, Arizona 2021, Colorado 2022, FSU 2024). Somehow during that same stretch Cal is 9-10 in all-offense, no-defense pillowfights, yet Justin Wilcox’s teams can no longer win defensive slugfests? What has happened to this program?