The Good, the Bad, and the Rock Fights: Cal vs North Carolina 2025
A surprising losing steak comes to an end.
Justin Wilcox’s 2017-2019 teams were known for their tendency to turn most games into low-scoring, grind-the-opponent-into-submission Rockfights. And they used that formula to take down superior opponents with impressive regularity (hi, Washington!). From 2020 onwards, however, something odd happened: Cal stopped winning Rockfights. The Bears have been involved in several of Rockfights recently, such as last year’s games against Syracuse, NC State, and UNLV, but wins in such games were elusive. In fact, Cal had lost 5 Rockfights in a row and had not beaten a Power 4/5 team in such a game since the 2019 Lightning Bowl. That is, until Friday.
PFF Grades
As always, PFF’s army of a thousand graders at a thousand monitors evaluted every player on every snap. Here is our usual array of team-level grades:
The grades show an unusual pattern of inconsistency in the team’s performance. Any of the grades above or below the box are in the top 25th or bottom 25th percentiles, respectively. Half the grades are in those top or bottom sections, and Overall is on the precipice of being in the top 25th percentile. So, many things went very right and many went very wrong on Friday. It was a mixed affair for the offense: Passing was great but let down by poor Receiving (SO. MANY. DROPS.). Run blocking was better than usual, while running was much worse than usual. Pass protection was perfectly average, and it all combined into a slightly below average grade for Offense. Defensively, things were generally better. Run Defense and Coverage were exceptional, although Tackling and Pass Rush were slightly worse than usual. No matter, as overall Defense earned a strong grade.
If I hadn’t already spend the entire intro talking about Rockfights, I’d mention that the combination of good defensive grades and a mixed bag on offense sounds like a pretty typical Rockfight.
PFF Clusters
I fed the results into our clustering algorithm and…
Yes, we already know it’s a Rockfight. This one is rather isolated in the Rockfight cluster, suggesting that it is a rather unique performance. Its closest neighbor is the 2023 Auburn loss, another low-scoring game decided by a turnover in the end zone in the waning minutes. Interestingly, this one is on the border of the Rockfights, not far from The Good. Take away a few of Cal’s mistakes (drops, penalties) and this may have ended up in The Good.
Odds and Ends
Onward to our last set of advanced stats.
Offensive Player of the Game: WR Quaron Adams, 81.2. Adams made the most of his single snap of action with an 18-yard reception. Since Adams was involved in only one play, JKS should also be recognized here with the team’s second-best grade of 74.2. And if we’re highlighting JKS’ grade, we should also highlight WR Mark Hamper’s 74.2.
Defensive Player of the Game: CB Brent Austin, 83.1
Iron Men: LT Frederick Williams III, C Tyson Ruffins, RG Sioape Vatikani, RT Leon Bell, TE Mason Mini, CB Brent Austin, S Dru Polidore Jr., CB Zeke Masses
Pass Protection: Cal surrendered 11 pressures (2 sacks, 3 hits, 6 hurries) on 47 passing plays for a perfectly middling protection rate of 76.6%.
Pass Rush: Cal forced 11 pressures (1 sack, 5 hits, 5 hurries) on 44 pass plays for a notably-worse-than-usual rate of 25%.
Tackling: Cal missed 9 tackles on 69 plays for a(nother) perfectly middling successful tackling rate of 87.0%.
Shake and Bake: Cal forced 10 missed tackles on 73 plays for a slightly better-than-usual rate of 13.6%.
Run Stops: Cal stopped 15 of 25 runs, for a much-better-than-usual rate of 60%.
And now we’re on to another Friday night game against a program desperately trying to avoid a death spiral. Buckle up, things could get weird again.
Berkelium's happy bear in the woods looks like he is enjoying the win way more than most Old Blue bears. I think he has it right.
Thanks as always for the analysis. I have to say the stats make this game seem much better than what I felt while actually watching it. After seeing Cal play what I judged to be mediocre football against a weak team, I now have a feeling that I can only describe as impending doom going into the next 5 games, 3 of which (UVA, Louisville and SMU) are likely big L’s and the other two (VT and Stanford) lousy teams that make for toss up odds of winning. One can hope for a 6-6 season but 5-7 seems very much in the mix.