Post-Game Thoughts: San Diego State Football 2025

Picking up the pieces after a shockingly comprehensive defeat

photo via Rob Hwang

It’s hard to objectively measure these things, but I think you can make a compelling argument that this is the single worst performance from Cal football in recent memory.

The math is simple enough. Cal closed as a 14 point favorite over SDSU. Cal lost by 34 points. Add that up and you get a 48 point underperformance relative to pre-game estimates.

Probably there are worse performances out there. I’m not aware of any from either the Wilcox era (already an era in many ways defined by utterly head scratching performances against the weakest teams on the schedule!) or the Dykes era. It’s possible that some of the late-Tedford era blowouts (42-3 to Oregon in 2009, or 62-14 against Oregon State in 2012 might surpass this game, though I’m having trouble finding betting line data that far back.

The point is that this game was unique in the worst kind of way.

It’s easy to point to three pivotal plays that swung the game - an early 4th and 2 that Cal failed to convert, and then two 2nd half defensive touchdowns that snuffed out any chance of a comeback. But when you underperform expectations by nearly 50 points, you need to have the big plays go against you AND you need to get outperformed on a per play basis:

For me, I knew that Cal was going to lose when the Bears received the 2nd half kickoff, promptly committed a holding penalty, and went 3-and-out. It was clear at that point that whatever malaise that led Cal to come out so unfocused hadn’t cleared at halftime. The only question at that point was what the final margin was going to be. Thanks to defensive touchdowns, a bad loss turned into an embarrassing loss.

Offense

Efficiency Report

12 drives: 1 field goal attempt (0-0), 6 punts, 5 turnovers (2 interceptions, 1 fumble, 2 downs), 0 points/drive.

Cal appeared to functionally give up on the final two drives of the game, bringing in Devin Brown just to have him mostly hand off the ball. I suppose one could be annoyed for surrendering, but when you’re down 34 points with 10 minutes left, the correct answer is to get the hell out of town without suffering any injuries.

Cal is probably not going to be able to run the ball this year

Through four games, Cal’s three primary running backs have carried the ball 94 times for 409 yards, an average of 4.35 yards/carry. Remove the Texas Southern game, and it’s down to 3.75. Really, Cal has only been able to run the ball in brief spurts - in the 2nd half against Texas Southern when Cal wore down their FCS opponent, and on one drive against Minnesota when I have no choice but to think that the Gophers were demoralized.

The simple reality is that if Cal is unable to run the ball against their competition so far in the season, they’re unlikely to be able to do so against the rest of their schedule.

Against San Diego State, Cal seemed to want to push the offense back towards a 50/50 run/pass balance. Maybe they thought SDSU was a defense they could push around. Maybe they didn’t like the way their passing game matched up.

Whatever the reason, Cal handed the ball off to their running backs 13 times in the first half . . . and gained 30 yards. Cal’s first run of the 2nd half was ironically their longest to that point in the game, but of course that run was a fumble/defensive touchdown that was one of the major turning point plays in the game.

This particular weakness wasn’t much of a problem in Cal’s first three games because against Cal rode their passing game. That didn’t happen in this game because . . .

JKS has his freshman game

In 2013, Jared Goff had many freshmen games. There was the infamous #tinyhands monsoon game against Oregon, a 0 TD 1 Int 5 yards/attempt game against UCLA, and an ugly 3.8 yards/attempt performance against 4-8 Colorado.

Honestly, it was my memory of Goff’s first season that had me so blown away by JKS’s first three games. I figured games like what we saw on Saturday were coming when he was announced as starter, but the longer he went without succumbing to the challenges of college football, the more I started to believe he was some kind of warlock.

I’m pretty sure we’re all on the same page about this, but to be clear: Sagapolutele’s performance on Saturday was entirely typical for a true freshman QB to put up, even without the context of ‘we have no run game and I have to help us come back entirely on the strength of my arm.’ For the same reason that nobody ever seriously considered moving away from Jared Goff in 2013, nobody should ever seriously consider moving away from JKS in 2025.

But it might’ve turned out differently with more support from his receivers

Per PFF, Cal’s wide receivers dropped 3 more passes, and came down with 2 catches on 12(!) contested catch opportunities.

Other than Trond Grizzell (who came down with two of those contested catches on sideline jump balls) nobody else managed to help out JKS by making a play. This is concerning for two reasons:

1. It’s a continuation from what we saw from the WR group against Oregon State and Texas Southern.

2. Cal’s WRs were able to get open against Minnesota, and whatever scheme/play-calling that helped get receivers open in space against the Gophers was not obviously in evidence against SDSU.

Defense

Efficiency Report

9 drives: 2 touchdowns, 2 field goal attempts (2-2), 5 punts, 2.2 points/drive.

Removed: SDSU’s final two garbage time drives

As is typically the case, Cal’s defense was very stingy with big plays - no handoff runs longer than 11 yards, exactly one pass play longer than 20 yards. That single pass play, an 80 yard bomb that was played pretty well by Cam Sydney until the ball actually got there and Sydney couldn’t locate it, represents 25% of SDSU’s total offense and is basically responsible for 35% of the points the Aztecs put up offensively. And frankly, you could argue that one of SDSU’s field goals shouldn’t be blamed on the defense since the Aztecs started with the ball on their own 41 thanks to a stumbling offense and long punt return.

So if SDSU didn’t do all that much except for one play that was a little bit fluky, why does this feel so bad? Well, one main reason:

Beaten by a bad passing offense

Look, I get that most of the production came from 1 play, but San Diego State dropped back to pass 20 times and gained 204 yards on those plays. Granted, SDSU threw one deep shot and spent the rest of the game dinking and dunking, but Cal only forced three incompletions . . . two of which were drops. Cal only managed one sack, and that only cost SDSU 1 yard.

Kudos, I suppose, to SDSU for knowing their limitations and avoiding much risk. But how did Cal allow so much production against a team that, functionally, hamstrung itself? There are times when I get why Wilcox plays very conservatively on defense; against some teams that can threaten you down the field and have explosive players, there’s a lot of value keeping everything in front of you.

But when you’re playing SDSU and they’re going to throw underneath almost every time, at a certain point you need to play more aggressively and not let them paper cut their way down the field.

Special Teams

A decisive loss

Not much to say here - Cal missed their only field goal, SDSU hit both of theirs, and Cal lost an average of about 7 yards with each punt exchange, mostly because of one touchback from Cal, and one bad punt/bad coverage incident that allowed SDSU an easy 22 yard punt return.

Coaching

Is the bigger concern schematic or motivational?

I don’t know which aspect of this defeat bothers me more: that Cal was, relative to the talent gap, firmly defeated schematically, or that Cal came out so flat competitively.

I suppose the motivational part is, as noted by Avi in the link above, a fact of life in the Wilcox era. I’d be willing to bet that Cal bounces back against BC next week from a pure focus/effort perspective, and plays a passionate game on the road. It may or may not result in a win, but it will probably be much more competitive.

Which leads me back to schematic concerns. Cal’s offensive brain trust has one good game and three other games of really concerning data regarding their ability to open up the run game or create easy throws for JKS. If the season is going to come down to Sagpolutele’s ability to throw guys open and/or the ability of Cal’s receivers to make contested catches as the primary source of offense, that’s an incredibly narrow needle to thread.

Big Picture

In one funny way, this loss doesn’t really matter. Unless you’re the type that came into this season hoping for an incredibly unlikely run to the college football playoffs, this loss has no impact on any goals for the season. Cal is still 0-0 in ACC play, and still well on track for a bowl berth.

The problem is that this game isn’t played in isolation.

Much of last week’s optimism was predicated 1) on Cal looking better than expected against one of the better teams on the schedule and 2) Cal’s schedule getting weaker and weaker by the week as we learned more about Cal’s future opponents.

You can’t really get excited about the prospects of a surprise run against a weak schedule if you lose to the weakest team left on the schedule. Intellectually, we all knew that there was a very real chance that Cal could lose to any team left on the schedule. But to do it immediately, by 34 points, as a 14 point favorite, is as deflating as it could possibly be.

In short, it’s exactly like every other Justin Wilcox season. Sure, the precise nature of HOW we get to ~.500 each year is unique and unexpected, but that Justin Wilcox will eventually get Cal to ~.500 isn’t surprising itself.

And yet it still hurts every year that simple trend reveals itself.