Post-Game Thoughts: North Carolina Football 2025

Are you just happy that Cal is 5-2, or do you have questions about how the sausage is being made?

photo credit @Calfootball twitter

I’ll be honest: I’m struggling badly trying to write about this game.

This is true: Cal just won a football game to move to 5-2 on the season. Cal has won five of their first seven games exactly one (1) time since 2009*. In some ways, this season has been a thing that Cal fans have been hoping to see for 15 years. If Cal beats Virginia Tech this Friday to go 6-2, you’d have to go back to the 2006 co-Pac-12 champs to find a team that started better across the first 8 games of a season.

This is also true: The actual football game on Friday night was mostly a miserable slog that left many Cal fans exhausted and embittered. The Bears required a last ditch forced fumble and recovery to avoid falling behind late to a team that is in the conversation for worst power conference team of 2025 (non-Oklahoma-State division).

These twin truths have created (to the extent I’m aware, having left twitter) a low grade war of words between those who want to support the team and celebrate another win and those who are increasingly done with painful rock fights against below average competition.

This season was supposed to provide clarity about the fate of the Justin Wilcox era, one way or another. This was either going to be the first Wilcox team to break through for something more than fighting just to make bowl eligibility, or it would clearly be time to move on.

What we didn’t account for was the possibility that Cal would objectively regress, and yet win football games through some combination of circumstance, timely play making, and divine providence.

*In 2014 Sonny Dykes started 5-0, then lost 4 straight.

Offense

Efficiency Report

10 drives: 3 touchdowns, 7 punts, 2.1 points/drive. (UNC average entering the game: 2.9 points/drive allowed)

Removed: Cal’s final drive of the game, which was aiming to run clock (successfully, for 3:42!) rather than score points.

Defense is the relative strength of North Carolina’s team, but even still Cal’s performance on offense was concerning. The Tar Heels have been good defensively against their non-power competition (and bad offensively against everybody) but have been somewhere between slightly bad to terrible against everybody else.

Ultimately the reason this was a close game was because the Cal offense had no explosiveness (long play of 22 yards) and limited ability to sustain drives. Which brings us to an odd realization

The only team better at going deep than better throwing underneath

I think the scout on Cal’s offense is out, and it’s incumbent on Cal’s coaches to find new ways to move the ball.

The Cal offense has one big thing going in their favor: A quarterback who can hit guys 20+ yards downfield.

What do you do when you face a QB who can make big time throws down field? You play your secondary deeper. Check out this look Carolina shows on 2nd and 1:

That’s a six man box with two deep safeties on a short yardage play. UNC mostly played one deep safety, but they played their CBs well off the line and were clearly focused on taking away the big pass play away from Cal.

This is normally a GREAT thing for an offense because it frees up space for easy yards. Running the ball against a 6 man box is usually a good formula. Screens and swing passes can gain consistent yards. That’s exactly what happens on this particular play, where Cal runs a swing pass to Quaron Adams in motion for a solid gain.

And yet Cal is not able to consistently take advantage of the space JKS’s arm creates around the line of scrimmage like they did on this play. The reasons are myriad. Offensive line blocking errors. Drops (five more against UNC!!!). WRs and RBs that don’t break many tackles. Penalties. JKS whipping 100 MPH fastballs at a receiver 5 yards away. A whole mixed bag of stuff that coaches usually sum up as ‘execution errors.’

When Cal protected well enough, and when a WR got open downfield, JKS found them. He went 7-11 for 111 yards on throws 10+ yards downfield. But on everything else underneath, JKS went 13-24 for just 99 total yards, a painful 4.1 yards/throw.

Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele-is-the-truth-throw-of-the-week OR

Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele has to be nearly perfect, and that’s not realistic, healthy, or fair

This throw, on 3rd and 8:

UNC sends 5, and JKS has a couple of guys in his face that makes scrambling impossible. Worse, he can’t even really step into his throw, as he kinda leans backwards away from the rush. And yet his arm is so damn strong that he wings a ball 20 yards downfield right into the chest of Jordan King in a narrow window between two defenders for a huge first down.

Defense

Efficiency Report

11 drives: 2 touchdowns, 1 field goal attempt (1-1), 6 punts, 2 turnovers (2 fumbles), 1.6 points/drive. (UNC average entering the game: 1.2 points/drive)

Ultimately Cal held UNC’s offense close to their season average. One could argue it took a little bit of fumble luck, but Cal did actively force both of UNC’s fumbles, and one of UNC’s scores was set up with a weird trick play that represented most of UNC’s offensive explosiveness for the game. Cal shouldn’t need to sweat about the difference between allowing 1.6 vs. 1.2 points/drive, which basically is one field goal.

A bounce back game all the way around

Which probably was going to happen anyway considering how much better Duke’s offense is compared to UNC, but it’s good news regardless. Cal tackled better, covered better, and played with much more physicality even ignoring the two huge forced fumbles. Cade Uluave was a physical force in a way we haven’t seen as much this year. Basically everybody played better all around on defense, and I’ll let you decide how much of that was Cal improvement vs. a downgrade in opponent quality.

Masses giveth, Masses taketh away

Hezekiah Masses is probably Cal’s best secondary player, and his interceptions make up most of Cal’s big plays on defense. He also leads the team in penalties with six this year. Two of them came against UNC, and both were important plays on two different UNC scoring drives.

His style of play is very physical and very handsy, and I think it’s basically just something you have to live with. Masses’ strategy is very clearly to play as close to the line of physicality allowed by the refs, and that’s what helps him maintain contact and disrupt a receiver’s route . . . and also what leads to a bunch of flags for PI/holding.

On the Gameday Experience

I don’t tend to comment much on this kind of stuff because I’m a football obsessive, and that’s always been my focus. But I think it’s worth noting the effort Cal has made to improve the gameday experience and get people to show up in person at Memorial Stadium. Here is a non-exhaustive list of various initiatives:

• Various events and activities at Oski’s Village

• Providing tailgate services for purchase at Oski’s Village

• Proactive outreach and ticketing to Raiders fans

• Bringing in Marshawn for gameday events/game entrance fun

• Jumbotron trolling

• Having Ron Rivera and Chancellor Lyons out everywhere glad-handing students and alums at every opportunity

Will some of this work? I have no idea. I dream of a day where Cal is the team of the East Bay. I can see the vision of Memorial Glade stuffed full of Cal tailgates like we’re in the Deep South.

It’s working for me, individually. All of the non-on-field aspects of the gameday experience have been pretty excellent this year. But Cal doesn’t have to try very hard to earn my loyalty, so who knows?

All I really know for sure is that Cal is trying. They’re being creative, and they are investing time and money into that creativity. And I suspect that they will eventually hit on enough good ideas that will last.

Big Picture

This Cal season simply cannot be understood without the context of strength of schedule.

ESPN’s FPI ranks Cal’s to-date strength-of-schedule 118th out of 136th, last among power conference teams. SP+ rankings currently place Cal’s opponents thus far at 44, 49, 59, 98, 104, and 106 in the country.

Let’s set aside Cal’s unimpressive win over FCS Texas Southern. In Cal’s three games against those average-ish teams ranked 44, 49, and 59, Cal has one truly good performance (beating Minnesota) and two non-competitive performances (Duke, San Diego State). Against three bad teams, Cal has one somewhat credible performance (comfortably beating Oregon State) and two deeply concerning performances (barely beating Boston College and UNC in coin flip games).

Throw it all together in the mixer and it suggests a team that is better than the very worst teams in power conference football . . . but only just. In SP+, Cal ranks 60 out of 68 power conference teams. That passes my personal smell test.

What Cal fans ultimately want from Justin Wilcox is to produce an above average power conference team, or at least an above average ACC team. The total data so far, shiny 5-2 record aside, shows that is not the case right now. One fumble-luck-aided home win over Minnesota (contrasted with non-competitive losses to Duke and SDSU) does not an above-average ACC team make.

I suppose Justin Wilcox and the Bears have an opportunity still to impress, and to prove that the doubters are wrong. Virginia (6-1, 3-0 ACC), Louisville (5-1, 2-1 ACC) and SMU (5-2, 3-0 ACC) are still on the schedule, providing opportunities for the kinds of impressive wins that can convince the many skeptical Cal fans (and computers).

But be honest with yourself: If this Cal team had been handed a typical Pac-12 schedule, and had to face some combination of Oregon, ASU, and Washington State, do you think this team would be 5-2? Does the performance on the field, relative to opponent, feel any different this year than any prior year under Justin Wilcox?

Celebrate a win. Enjoy a 5-2 record. That is (sadly) rare enough that you should absolutely allow yourself that happiness. But don’t let the shiny record confuse you: this team will need to get better quickly to reach the goals that have been set both internally and externally.