Post-Game Thoughts: Virginia Tech Football 2025

Cal suffers a defeat that finally provides clarity about the future of the football program

photo credit: @calfootball twitter

The incredible thing isn’t that Cal’s defensive-minded head coach led a team that missed 22 tackles against Virginia Tech.

The incredible thing isn’t that Cal’s new offensive coaches could not prevent a portal exodus, then failed to restock the roster, leading to a situation where a gifted quarterback has watched his receivers drop 24 passes so far this season.

The incredible thing isn’t that Cal was defeated by a team running the same zone read play that has been a staple of college football offenses for 20 years over and over and over and over again.

The incredible thing isn’t that Cal was wildly mistake prone on the way to losing to a 2-5 team that fired their head coach.

Nah. The incredible thing is that a head coach with a total record of 47-53 (25-45 in conference play) was given a six year contract extension after going 5-7 in 2021, was allowed to continue at Cal after going 4-8 with a loss to 1-11 Colorado in 2022, was allowed to continue at Cal after going 6-7 in 2023, was allowed to continue at Cal after going 6-7 with a loss to 2-10 Florida State in 2024.

Offense

Efficiency Report

13 possessions: 4 touchdowns, 3 field goal attempts (2-3), 5 punts, 1 turnover (downs), 2.6 points/possession. (V. Tech defensive points/drive allowed entering the game: 3.1)

Another game, another offensive performance in which Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele gets very little support from the rest of the offense.

Cal’s run game was generally ineffective - running back carries averaged 3.4 yards/attempt with a long of 11. You can get somewhere if your running game is efficient or explosive, but sadly Cal is neither. Meanwhile, Cal’s pass catchers combined for 4 drops and only one contested catch. The offense combined to commit 8 penalties. Snapping was such an issue that Cal went to their back-up center. You get the idea.

But as has been the case much of the season, the offense was held aloft by JKS. He wasn’t at his absolutely best and had some iffy decisions at times, but his ability to make pin point downfield throws was the difference between an offense that could put up points and an offense that would have otherwise curled up and died.

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

This throw, a 30 point pinpoint sideline throw over the arms of a defender and directly into the chest of Trond Grizzell, is crazy. Frankly, I thought JKS had the time to step into this throw, but perhaps because he had faced pressure all game long he decided to uncork this throw with pretty much just pure arm strength. That it came on Cal’s do-or-die game tying touchdown drive makes it all the crazier.

Defense

Efficiency Report

13 possessions: 5 touchdowns, 3 field goal attempts (2-3), 3 punts, 1 turnover (interception), 3.2 points/possession. (V. Tech offensive points/drive entering the game: 1.8)

I joked during the game that Cal was almost playing a service academy. Virginia Tech ran the ball on 70% of their plays, and on the rare occasions when they attempted to pass the ball, they went deep, with an average depth of target of 15 yards. It feels silly to say this about a game when Cal was a long missed field goal away from winning, but this game was decided once Tech realized they could run the ball for chunks of yards at will.

And I think Tech realized that at halftime? Maybe early in the 3rd quarter? All seven Virginia Tech drives after halftime reached at least the Cal 35 yardline. One drive that ended in a field goal probably should’ve been a touchdown, but a Tech receiver failed to complete the process of a catch. Tech’s last field goal was forced by a false start, and frankly if I were a Tech fan I’d be irate at Philip Montgomery for not going for it on 4th and 2 when you’ve been running for 6 yards a carry all game long, both in order to get closer for a field goal and also to run more clock. Cal was lucky to even get to OT, and once OT arrived the likely winner was clear.

What’s the deal with the zone read QB keepers?

Let’s look at a representative example - Tech’s first overtime touchdown. Here’s the play:

Here’s the presnap look on V. Tech’s touchdown in the first OT period:

There is a 3rd WR at the bottom of the screen (covered by Masses) cut off by bad camera work from the broadcast, but you can see how the other 10 Cal defenders are lined up, with four guys along the line and Cal’s two ILB in the middle.

When the game was going on, I was getting VERY frustrated that Cal had their OLBs constantly crashing down on the mesh point, and you can watch #10 Jayden Wayne do that here. In fact, here’s the critical point in the play, just after Drones makes the decision to keep the ball:

I’ve highlighted both Wayne and #41 Luke Ferrelli. Here is the fundamental flaw that existed all night long: Cal’s OLB and ILBs to one side were constantly caught too far inside - just look at the expanse of grass available for Drones as he follows his lead blocker. Both OLB and ILB are taken out of the play positionally, leaving a safety (in this case, #2 Dru Polidore) to try to get through a lead blocker and make a tackle. Polidore is unable to do it, Masses makes a really poor attempt to hit Drones rather than wrap up (a bad decision considering he gives up about 50 pounds), and Drones drags Cam Sidney into the end zone.

But everything that happens after Drones is 10 yards downfield is a consequence of Cal’s flawed run fits.

The most common way to defend the zone read is with a scrape exchange, and the basic concept is to have an OLB crash the mesh point, force the QB to keep . . . and have SOMEBODY available to behind the OLB ready to get to the QB. Ferrelli’s inside pre-snap position would indicate that perhaps a safety should have QB responsibility. The safety being deep would indicate that it should be Ferrelli’s responsibility. Regardless, the way Cal lined up made it trivially easy for Tech to grab chunk plays.

As this example comes from overtime, it’s clear that this fundamental flaw was never fixed despite plenty of issues earlier in the game. It’s ultimately a coaching failure when the opponent can just run one play over and over and no adjustments are made in real time to stop them.

Special Teams

Taking advantage of Tech screw ups

I don’t want to deny Cole Boscia credit for his punt block - he took advantage of an opportunity and deserves kudos. But it’s also true that the right end blocker on Tech’s line made an impressively bad ole block, and then Tech only had a one-man shield, as it appears that the punt formation that has defined punting for some time now hasn’t reached Blacksburg. It gave Cal excellent field position and led to a touchdown.

Meanwhile, Tech’s kickoff returners spent most of the game screwing up. The most obvious error was fielding a kick on the 1 and immediately stepping out of bounds, but Tech had a number of boneheaded return decisions that left Tech starting drives from inside the 25.

Add it all up and Cal had a 10 yard advantage in average starting field position, which is a big reason why the Bears were able to take the game into overtime despite averaging 1.4 more yards/play.

Coaching/Game Theory and Errata

One wrong decision, one TERRIBLE AWFUL UNJUSTIFIABLE decision.

Warning, rant incoming. You can put it in the newspaper that I’m mad:

After Virginia Tech missed a late field goal, Cal regained possession with 1:12 left in the game and zero timeouts.

On first down, Cal ran the ball for eight yards. When Cal got off the next snap of the game, there was 0:55 left on the clock. 17 seconds burned for 8 yards.

On the next play, JKS scrambled for a first down, losing his helmet in the process. Devin Brown enters the game, and snaps the ball on Cal’s next play with 0:41 on the clock. He hands off to Raphael for a 4 yard gain. Cal’s next snap comes with 0:19 left. 22 seconds burned for 4 yards.

Cal ran the ball twice for 12 yards, losing a total of 39 seconds on both plays . . . which is pretty terrible when you were only given 72 seconds total to try to score. 54% of the total time available burned on running plays that did little to advance Cal’s chances of getting into field goal range.

The first run call was really dumb, but not the worst decision you’ll ever see. Cal ‘only’ needs 40 yards to get into plausible field goal range and that’s two plays from JKS, so maybe you catch the defense by surprise and get an easy 10 yards and first down to stop the clock? I guess? This would be more defensible if Cal’s run offense hadn’t been terrible all season long, and you should trust your QB and his preternaturally amazing ability to throw good downfield passes, but it’s just one play and Cal moved decently well to get the next snap off quickly.

But the second decision to call a run play is UNFORGIVEABLY bad.

Now, I know what you might be thinking. “But Nick! Cal was forced to substitute in a totally cold Devin Brown on that play, and asking him to throw the ball is too risky!”

Then spike the ball. As a coach, you HAVE to know that the time you will lose on a run play is more valuable than the likely yardage gained. The four yards that Raphael gained (which is about what you’d predict in those circumstances) doesn’t matter. Losing more than HALF of the time remaining in the game matters. If you don’t trust your back up quarterback to throw the ball (which, if true, is a different kind of gigantic problem by itself) then you have to just spike the ball and move on with the next play with ~39 seconds left to play with.

If Cal had just spiked the ball but everything else was the same, then the Bears still have ~30 seconds to move the ball further down the field, rather than 9 seconds. Cal could run an entire set of downs and take three more shots down the field, rather than trying to run one hurried sideline route that did nothing.

And Cal knew - THEY KNEW - that their back-up field goal kicker didn’t have a reliable leg for long distance kicks. And yet they still called a running play that was more harmful to Cal’s chances than a pass play or a spike.

Welcome to the ref show

I don’t really WANT to talk about the refs, because 1) blaming the refs is loser talk and 2) I’m not actually sure who had the better end of the calls in this game. Obviously both teams were called for two of the worst roughing the passer calls you’ll ever see, though the call that went against Tech was significantly more impactful based on down/distance AND time left.

But Cal had two potential targeting calls that went in for the usual targeting roulette wheel and lost out on both. The targeting against Mini that was chalked off seemed pretty text-book to me. Consider this screen grab from the moment of impact:

That’s Mini, landing, completely defenseless, receiving a helmet-to-helmet blow. As usual, targeting enforcement is a random chance event.

Big Picture

I am very confident that Justin Wilcox will not be Cal’s coach in 2026.

I want to be clear that I do not have insider information. I don’t cultivate sources, and people don’t leak things to me. This is based on information that everybody has access to.

Point 1: Ron Rivera has been incredibly consistent in stating that 6 or 7 wins is no longer acceptable. Furthermore, this was supposed to be the year that Justin Wilcox could get back to the basics of coaching after being tied up in administrative red tape for years. And yet, if anything, the 2025 Bears are more mistake prone than ever, and playing the least fundamentally sound football of the Wilcox era.

Point 2: Cal is 5-3, and their performance indicates that they are equal to the healthy selection of teams at the bottom of the ACC, after playing coin flip games against Boston College, UNC, and Virginia Tech. Anybody with eyes can tell that this team is likely to lose to Virginia, Louisville, and SMU, and Big Game will be another coin flip. This season is headed straight towards 6-6, like every Wilcox season that came before.

Point 3: Justin Wilcox has two years left on his contract, which runs through 2027. Offering him a contract extension is a laughable idea. Bringing him back in 2026 without extending his contract would create the lamest of lame duck seasons. He would be even less effective as a recruiter than usual because everybody would understand that he’s not going to be around long term.

Taking all three basic truths into consideration, the only conclusion anybody can reach is that Justin Wilcox will leave Cal in some capacity. Anything else would be malpractice. I currently have a high level of trust that those involved in decision making surrounding Cal football are significantly smarter than the people who were in charge in 2021-2024.

Oh yeah, I forgot about something else:

Point 4: After the North Carolina game, three different people told me that they will not attend a Cal game while Justin Wilcox is still the head coach. Three people is not a relevant sample, but I am confident that they are not alone, and I am confident that there are other fans expressing ultimatums of one kind or another.

Engagement from fans is essential to saving Cal football, and I’m confident that Cal’s current leadership can read the room and easily determine what needs to be done to restore optimism and excitement for the future.