The strange part about all this is that I've rarely seen a Wilcox defense get out-coached or out-schemed. If the D gets handled it's either because they get steamrolled by a bigger, better offensive line or the opponent has a duel threat QB that can make big time plays with his legs and arm. If you don't have either of those you are usually in a dogfight against the Cal defense.
So to see a well-organized defense, maximizing its talent playing disciplined, sound football versus the abject disaster of the offense where you could be fooled into wondering if they even practice plays, is surreal.
And don't forget, Nick, that James Madison was ranked in the Top 25 just six weeks after joining D1. (yes, they lost last week, but somehow they figured out a way to get 5 straight wins against the big boys.)
I've been going to Cal games pretty consistently since 1962 when I was a child. I've missed three home games since '82 and one since '89. I don't know if this is the lowest point the Bears have reached during all these decades of suffering but it's in the bottom three or four. There is zero evidence that Wilcox can win more than seven regular season games and there's no reason to suspect that we'll even get to seven this year or next. I understand those who are giving up on Cal football but I never will. It's in my DNA. I'll always support the players who work so hard to represent the university -- the greater public institute of higher education in the world. I walked out on them once during the Holmoe years when I detected they weren't giving a hundred per cent but I think these lads will play hard for Wilcox, though his limitations as a coach will prevent them from being successful as a team. We're at the halfway point and already know this is another lost season. Anyway, thank you all for being here. Thanks Nick and everyone else at WFC for their superb write-ups. Misery does indeed love company and these are miserable times.
- New transfer QB in system; no experience behind him.
- Mosaic offensive line after early retirement and transfers/graduations.
- New talent in the skill positions, but also a lot of inexperience.
- Thin D-line loses best player.
- Thin on ILBs
These were all the little problems that, as Cal fans, we wanted to ignore and hoped they would overcome. This is not a tragic loss to Colorado; this is regression to the mean.
Didn't Vegas have us at like 4-8? Sucks to take those Oski Goggles off when all HOPE is squeezed out of your blood! The question is: why were we so optimistic in the first place?
This is total junk excuses. We just lost to one of the worst teams in football. There are no excuses to cover this. None. This team is FAR more talented than this and has shown it. If this is regression to a mean I’m curious where your mean is cause its waaaaay lower than mine.
Losing Mettaur to the transfer portal was a gut punch. He was Cal's nastiest O lineman last year and undoubtedly would made a difference had he stayed this year. But four other Pac 12 quarterbacks came in through the transfer portal this year and have thrived in new offenses. We just happened to pick the guy who got demoted to the bench after two games last year. That tells you everything you need to know.
Plummer has a better arm, but his inaccuracy is a problem, even in the short routes. He throws passes Garbers wouldn’t have even attempted.
Respectfully, I think you could argue Plummer is definitely one of the reasons why this offense is dreadful. He gets happy feet in the pocket, understandable of course because of the porous line, but he hesitates on throws…some of his balls just have no chance of being completed, and he is constantly missing open receivers, esp. Saturday.
Like most QBs, he definitely seems to do better when we get some tempo going, which also begs the question of why Musgrave doesn’t go up tempo more? Plummer in rhythm is pretty damn solid…you can win with that. Which leads us to the biggest problem - coaching.
I’ve heard so many announcers this year list one of his attributes as accuracy, which is just proof that announcers don’t really do their own homework.
Plummer has even done that second thing a few times this season, to my surprise! Again, he seems good enough to win with. But he needs either better protection or a scheme that can cover for the lack of it, and we have neither.
Yup. I understand they don't have great talent/depth right now, but frequently it looks like they don't even know who is blocking who. That seems to be on the coaching.
Except for the Arizona game. I still don't know how that game happened.
Yep. Probably being a bit unfair. But I am suffering from a case of last game, short-term memory. He missed a crap ton of passes Saturday that could have made a difference in the game.
He missed a ton of throws that a Pac 12 starting QB has to be able to hit, especially along the sideline.
How Musgrave can watch Jack continuously move the ball in up tempo situations yet NEVER use that is beyond me…happened again Sat…as soon as they get in the red zone tho Musgrave ground everything to a halt. Brutal.
Nothing's going to change until we stop accepting mediocrity as our normal.
Nothing's going to change until we stop paying money for this product.
Nothing's going to change until we stop telling ourselves, "Next year will be better."
Memorial can either be packed with football fans or become a concert venue, but this perfunctory fielding of a team, without true support from admin, is an agonizing joke.
I, for one, cannot stand watching our players play their hearts out with such bad leadership mocking and thwarting their efforts.
Re: Leadership. I've benefitted from the numerical analysis and policy examinations we've read on this site. I've wondered, though: How did we get here? I did a rough comparison of HC's and Chancellors since Pete Elliott took Cal to the Rose Bowl. I am unaware of any explicit administrative moves by any Chancellor to thwart Cal Athletics, especially Football. I can understand, even expect, benign neglect by almost any administration in the 60's, 70's, and into the 80's... because at that point, in the 80's, TV became an important force in football: An irreversible force. But, set aside the more recent Larry Smith mess, Cal wasn't on national IV much, and the team wasn't exactly horrible but the team wasn't winning a lot of games either. Then, in the 2000's, we get Tedford, Aaron Rodgers, etc: And, TV came anyway. It may be worth asking: What were Berdahl and Birgeneau doing for Cal Athletics, given the relative success of Tedford? Similarly, what happened following Elliott with Seaborg, Strong, and Heyns? The latter series (1959-1971) had absolutely dreadful football teams following the last Rose Bowl appearance through the early 70's. Sorry to run on, but, you get my point: What was happening to campus leadership that lent itself to the slow dismal structures that have produced Cal football in the present?
It's a generally perfunctory support. There has been an admin leader quoted as saying, "we don't want Cal to become another football factory." This is emblematic throttling down of our success. Most recently, the 20% grade and test score exception means a much, much smaller recruiting pool and that 20% threshold is just Cal.
Yes, I am very proud of our academic reputation, but there is mentality that the Nobel greatness and football greatness are mutually exclusive or an inverse relationship.
Witness this comment from a fan (I shall keep anonymous) and betrays a sort of nerds- don't-like-football thinking:
"Cal prioritizes research over football. (I hope that the irony of any institution of higher learning, including Cal, emphasizing a sport that leads to brain injuries isn’t lost on you.)
Meant to circle back to my all-too-brief comment in the other post, so let's try this here: Avi's absolutely correct in reiterating Cal's lack of institutional support. That's been the case forever - in my head, I can still recall the gist of Fiat Lux's contributions from the prior site. We'll never be Nebraska & burn MILLIONS to drop a coach mid-season (or 2 weeks before a payout becomes relatively reasonable). In some version of the multiverse, though, I'd like to believe that an abuse scandal at one of the country's top universities would result in the dismissal of all involved, including the AD who ignored said abuse. If any of them had any decency, they'd have resigned by now, disgrace be damned.
Knowlton hired Fox, who can't coach; re-upped Wilcox, who can't coach. If there's a way to blow up the revenue sports and start over with a clean slate for each, I'm all for it. Ironic that neither's generating enough revenue with all the losing. There's probably a fine line between accepting mediocrity & tolerating a losing program, or maybe not; maybe those are 2 sides of the same Cal coin. Either way, the players, students, and fans deserve better. To borrow from William Wallace, 'you know what happens if we don't try? Nothin'.
This seems to be a common thing with coaches who were bad at Cal but had later success: they needed to take a break somewhere else before coming back and doing well.
No, but as I understand it they are very insistent that Cal not schedule anything else there BUT football games. Or maybe it was about not having nighttime events besides football. Something like that.
I remember there was Under Armor guy who came to CGB and told us the new OC will be a splash hire and got me all excited, and even with that high expectations I was more than surprised when Baldwin hire was announced.
I googled to check if Musgrave and Wilcox were friends, or if Wilcox actually never knew him but had mutual friends due to Oregon ties. And I found this paragraph on the Athletic.
"Musgrave and Wilcox are both Oregon products who have kept in touch over the years. While Musgrave was a backup quarterback under coach Bill Walsh on the 49ers and is well-versed in the West Coast short-passing offense, Wilcox said one reason that he hired him was because Musgrave “has been extremely versatile in the offensive systems he has run throughout his career.”"
His pro record was actually pretty good, but that's probably the biggest problem, he's used to pros. It'd been a couple of decades since he coached college. When he came on in January 2020.
Honestly, the proof is in the pudding. He's not connected, mentally, with these players and their limitations. And it feels like, when the same thing is done over and over, he's blaming the players.
Maybe he'll get hired back to the pros. 49'ers could use offense help and he would not have to move. I feel bad to knock him, but it's obviously not working.
Agreed - just like my disdain for Jimmy Garoppolo, it’s not personal…it’s their football personalities I struggle with. I don’t think Musgrave’s a bad dude…hell, with the right personnel, he’s probably not even a bad college OC. Imagine him with ‘Bama or UGA…I bet he’d be solid with NFL talent littered across the offense, especially OL.
But he’s bad fit for Cal…worse yet, he was a bad hire from the start. A guy with 20 years away from coaching college kids.
Dunno where Wilcox goes from here. Nick’s point is valid - even if he gets a 3rd shot at hiring an OC, can we really expect him to nail it? But to be successful offensively at Cal, I think a more wide open or spread attack would be great…Cal doesn’t have the horses to win 1 on 1 matchups, so maybe getting more gimmicky will work…
Absolutely. At least with Baldwin, who won a Natty at Eastern WA, I had confidence that he would put the kids in position to win….he would make in-game adjustments based on what the defense was doing. Those Cal teams were painfully thin on offensive talent, tho, and really struggled with execution.
Even before Boulder, I had almost zero confidence in Musgrave’s ability to put the kids in a position to win, despite the uptick in talent. Then he comes out with a pass heavy game plan early against the 129th ranked rushing defense in the country. He had 2 weeks to attack this Colorado D, yet they looked unprepared. Can’t happen.
Granted, Plummer is disappointing and consistently misses too many throws, and the Cal WR seem unwilling or unable to block…however, this is painfully obvious - a more dynamic OC should be able to scheme around what his players don’t do well, no? A better OC finds what his kids do well and exploits it. Hell, Sturdivant was 1 on 1 with a linebacker in the red zone Sat and Plummer is forcing the ball to Mavin Anderson in traffic.…WTF!!
Great article and I agree with everything you wrote.
With the exception of a few hardcore sunshine pumpers and Wilcox supporters, it seems like all Cal fans are pessimistic about the program and the coaching staff and are checking out.
Gotta dump Musgrave and the O line coach - gotta happen - their schemes aren't working, they aren't inspiring, their calls are too conservative, they can't recruit, they are over-the-hill losers who cannot shift gears at this stage in their careers, they are has- beens with no will-be up side - tis' simple, good coaches win, and these two are not good coaches , they have no "win" left in them - shoot them and move on --- Wilcox has to wake up too - gotta find an innovative, gutty, high-energy O coordinator and not some other hack from his past --- Knowlton (sp?) is in the same category as Musgrave - he deserves no respect and nobody should listen to him, send him out for the donuts when the meeting gets serious --- contrast the football situation with that of the swimming situation - listen to Durden (sp?) describe how his coaching group responded to the crisis involving the head women's team coach. Listen to the deep love of Cal and the commitment to the swimming programs and the absolute refusal to let the problems diminish in any way , absolutely no tolerance for any erosion of the level of excellence and viewed the crisis as an opportunity for the programs to get even stronger
Cal has a good QB in Milner who is sitting while Plummer is mot doing the job. There had to be a reason why Purdue demoted him mid season. He's slow to react. He's average or worse on accuracy. And, he's not mobile. Milner was a 4 star recruit and he's mobile. Garbors was mobile and the offense was much more efficient because of it.
I’ve watched Milner a bunch in practices and he’s not the answer in the short term, maybe even the long term unfortunately. Not nearly as elusive as you might think he is.
If Millner couldn’t get on the field last year @ U of A, then he’s either not a Pac 12 caliber QB or Musgrave’s meager O is still too complicated for 19 year old student athletes.
Well said. Like others have remarked, it's time for a change. And if Cal will not change and play college football like teams in the modern era, it might be time to drop the program.
Success is possible and Cal does have some issues in terms of institutional support but that lack of institutional support isn’t the reason we lost to Colorado on Saturday.
The strange part about all this is that I've rarely seen a Wilcox defense get out-coached or out-schemed. If the D gets handled it's either because they get steamrolled by a bigger, better offensive line or the opponent has a duel threat QB that can make big time plays with his legs and arm. If you don't have either of those you are usually in a dogfight against the Cal defense.
So to see a well-organized defense, maximizing its talent playing disciplined, sound football versus the abject disaster of the offense where you could be fooled into wondering if they even practice plays, is surreal.
And don't forget, Nick, that James Madison was ranked in the Top 25 just six weeks after joining D1. (yes, they lost last week, but somehow they figured out a way to get 5 straight wins against the big boys.)
I've been going to Cal games pretty consistently since 1962 when I was a child. I've missed three home games since '82 and one since '89. I don't know if this is the lowest point the Bears have reached during all these decades of suffering but it's in the bottom three or four. There is zero evidence that Wilcox can win more than seven regular season games and there's no reason to suspect that we'll even get to seven this year or next. I understand those who are giving up on Cal football but I never will. It's in my DNA. I'll always support the players who work so hard to represent the university -- the greater public institute of higher education in the world. I walked out on them once during the Holmoe years when I detected they weren't giving a hundred per cent but I think these lads will play hard for Wilcox, though his limitations as a coach will prevent them from being successful as a team. We're at the halfway point and already know this is another lost season. Anyway, thank you all for being here. Thanks Nick and everyone else at WFC for their superb write-ups. Misery does indeed love company and these are miserable times.
Great stuff…thanks Nick.
Let's see:
- New transfer QB in system; no experience behind him.
- Mosaic offensive line after early retirement and transfers/graduations.
- New talent in the skill positions, but also a lot of inexperience.
- Thin D-line loses best player.
- Thin on ILBs
These were all the little problems that, as Cal fans, we wanted to ignore and hoped they would overcome. This is not a tragic loss to Colorado; this is regression to the mean.
Didn't Vegas have us at like 4-8? Sucks to take those Oski Goggles off when all HOPE is squeezed out of your blood! The question is: why were we so optimistic in the first place?
This is total junk excuses. We just lost to one of the worst teams in football. There are no excuses to cover this. None. This team is FAR more talented than this and has shown it. If this is regression to a mean I’m curious where your mean is cause its waaaaay lower than mine.
Losing Mettaur to the transfer portal was a gut punch. He was Cal's nastiest O lineman last year and undoubtedly would made a difference had he stayed this year. But four other Pac 12 quarterbacks came in through the transfer portal this year and have thrived in new offenses. We just happened to pick the guy who got demoted to the bench after two games last year. That tells you everything you need to know.
Honestly, I think Plummer is the least of our problems. He seems good enough to succeed here. The scheme and the blocking are doing him no favors.
I actually think Plummer is more accurate than Garbers, especially on the short to medium throws.
The difference is Garbers could turn lemons into lemonade with his legs when he was running for his life, Plummer can't.
Plummer has a better arm, but his inaccuracy is a problem, even in the short routes. He throws passes Garbers wouldn’t have even attempted.
Respectfully, I think you could argue Plummer is definitely one of the reasons why this offense is dreadful. He gets happy feet in the pocket, understandable of course because of the porous line, but he hesitates on throws…some of his balls just have no chance of being completed, and he is constantly missing open receivers, esp. Saturday.
Like most QBs, he definitely seems to do better when we get some tempo going, which also begs the question of why Musgrave doesn’t go up tempo more? Plummer in rhythm is pretty damn solid…you can win with that. Which leads us to the biggest problem - coaching.
I’ve heard so many announcers this year list one of his attributes as accuracy, which is just proof that announcers don’t really do their own homework.
He hesitates, and then pocket collapses and he throws in desperation.
Plummer has even done that second thing a few times this season, to my surprise! Again, he seems good enough to win with. But he needs either better protection or a scheme that can cover for the lack of it, and we have neither.
Never seen an offensive line just straight up blow blocking assignments as much as the Cal line does.
It's a poorly coached, poorly prepared unit.
Yup. I understand they don't have great talent/depth right now, but frequently it looks like they don't even know who is blocking who. That seems to be on the coaching.
Except for the Arizona game. I still don't know how that game happened.
Yep. Probably being a bit unfair. But I am suffering from a case of last game, short-term memory. He missed a crap ton of passes Saturday that could have made a difference in the game.
He missed a ton of throws that a Pac 12 starting QB has to be able to hit, especially along the sideline.
How Musgrave can watch Jack continuously move the ball in up tempo situations yet NEVER use that is beyond me…happened again Sat…as soon as they get in the red zone tho Musgrave ground everything to a halt. Brutal.
That sideline out is one of the hardest throws to consistently hit. Of course we call it constantly.
True…and true.
He also was throwing the ball in desperation multiple times as if there was no actual playcall.
Because the opponent was Colorado
Nothing's going to change until we stop accepting mediocrity as our normal.
Nothing's going to change until we stop paying money for this product.
Nothing's going to change until we stop telling ourselves, "Next year will be better."
Memorial can either be packed with football fans or become a concert venue, but this perfunctory fielding of a team, without true support from admin, is an agonizing joke.
I, for one, cannot stand watching our players play their hearts out with such bad leadership mocking and thwarting their efforts.
Re: Leadership. I've benefitted from the numerical analysis and policy examinations we've read on this site. I've wondered, though: How did we get here? I did a rough comparison of HC's and Chancellors since Pete Elliott took Cal to the Rose Bowl. I am unaware of any explicit administrative moves by any Chancellor to thwart Cal Athletics, especially Football. I can understand, even expect, benign neglect by almost any administration in the 60's, 70's, and into the 80's... because at that point, in the 80's, TV became an important force in football: An irreversible force. But, set aside the more recent Larry Smith mess, Cal wasn't on national IV much, and the team wasn't exactly horrible but the team wasn't winning a lot of games either. Then, in the 2000's, we get Tedford, Aaron Rodgers, etc: And, TV came anyway. It may be worth asking: What were Berdahl and Birgeneau doing for Cal Athletics, given the relative success of Tedford? Similarly, what happened following Elliott with Seaborg, Strong, and Heyns? The latter series (1959-1971) had absolutely dreadful football teams following the last Rose Bowl appearance through the early 70's. Sorry to run on, but, you get my point: What was happening to campus leadership that lent itself to the slow dismal structures that have produced Cal football in the present?
It's a generally perfunctory support. There has been an admin leader quoted as saying, "we don't want Cal to become another football factory." This is emblematic throttling down of our success. Most recently, the 20% grade and test score exception means a much, much smaller recruiting pool and that 20% threshold is just Cal.
Yes, I am very proud of our academic reputation, but there is mentality that the Nobel greatness and football greatness are mutually exclusive or an inverse relationship.
Witness this comment from a fan (I shall keep anonymous) and betrays a sort of nerds- don't-like-football thinking:
"Cal prioritizes research over football. (I hope that the irony of any institution of higher learning, including Cal, emphasizing a sport that leads to brain injuries isn’t lost on you.)
Cal has 69 Nobel laureates.
UCLA — 13
Wisconsin — 19
Michigan — 20
The numbers speak for themselves."
Meant to circle back to my all-too-brief comment in the other post, so let's try this here: Avi's absolutely correct in reiterating Cal's lack of institutional support. That's been the case forever - in my head, I can still recall the gist of Fiat Lux's contributions from the prior site. We'll never be Nebraska & burn MILLIONS to drop a coach mid-season (or 2 weeks before a payout becomes relatively reasonable). In some version of the multiverse, though, I'd like to believe that an abuse scandal at one of the country's top universities would result in the dismissal of all involved, including the AD who ignored said abuse. If any of them had any decency, they'd have resigned by now, disgrace be damned.
Knowlton hired Fox, who can't coach; re-upped Wilcox, who can't coach. If there's a way to blow up the revenue sports and start over with a clean slate for each, I'm all for it. Ironic that neither's generating enough revenue with all the losing. There's probably a fine line between accepting mediocrity & tolerating a losing program, or maybe not; maybe those are 2 sides of the same Cal coin. Either way, the players, students, and fans deserve better. To borrow from William Wallace, 'you know what happens if we don't try? Nothin'.
I gotta admit that Dykes firing was a big surprise. It happened in the off-season, but I was surprised AD took action.
Didn't Dykes get hired away? He'd been firing up his resume for like six months before.
No, Sonny was fired for continuously job shopping.
I don't think so. He didn't coach anybody in 2017.
He was hired as offensive analyst or some role at TCU.
Yup, he took a year off first.
This seems to be a common thing with coaches who were bad at Cal but had later success: they needed to take a break somewhere else before coming back and doing well.
Rather on-brand for Cal football.
Great idea. Host concerts and make money to hire coaches
We'll just use that money to pay for the lawsuits brought by the Panoramic Hill Association once we add more events to the stadium calendar.
They actually sue over football games?
No, but as I understand it they are very insistent that Cal not schedule anything else there BUT football games. Or maybe it was about not having nighttime events besides football. Something like that.
Typi-Berkeley.
Reminds me of Big Sur residents complaining about too many tourists.
The disingenuity of "Why are all these people, here?"
It's classic Berkeley homeowner behavior to complain about the effects of having a major university on their doorstep.
You know, the university that's been there for 150 years and certainly was there when you bought your house.
Of course! Concert goers and football fans have nearly identical demographics.
they do, don't they?
LOL.
Maybe have coaches "audition" by singing in Memorial.
Is Musgrave fired yet?
He is as fired as Baldwin was, which is not.
Fun Fact: Baldwin is 3-17 at Cal Poly SLO.
Baldwin is evidence of two things:
1. JW seems clueless about Offense coaching abilities
2. Why one does not hire "friends" or get too close to staff when you're the Big Guy.
The sad thing is I was super excited about the Baldwin hire and thought he was the better hire with more potential than TDR.
I remember there was Under Armor guy who came to CGB and told us the new OC will be a splash hire and got me all excited, and even with that high expectations I was more than surprised when Baldwin hire was announced.
I googled to check if Musgrave and Wilcox were friends, or if Wilcox actually never knew him but had mutual friends due to Oregon ties. And I found this paragraph on the Athletic.
"Musgrave and Wilcox are both Oregon products who have kept in touch over the years. While Musgrave was a backup quarterback under coach Bill Walsh on the 49ers and is well-versed in the West Coast short-passing offense, Wilcox said one reason that he hired him was because Musgrave “has been extremely versatile in the offensive systems he has run throughout his career.”"
"versatile" LOL
Musgrave’s Pro Style offense succeeds…when he has Pro players making pro plays.
We…don’t…have…those…
His pro record was actually pretty good, but that's probably the biggest problem, he's used to pros. It'd been a couple of decades since he coached college. When he came on in January 2020.
Honestly, the proof is in the pudding. He's not connected, mentally, with these players and their limitations. And it feels like, when the same thing is done over and over, he's blaming the players.
Maybe he'll get hired back to the pros. 49'ers could use offense help and he would not have to move. I feel bad to knock him, but it's obviously not working.
Agreed - just like my disdain for Jimmy Garoppolo, it’s not personal…it’s their football personalities I struggle with. I don’t think Musgrave’s a bad dude…hell, with the right personnel, he’s probably not even a bad college OC. Imagine him with ‘Bama or UGA…I bet he’d be solid with NFL talent littered across the offense, especially OL.
But he’s bad fit for Cal…worse yet, he was a bad hire from the start. A guy with 20 years away from coaching college kids.
Dunno where Wilcox goes from here. Nick’s point is valid - even if he gets a 3rd shot at hiring an OC, can we really expect him to nail it? But to be successful offensively at Cal, I think a more wide open or spread attack would be great…Cal doesn’t have the horses to win 1 on 1 matchups, so maybe getting more gimmicky will work…
And the sad thing is that Baldwin was actually a better OC for us.
Absolutely. At least with Baldwin, who won a Natty at Eastern WA, I had confidence that he would put the kids in position to win….he would make in-game adjustments based on what the defense was doing. Those Cal teams were painfully thin on offensive talent, tho, and really struggled with execution.
Even before Boulder, I had almost zero confidence in Musgrave’s ability to put the kids in a position to win, despite the uptick in talent. Then he comes out with a pass heavy game plan early against the 129th ranked rushing defense in the country. He had 2 weeks to attack this Colorado D, yet they looked unprepared. Can’t happen.
Granted, Plummer is disappointing and consistently misses too many throws, and the Cal WR seem unwilling or unable to block…however, this is painfully obvious - a more dynamic OC should be able to scheme around what his players don’t do well, no? A better OC finds what his kids do well and exploits it. Hell, Sturdivant was 1 on 1 with a linebacker in the red zone Sat and Plummer is forcing the ball to Mavin Anderson in traffic.…WTF!!
So sad
Arrghh, so true.
Great article and I agree with everything you wrote.
With the exception of a few hardcore sunshine pumpers and Wilcox supporters, it seems like all Cal fans are pessimistic about the program and the coaching staff and are checking out.
While I have lost hope for this season, I feel that I will be back home in time to watch the UW game and hoping for a win.
Penix hangs 40 on us.
Probably but with our offense, 24 points should be more than enough to win.
I'll be watching of course. But in the dispassionate knowledge of the facts around the program it's easy to see that something has to be done.
Same here, I am happy you will be watching because misery loves company.
Gotta dump Musgrave and the O line coach - gotta happen - their schemes aren't working, they aren't inspiring, their calls are too conservative, they can't recruit, they are over-the-hill losers who cannot shift gears at this stage in their careers, they are has- beens with no will-be up side - tis' simple, good coaches win, and these two are not good coaches , they have no "win" left in them - shoot them and move on --- Wilcox has to wake up too - gotta find an innovative, gutty, high-energy O coordinator and not some other hack from his past --- Knowlton (sp?) is in the same category as Musgrave - he deserves no respect and nobody should listen to him, send him out for the donuts when the meeting gets serious --- contrast the football situation with that of the swimming situation - listen to Durden (sp?) describe how his coaching group responded to the crisis involving the head women's team coach. Listen to the deep love of Cal and the commitment to the swimming programs and the absolute refusal to let the problems diminish in any way , absolutely no tolerance for any erosion of the level of excellence and viewed the crisis as an opportunity for the programs to get even stronger
There are states where losing a game like this would carry criminal charges.
Cal has a good QB in Milner who is sitting while Plummer is mot doing the job. There had to be a reason why Purdue demoted him mid season. He's slow to react. He's average or worse on accuracy. And, he's not mobile. Milner was a 4 star recruit and he's mobile. Garbors was mobile and the offense was much more efficient because of it.
I’ve watched Milner a bunch in practices and he’s not the answer in the short term, maybe even the long term unfortunately. Not nearly as elusive as you might think he is.
If Millner couldn’t get on the field last year @ U of A, then he’s either not a Pac 12 caliber QB or Musgrave’s meager O is still too complicated for 19 year old student athletes.
Chances are good both are true, unfortunately.
No, he didn't get on the field because Musgraves will not sub in QB's even if the game is a runaway either way. He never took Garbors out last year .
Hmm, I remember the same thing being said about Tedford's complex offense.
Well, that one seemed to work.
It worked with Aaron Rodgers. After that the results were mixed.
Longshore was fine before the ankle injury too. We got the most out of strongly talented offensive weapons we had in 2006 and 2007.
And honestly, if we even had the Kevin Riley offense of 2008-10 we'd be doing backflips right now.
Go ahead and punch me in the arm now for invoking the name, but I'd love to see what Troy Taylor could do here in 2023.
If you don't bombard us with the same comment 10x a day, you will not be punched.
Please include a Wikipedia link about Troy Taylor, it is required for all Troy Taylor post.
Or a link to some game box scores.
Who is this Troy Taylor I keep hearing about? Is this like that “Who is John Galt” schitt from Atlas Shrugged???
;-)
Or details of emails written to Knowlton.
Yep, all of this.
Well said. Like others have remarked, it's time for a change. And if Cal will not change and play college football like teams in the modern era, it might be time to drop the program.
Success is possible. But it takes a hell of a lot more than what Cal is providing the coaches and team currently.
Success is possible and Cal does have some issues in terms of institutional support but that lack of institutional support isn’t the reason we lost to Colorado on Saturday.
Poor coaching lost to Colorado
Exactly