Post-Game Thoughts: Oregon State Football 2025

One of the great "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in" games in Cal history.

“Nick’s heart grew three sizes that day” photo via @calfootball twitter

All off-season long, what I heard from Cal fans was disengagement strategies of one kind or another. The exhilarating highs of early 2024 gave way to crushing lows, and more than a few have told me that the constant roster churn in and out of the transfer portal is as dizzying as it is unpleasant. Many had to find ways to disconnect.

I get that perspective. Personally, I’m not disengaging since it’s more or less my job to keep up with the comings and goings of Cal football. But the coaching and roster turnover after last season calcified in me the idea that there was a hard ceiling on what Cal could achieve under this coaching staff, and the ennui of believing that ~.500 football is the best we can hope for has felt oppressive at times.

I turned on the game on Saturday night expecting a very typical September Cal performance under Justin Wilcox. It’s a game that we see at least once most seasons - the game where Cal beats a team they are supposed to beat, but it’s ugly and closer than it should be, and you walk away with a sense that there are flaws on the roster that act as a hard cap for the season. 2018 BYU, 2019 North Texas, 2022 UNLV, even 2024 SDSU. Cal struggling to put away a non-power team has been a hallmark for the return of football season for nearly a decade now.

I was also tamping down my own expectations because I spent the last week doing a ton of reading on how true freshmen QBs have fared in year one when they win the starting job out of fall camp. Most of the info I consumed specifically looks at consensus 5 star QBs, of which Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele falls juuuuuust short.

On one hand, the evidence is encouraging - highly talented QBs who immediately win the job are almost always eventually good to great college players, and occasionally they are good to great immediately. On the other hand, most of them (and particularly the successful ones) are surrounded by an elite supporting cast of linemen and skill position players, which probably isn’t the case this year at Cal. This led me to write that “it’s unfair to expect JKS to transcend the talent around him in year 1” on this website’s internal discord chat.

And then an 18 year old Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele dropped absolute dimes 20+ yards downfield from start to finish for an entire game of FBS college football.

Offense

Efficiency Report

10 drives: 3 touchdowns, 1 field goal attempt (1-1), 5 punts, 1 turnover (1 downs), 2.4 points/drive.

I am not including Cal’s one play, two yard touchdown drive following Hezekiah Masses’ interception return, nor the final drive of the game in which Cal was primarily trying to burn clock. If you did count those drives towards offensive production (vs. defense and special teams) that would bump Cal up to 2.8 points/drive.

Dropping dimes vs. catching dimes

Because Cal basically sealed the game a couple of minutes into the 4th quarter after the Masses interception, JKS really only spent three quarters throwing the ball. And in those three quarters he completed six passes of 19 yards or more, and threw another five catchable deep balls that Cal’s receivers weren’t able to haul in.

Those near-misses down the field were the difference between a good day of offensive production and a great day of offensive production, and it raises a critical question for the rest of the season:

Does Cal have wide receivers on the roster who can either a) get separation down field or b) make contested catches downfield? If the answer to either of those questions is YES, then the Bears might truly be cooking on offense for the first time since Davis Webb and Chad Hansen played catch in 2016.

Will the threat of JKS dimes open up the run game?

I haven’t been able to re-watch the game yet (my apologies!) and as a result I don’t have a great sense of how many men OSU kept in the box and whether or not that changed as Cal attacked the field deep. Cal did break off a couple of longer runs but for the most part OSU was able to contain Cal’s run game and force the Bears to rely on JKS’s arm to move the ball . . . which wasn’t really a problem.

We’ll see if the offensive line and running backs develop, but my instinct tells me that Cal just isn’t going to have the ability to run the ball at will even when the opponent knows Cal wants to run, and the Bears will instead have to keep the run game as a change-of-pace threat if teams drop too many defenders deep into coverage.

Defense

Efficiency Report

11 drives: 2 touchdowns, 1 field goal attempt (1-1), 5 punts, 3 turnovers (1 interception, 1 fumble, 1 down), 1.4 points/drive.

This was a VERY Cal-under-Wilcox defensive performance. For most of the game, Cal controlled Oregon State but did allow a pair of long, multi-play, dink-and-dunk drives that resulted in touchdowns. But whatever frustration you might feel because Cal allowed OSU too many gains of 5-9 yards was offset by a couple of forced turnovers that swung what could have been a close game into a pretty routine win.

Disruptive in the run game, not so much the passing game

Cal utterly suffocated OSU’s run game. 2.4 yards/run on 27 carries is ugly, and Cal’s linebackers (most often Cade Uluave) were slicing through the line to record tackles for loss all game long. It was as disruptive as I can recall Cal looking with their run fits since Evan Weaver roamed behind the line.

But if there’s one nit to pick from this game, it’s that Cal’s pass rush was not nearly as disruptive. Cal recorded just one sack, and Maalik Murphy was mostly able to find this throws. Those throws were only marginally successful because he’s not a very good quarterback, but it was concerning that Cal wasn’t able to more frequently disrupt an OSU team that probably has a weaker offensive line than most of Cal’s power conference opponents.

To be fair, Oregon State spent most of the game throwing underneath and didn’t much try to stretch the field. Which brings us to . . .

No major secondary busts

Cal gave up a couple of explosives to Trent Walker, Oregon State’s best player. Those plays are probably worth a film study later this week to better diagnose what went wrong. But as noted above, OSU spent the rest of the game throwing underneath, and Cal spent the game mostly tackling pretty well in space to ensure that those underneath throws weren’t particularly damaging.

It’s a good sign for Cal’s rebuilt secondary that they took on a ton of pass attempts without the support of a withering pass rush and largely held their own, and without any obvious busts. Getting beaten by a legit WR isn’t ideal, but far from the end of the world. For now, put a notch in the “you can trust Justin Wilcox to have a solid secondary almost regardless of who is playing” scorecard.

Special Teams

Jacob De Jesus could be a massive difference maker

Over the prior two seasons, Cal has collectively returned 28 punts for 127 total yards.

In one game, Jacob De Jesus returned three punts for 73 yards. He’s about to outproduce two full seasons in a matter of games. He had three excellent returns that put Cal into plus territory and ultimately resulted in 10 points, while simultaneously helping Cal control field position.

One game of positive data

Cal will likely spend the year using one kicker for short field goals and one kicker for long field goals, and for at least one game it worked perfectly. Chase Meyer wasn’t really asked to do anything more difficult than extra points, and Abram Murray nailed a 49 yarder. Does this portend success later in the year? I don’t think two kicks are predictive, but it’s certainly better than missing any of them.

Coaching

A gutsy offensive gameplan

It would have been easy for Cal’s coaches to go ultra conservative when you’re starting a true freshman on the road. Instead, playcalling was evenly balanced between run and pass, and when Cal DID elect to pass, JKS was given plenty of deep options and the freedom to go down the field. This never felt like a game where the coaches kept training wheels on the offense in a situation where you wouldn’t necessarily have blamed them.

Will Cal be able to do the same thing against opponents with better secondaries and/or pass rushes? We’ll find out eventually, but if nothing else every single team now has to game plan around the fact that Cal has a QB who can carve them up down the field if they don’t defend vertically.

Please don’t run a play when you’re in field goal range with 6 seconds left in the second quarter

Unless, like, you’re just a few yards away from the end zone and we really need a touchdown? That might have been the single biggest high-risk, no-reward play Cal has ever run under Justin Wilcox.

Big Picture

Last year, after Cal beat Oregon State 44-7, I wrote a long article about how the Beavers served as a warning of what could happen if Cal doesn’t get serious about football and maintain their status as a member of a power conference.

Over the last year, Cal has taken the task very seriously indeed, and this game was evidence of that. Plenty of talent departed from Berkeley last year, and if you looked at what Cal lost in isolation, you could be forgiven for thinking that OSU could maybe kinda sorta be a favorite to win this game.

But Cal brought in nearly as much talent as they lost, and certainly enough talent to comfortably handle an Oregon State team that is still bleeding out after the destruction of the Pac-12.

In short, Oregon State is not a good measuring stick for how good Cal might be. There were hugely positive signs from this game - a prodigy QB throwing darts downfield, competent special teams, improved pass protection, and a rebuilt secondary playing well together.

But there were also signs of a team learning to play together. The offense was hit and miss and a little too dependent on big plays downfield. The defense was at times vulnerable to short throws underneath and struggled to rush the passer. Quibbles against Oregon State, but potential areas of concern against stronger opposition.

You can’t achieve a season’s worth of goals in one game. But on rare occasions, when a special talent rolls through Berkeley, you can watch one player do things on a football field that spark your imagination. Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele is a Bear, and if you’re putting a ceiling on what he might do in a Cal uniform then your heart has hardened beyond repair.