I am a UNLV fan, and just happened to stumble across this article and thread. The one thing that the author and all the fan posts failed to mention, is that this year UNLV is actually a much better team than they used to be. This will only be evident by the end of the season, but UNLV in the past 2 years has recruited and developed better talent than they had in the past. I would say this UNLV team is probably on par with where Boise State was roughly 5 years ago. Cal fans are naturally surprised that their team struggled with UNLV, but by the end of the season, I think it will make a lot more sense. No one would have been surprised by Boise State of 5 years ago coming into Cal and putting up a good fight, possibly leaving with a win.
We're not surprised that you're better than you were last year, that was already obvious. We're mad that the strategy that put us up 20-7 was just abandoned and we sat with our thumbs up our asses, giving y'all seemingly endless chances to catch up. No matter how good your defense is, they won't prevent scoring forever and a 2 score lead isn't enough to just do nothing. Had we kept using Ott for a normal usage amount for a starter (15-25 carries instead of 7), I guarantee that gives us 1-2 more TDs and a healthier victory margin.
There are two big takeaways from the game. One is very obvious: Ott needs to get WAY more touches. He's our best RB and it's not even close. Moore and Brooks are not on the same level as Ott, and when they get forced into the game they are complete momentum killers.
The other less obvious takeaway: Braxton Croteau is simply not it. He needs to be benched asap. In 98% of the plays he gets easily blocked out and removed from the play, sometimes by a tackle but sometimes he's even completely manhandled by a skinny tight end. And on the very rare occassion he isn't blocked, like when he came free at the QB up the middle, he whiffs the tackle and let's the QB scramble for 12 and a first down. The ONLY play he happened to make came pretty much on accident when he was blocked out of the play completely, but the rb happened to run right at him and even then he still almost missed the tackle. The guy offers nothing aside from being one of those "over the pile" guys who run to a tackle after it's been made and pretend like they were almost in on it. He's basically another Evan Tattersal...and now Tattersal is a 3rd stringer on UCD. I hate to trounce on a kid, but this guy has no business getting any further playing time. The reason why they get the edge? He's set's the edge and fails every time. When he's in it's like we are playing 10-11 football. Bench him and play a real play maker like Myles Jernigan.
The timing between Plummer and the WRs seems off. Either they have to wait for the ball instead of catching it in stride, or they slow down to look for the ball instead of keeping up their speed, and it flies past them. They were better vs UNLV, but need to improve way more by Saturday.
As for Musgrave, IMO he is trying to impose his offense on the players instead of matching an offense to their abilities/talents.
The QB who is out was 6-1 and 215 pounds, and notably the first Asian American QB to start at Notre Dame and who ran a 4.5 40. The replacement is 5-11 and 195 pounds, kind of a smaller dude for a QB. Maybe we can bat down some of his throws.
A coaching decision I didn't see mentioned: the missed 43 yard FG near the end of the game on 4th and 2. It may have been the conservative move but I think it was the right choice. 43 yards is reasonably makeable and it would have put us up two scores. The miss is frustrating but it happens.
I was very happy with the decision to go for it on 4th and 2 early in the game. It ended up being the game winning move, since it led to a touchdown and Cal won by 6. Pretty sure that move wouldn’t have been made in earlier Wilcox iterations.
Lack of a special-teams coordinator could end up as a HUGE, potentially season-wrecking issue if they don’t get better organized. Multiple breakdowns as pointed out by Nick.
We have many capable coaches on defensive side. We should have added extra coach on the offensive side of the ball if we decided not to hire a ST Coordinator.
Jaydyn Ott against Davis had the most yards in a debut since Keenan Allen and then touched the ball 9 times less against UNLV. He's responsible for 60% of our TDs this year, is averaging 3 yards/carry more than our next best back, and yet he's not on the field when the game is on the line. Unless this is some injury situation that is not being disclosed, my only conclusion is that this offensive coaching staff hates the fans and anything remotely resembling exciting football. WTAF.
I thought Ott had been dinged when he went "Jahvid-Best" into the end zone on his second TD, but the kid got most of his carries (and his longest run, 23 yards) AFTER that.
If they were saving him for this weekend, great. Let the kid play. I'm just worried that he does play in South Bend, and does well on national TV with Touchdown Jesus smiling down upon him, the kid is going to think he could do so much better than staying another year at Cal...
And if that happens, so be it. At least in that scenario the next four star recruit who might look at Cal can say, hey, I've got a chance to get on the field as a freshman and make an immediate impact. The worst thing this coaching staff can do is hold him back, completely underutilize him to the detriment of the team, and then lose him to the transfer portal anyway.
And if the offensive coaching staff was saving him for this coming weekend, they're even bigger morons than I previously thought. Our defense had to bail us out to prevent a complete gagjob against a middling Mountain West team. We're not bleeping good enough to be saving our best players for potential bigger match ups in the future. The best players need to be on the field. And getting Ott the ball might even generate some excitement amongst our fanbase, which is so far down the road to apathy I'm not sure we even still collectively have a pulse.
This. We're going to have utilize the crap out of the transfer portal, because we're going to be losing anyone with actual star power unless we drastically improve our reputation as a program. The only way to take advantage of the transfer portal for skill positions is if these guys think they'll actually be utilized and score.
I want him to play as well, don't get me wrong. I basically want Brenden Bigelow 2.0 but with a better kicking game.
Unfortunately, I'm not the OC or the running back coach or Wilcox. He needs to be in the game for nearly every down on Saturday. Like you, I can't understand why he's being limited and he certainly shouldn't be wished into the cornfield in the fourth quarter.
When Lynch was limited as a freshman, we had Arrington. Best played 2nd fiddle to Forsett and Vereen with Best. Hell, Russell White had Anthony Wallace. This team only has Ott. And that reminds of teams that I had to start my Cal fandom rooting for--a few good offensive players, a decent defender or two, and a stud punter. So basically, if this team is going to resemble a mid-1980s Cal team, where everything had to go right in order for us to win a game against a major opponent, then yes, we need our best weapons on the field. A 1985 Marc Hicks versus U$c would be very nice, for instance...
Exactly, totally agree. All those guys you mentioned that ended up being studs had NFL running backs in front of them when they came to Cal. Not the case with Ott. Based on statistics through two games and the eye test, he is clearly our best back, and quite possibly our best offensive weapon. Absolutely mind boggling. And the fact that no reporter even asked about it in the post game press conference is dumbfounding. "Hey coach, your best player through two games wasn't on the field when you desperately needed to sustain a drive. Uhhh, any particular reason for that?"
So in fairness to the staff, we've also seen it before that this team looks blah against the early-season cupcakes and then later becomes bizarrely competitive against the better conference foes. I suspect we'll see something similar again.
But that also means we're likely in line for another 5 to 7 win season, which is not a step forward.
Playing close to the level of your opponent is basically a biproduct of Wilcox's limit-the-total-snaps philosophy and having a bend but dont break defense, and part of why people (or at least me) favor him over Dykes. Fewer emasculating, getting annihilated losses even though the overall W/L ends up the same. But more frustrating wins that didnt need to be as close, or frustrating losses that you wish didn't need to have such a slim margin of error that you cant overcome that one bad play or call that swung the game.
This is actually why Howland was fired from UCLA basketball IIRC, he was taking better talent than just about anyone in the nation and wasting them with his 35 second offense. It's usually a strategy used by worse teams to punch up because the more drives each team has, the more likely it is for the better team to average out to a win. You're opening yourself up to really dumb losses.
Right, and it makes sense against the teams with the talent advantage, but when you have the advantage you should be trying to put them away early before. The scary thing about these two games so far this year is that I got the feeling that Wilcox has finally given Musgrave the license to actually try to jump on these these teams and keep going until we put them away but we couldn't do it, hence the trepidation about the rest of the schedule. We'll see I guess.
Yup. The problem is we can't do that because we are on the razor's edge the whole 4th quarter and can't sub everyone in. So your starting inside linebacker has to cross the field and make a great play to stop the QB scramble on 4th and 2 late in the 4th. Cardiac arrest for the fans who have to witness, needlessly, the game going down to the last play to cement the victory. We should be putting our foot on the accelerator and burying inferior teams. I had an old partner, kind of a Gordon Gekko figure who used to say, if you got in his way, that he would "tear out your windpipe and strangle you with it." Admittedly hyperbolic but nobody would cross him when it came to closing deals. Developing more of a killer instinct would probably allow us to salt away 2 more wins each season.
Plummer missed a wide open Anderson in the flat (he pulled the ball back and scrambled to the right) and then overthrew him in the end zone during 2nd quarter, preceded the 3rd down interception. At the time, and now in retrospect, Anderson scoring there puts up 21-7. It was definitely a chance to put UNLV in a big hole, and all things staying the same, the team wins comfortably 30-14.
But we've seen the pattern before, if Wilcox can't put the game away early, he pulls back into the proverbial "turtle shell" to use Avi's analogy and appears to put every ounce of his decision energy to worry only about defense for however long remains in the game.
We're going to burn out that defense long before we get to Big Game. I can't see that being sustainable.
This 100%, and I've been saying this is Wilcox's greatest weakness. He's a competitor and a great guy, but I feel like he doesn't have that nastiness in him. Kind of like how Tedford was so obsessed that he slept in his office (not saying Wilcox should literally do this). Wilcox has all the pros and cons of a laid back guy, and he needs to be on fucking edge sometimes.
When Ott dove for that TD into the end zone and got upended...my heart skipped a beat as it reminded me of Jahvid Best doing the same thing in the same spot a few years ago! And he was never the same after that play. Phew!
It looks like Ott's last carry came with over 11 minutes left in the 4th. For some reason, the team is still needing to "spread the ball around" in the 4th quarter when the game is in question?
This will, sadly, will be Cal football till Wilcox gets a top notch, creative, exciting, offensive coordinator. Mediocre coordinators combined with mid-level talent lead to inconsistent, lackluster, frustrating results. If Cal gets very lucky and is invited to join the Big 10, Northwestern, Purdue, and Indiana will rejoice because the league will have a new doormat. To compete, as his first step, Wilcox will need to add an offensive wunderkind to pair up things with his solid, but undermanned defenses. Knowlton (sp?), the empty suit, will have to be replaced by a dynamic athletics director and the administration will have to get it's head out of its southern parts and commit to football as being a critical component of a university's essence. Otherwise, in a few years Cal will end up in the Greater Central Valley Conference playing the likes of Chico State, Sac State, Sonoma State, and UC Davis and parking will no longer be a problem at Memorial Stadium.
Knowlton the empty suit... love it. I couldn't believe what I was watching when I turned on the Zoom press conference he had in the midst of last year's Arizona Covid debacle. Unprepared, deflecting questions to the SID. One of the reporters actually had to respond with something along the lines of "...but you're the AD." If I was the Chancellor he would've been fired immediately for the optics of that alone. But, you know, we had just extended him through 2029 sooooo... Good lord, Cal Athletics in a nutshell.
Despite how negative I've been these last couple days, I don't actually think Musgrave is a mediocre coordinator. I'm starting to think Wilcox doesn't actually let his OC's work autonomously and they have to fit within his game script. There's no way any OC with any self-respect calls the game Musgrave did yesterday and just decides not to try to score for an entire half in the interest of burning clock.
I like the sound of that...at least in the Greater Central Valley Conference, we would maybe have a chance to play for a championship in the Fresno Bowl?!?
They should probably go ahead and use Memorial for the championship game since it will be the best stadium in the conference.
Will the Sonoma vs. Chico championship game be a bigger draw than Cal games in recent years? It’s painful to honestly consider the answer to that question.
Has Wilcox ever fired someone on his staff? I think Beau Baldwin left on his own to take the Cal Poly gig. He has shown no inclination to part ways with Musgrave or McClure, either. So if you have continual inconsistency and mediocrity with a head coach who will not change things, then why not part ways with the head coach? The Cal administration obviously does not think that way, and I don't think Wilcox' seat will be warm after what I now predict will be a 5-7 season at best. Still trying to figure out where Cal will get three more wins with that O line.
No he hasn't, and you're hitting the nail on the head here. Despite the tough talk and the frustration from Wilcox in his press conferences, I wonder how much of a demand for excellence there really is in the football building. There sure as hell isn't any coming from the athletic department that employs him. Flirt with Oregon, turn them down, and get a raise and extension. Why leave for a place that demands excellence and results on the field when you can pull a sub .500 overall record and get a longer contract and more money from your current employer? In spite of all this, I'd still love to see Wilcox succeed, but he has to have the guts to make changes when we're in year 6 of anemic offense and dumbfounding personnel decisions. If not, cut him loose and hand the program to the guy 80 miles up the road in Sacramento.
How bout Oregon State's Jonathan Smith firing his D coordinator in mid season last year just one day after Cal embarrassed his team. (If a Cal offense puts up 39 points and makes your defense look foolish, it's probably time to pull some kind of lever.) The Portland Oregonian put it this way: "It marked the first firing by Jonathan Smith and serves as evidence that the fourth year coach is willing to make tough professional decisions."
But, the 4 teams being replaced on our conference schedule in a given year will likely be a combined higher quality than Oregon State + Washington State + 2 (ASU/UA/CU/UU), so our W/L record likely declines, ceteris paribus. I would look forward to never playing Utah again though :).
Will they be? Utah has been great lately. WSU and ASU have been pretty good. We seem to always be snakebit against Arizona.
Not sure the average four-team rotation from the current B1G would be all that much tougher, in most years. Maybe if it includes OSU/Michigan, but otherwise no.
Went to mediocre bowls - 2019 (Redbox), 2018 (Cheez-It), 2015 (Armed Forces)
Purdue got a couple bigger gets in there with knocking off two (2)s, but overall pretty similar results. I bet if I go back to Tedford we look pretty good but that's getting to be ancient history, sadly.
Does anyone know why Cal didn't opt for taking a safety by running the ball out of the northwest corner of the end zone, killing 5 to 12 seconds and free kicking from the 20 vs. the -5? Even if it killed 3 seconds, the net gain would have been 25 yards with a pressure free kick. It worked, but seemed like a "better" play call would have been the safety option. Or am I missing something (entirely possible, although I am undefeated from my seat in Memorial Stadium :) )
Just curious as to reason for kot doing it. I believe in Wilcox and think there is a side, (maybe from a conservative angle, that suggests it’s not the most beneficial path for that situation, I’d just like to know what it is.
Besides stubbornness or not thinking, I can't think of any reason that would trump all of the risks mentioned by others. Give up 2 points shrinking the lead to 4 but then having the chance for a safe, free-kick to back them up farther down the field.
I was saying this during the game chat. Absolutely baffling we risked getting a kick off up 6 and gave them better field position. Just bad coaching, Wilcox will learn.
He’s shown the ability to effectively manage late game. Remember, against unc we intentionally took defensive holding penalties to run our clock resulting in an ncaa rule change!
I think Bob means it would have been a win/win in the sense that Cal would still be up enough points that UNLV would still need a TD to win and Cals defense would potentially have more field to defend as UNLV as would get worse field position as we wouldn’t be punting out of our own end zone.
I agree, typically win/win means both Cal and UNLV would win in that situation.
I think he meant win/win for Cal in terms of we would still have a large enough lead that UNLV has to score a TD and we get better field position to defense, plus you’re not risking a blocked punt.
In last year's Chargers Raiders game, if the Raiders took a knee to run out the clock and ended in a tie, it would've been a Win-Win, as both teams would've made the play-offs.
hold up -- now you're talking about a win/win/win. aka the Triple Lindy of game management decisions. that's a little different.
oh, but wait, you also *lose* the opportunity for your punter to flop into a roughing penalty that would give you a first down, so that negates a win, and we're back to a net win/win. in that case, please disregard what I said above re: 3 wins.
I still liked him. He fixed a lot, just couldn't hire a decent DC. In comparison, Wilcox doesn't have the excuses that Sonny had taking over a dumpster fire of a program.
Even with a good DC, that was an uphill battle with the sheer number of snaps your defense had to be on the field. The up tempo Air Raid being the other (and polar opposite) way to punch above your weight..
Did you know that when Dykes became Cal HC, we still had Nick Forbes, Khairi Fortt, David Wilkerson, Chris McCain, Cecil Whiteside, Hardy Nickerson, Mike Barton, Jalen Jefferson, Ray Davidson, Nathan Broussard, Kyle Kragen, Johnny Ragin, Steve Williams, Kam Jackson, Stefan McClure, Darius Allensworth, Cedric Dozier, Damariay Drew, Michael Lowe, Avery Sebastian, Mustafa Jalil, Villami Moala, DeAndre Coleman, Brennan Scarlett, Marcus Manley, Jacobi Hunter, Todd Barr, Tony Mekari still on the roster? That's hell of a talent.
There was a lot of talent, but a lot of locker room issues which is why Dykes basically pushed out a bunch of players who were too entitled or whatever. Tedford basically lost the locker room every year after our first loss.
That's a lot of names! But I still think the Bear Raid put them at a disadvantage, and a couple of those guys like Whiteside (ugh) and Forbes (medical retirement) didn't play a down? And some mightve been, dare I say, overrated. As a team, the Tedford cupboard was generally emptied and there were major cultural issues to fix. And my ignorant Hot Take: Nickerson, Davison, Jefferson were not quality Power 5 level starting linebackers and were for all intents and purposes a major limiting factor of that era's defenses. Wilcox converting Weaver to LB was outside of the box and the Kunaszyk transfer in plus GA's The Takers were a revelation, but still the W/L production and overall trajectory stayed the same, just a polar opposite brand and identity, as it shook out.
I think Forbes only played in 2012. He came in 2010 with all the other talented LBs but they all had their issues. Forbes was the only one that did not have any trouble but he was always injured.
I think Hardy was talented. Jefferson and Davison were serviceable LBs but slow and not athletic enough. They played smart though.
Kam Jackson, Jacobi Hunter and Johnny Ragin were the what could have beens in my memory.
Soon after, Williams declared for NFL draft, Whiteside got kicked off the team, Wilkerson transferred after spring practice, McCain got kicked off the team in September, Nick Forbes sustained season ending injury, many others got injured, and a bunch of them transferred after 2013 season. We ended up playing Lapite and Logan.
The sheer number of injuries to the defensive backs in 2013 and 2014 was ridiculous. Then again, it forced Dykes to play a lot of freshmen and also recruit heavily at that position, leading to the Takers.
Yeah, Avery Sebastian sustained a season ending injury in the Northwestern game. Fortt could never stay healthy while at Cal. Moala never lived up to his potential. I believe Hunter transferred to Houston to be closer to home. A lot of talent on paper but due to academics, injuries, transfers, culture fit, a lot of those guys never reached their potential at Cal or anywhere.
Yeah. Of the guys listed above, I think only Ragin was the incoming guy, but I really liked him in his only year at Cal. He had so much potential but transferred to Oregon after one season. And so was Chad Whitener. Ed Tangy also left the team after two years. Those 3 LBs came together and were talented.
I met him with my Dad during Cal Day several years back. He was greeting fans along with incoming freshman Jared Goff, who shook our hands and said "Hi, I'm Jared". McClure said he wanted to get into broadcasting after his Cal days (he was on the Redskins for a bit) and had a very engaging personality.
How do you not remember these guys? It was fairly recent. Only 10 years ago. They were special players who were dominant when they were on the field. Staying on the field, however, was another issue.
I think he could have if he had the type of support Wilcox currently has at Cal. I feel like he wasn’t a cultural fit because Dykes kept fighting to get more resources for the football program and did so loudly and publicly. One can view his constant flirting with other jobs as disloyal or as a way to try to extract more resources for the program.
Given our experience with COVID last year, I'm not sure Wilcox actually has much more administrative support than Dykes did.
Dykes also had the advantage of having a first-round NFL QB talent on the roster when he arrived. With Goff we should have topped out at more than 8 wins and the Armed Forces Bowl.
Honestly I don't follow them enough to know how good they were, but if we beat them they must be pretty bad.
Actually I just looked up and Texas was ranked #11 when we beat them in 2016. It was only week 3 and that Texas ended the season unranked but the talent must have been there if they started the season that high.
But I was a bit unfair to Sonny's record. In 2015 he did have some other "good" wins, over WSU and Washington. And San Diego State had a good year after being beaten soundly by Cal. Still, his overall record against decent P5 teams was not good.
He did recruit successfully defensively, just could not coach them up for the life of him (or his coaching staff). We know this because as soon as Wilcox took over we had a top 25 defense nationally with those same exact players.
I am a UNLV fan, and just happened to stumble across this article and thread. The one thing that the author and all the fan posts failed to mention, is that this year UNLV is actually a much better team than they used to be. This will only be evident by the end of the season, but UNLV in the past 2 years has recruited and developed better talent than they had in the past. I would say this UNLV team is probably on par with where Boise State was roughly 5 years ago. Cal fans are naturally surprised that their team struggled with UNLV, but by the end of the season, I think it will make a lot more sense. No one would have been surprised by Boise State of 5 years ago coming into Cal and putting up a good fight, possibly leaving with a win.
We're not surprised that you're better than you were last year, that was already obvious. We're mad that the strategy that put us up 20-7 was just abandoned and we sat with our thumbs up our asses, giving y'all seemingly endless chances to catch up. No matter how good your defense is, they won't prevent scoring forever and a 2 score lead isn't enough to just do nothing. Had we kept using Ott for a normal usage amount for a starter (15-25 carries instead of 7), I guarantee that gives us 1-2 more TDs and a healthier victory margin.
A cogent analysis.
There are two big takeaways from the game. One is very obvious: Ott needs to get WAY more touches. He's our best RB and it's not even close. Moore and Brooks are not on the same level as Ott, and when they get forced into the game they are complete momentum killers.
The other less obvious takeaway: Braxton Croteau is simply not it. He needs to be benched asap. In 98% of the plays he gets easily blocked out and removed from the play, sometimes by a tackle but sometimes he's even completely manhandled by a skinny tight end. And on the very rare occassion he isn't blocked, like when he came free at the QB up the middle, he whiffs the tackle and let's the QB scramble for 12 and a first down. The ONLY play he happened to make came pretty much on accident when he was blocked out of the play completely, but the rb happened to run right at him and even then he still almost missed the tackle. The guy offers nothing aside from being one of those "over the pile" guys who run to a tackle after it's been made and pretend like they were almost in on it. He's basically another Evan Tattersal...and now Tattersal is a 3rd stringer on UCD. I hate to trounce on a kid, but this guy has no business getting any further playing time. The reason why they get the edge? He's set's the edge and fails every time. When he's in it's like we are playing 10-11 football. Bench him and play a real play maker like Myles Jernigan.
Croteau was a Tattersal last year too. I don't know why we are still playing him when we have more talented LBs.
The timing between Plummer and the WRs seems off. Either they have to wait for the ball instead of catching it in stride, or they slow down to look for the ball instead of keeping up their speed, and it flies past them. They were better vs UNLV, but need to improve way more by Saturday.
As for Musgrave, IMO he is trying to impose his offense on the players instead of matching an offense to their abilities/talents.
The QB who is out was 6-1 and 215 pounds, and notably the first Asian American QB to start at Notre Dame and who ran a 4.5 40. The replacement is 5-11 and 195 pounds, kind of a smaller dude for a QB. Maybe we can bat down some of his throws.
Timmy Chang
Kyler Murray
Joe Ayoob
What continent is Lebanon in?
and how do you not find wikipedia of a star NFL QB?
Lebanon is Asia!
Kyler Murray is partially Korean.
A coaching decision I didn't see mentioned: the missed 43 yard FG near the end of the game on 4th and 2. It may have been the conservative move but I think it was the right choice. 43 yards is reasonably makeable and it would have put us up two scores. The miss is frustrating but it happens.
I don't think anyone would argue it was a bad decision.
I saw some people elsewhere complaining that we should have gone for it, but W4C is a bastion of sagacity.
Ott wins freshman of the week again. First repeat week winner since 2010 when the award commenced
Give the kid the d*** ball
I was very happy with the decision to go for it on 4th and 2 early in the game. It ended up being the game winning move, since it led to a touchdown and Cal won by 6. Pretty sure that move wouldn’t have been made in earlier Wilcox iterations.
Lack of a special-teams coordinator could end up as a HUGE, potentially season-wrecking issue if they don’t get better organized. Multiple breakdowns as pointed out by Nick.
We have many capable coaches on defensive side. We should have added extra coach on the offensive side of the ball if we decided not to hire a ST Coordinator.
Are there any OL/ST specialists out there?!?
Pete Alamar has coached ST AND OL according to Wikipedia!!
Jaydyn Ott against Davis had the most yards in a debut since Keenan Allen and then touched the ball 9 times less against UNLV. He's responsible for 60% of our TDs this year, is averaging 3 yards/carry more than our next best back, and yet he's not on the field when the game is on the line. Unless this is some injury situation that is not being disclosed, my only conclusion is that this offensive coaching staff hates the fans and anything remotely resembling exciting football. WTAF.
I thought Ott had been dinged when he went "Jahvid-Best" into the end zone on his second TD, but the kid got most of his carries (and his longest run, 23 yards) AFTER that.
If they were saving him for this weekend, great. Let the kid play. I'm just worried that he does play in South Bend, and does well on national TV with Touchdown Jesus smiling down upon him, the kid is going to think he could do so much better than staying another year at Cal...
And if that happens, so be it. At least in that scenario the next four star recruit who might look at Cal can say, hey, I've got a chance to get on the field as a freshman and make an immediate impact. The worst thing this coaching staff can do is hold him back, completely underutilize him to the detriment of the team, and then lose him to the transfer portal anyway.
And if the offensive coaching staff was saving him for this coming weekend, they're even bigger morons than I previously thought. Our defense had to bail us out to prevent a complete gagjob against a middling Mountain West team. We're not bleeping good enough to be saving our best players for potential bigger match ups in the future. The best players need to be on the field. And getting Ott the ball might even generate some excitement amongst our fanbase, which is so far down the road to apathy I'm not sure we even still collectively have a pulse.
This. We're going to have utilize the crap out of the transfer portal, because we're going to be losing anyone with actual star power unless we drastically improve our reputation as a program. The only way to take advantage of the transfer portal for skill positions is if these guys think they'll actually be utilized and score.
I want him to play as well, don't get me wrong. I basically want Brenden Bigelow 2.0 but with a better kicking game.
Unfortunately, I'm not the OC or the running back coach or Wilcox. He needs to be in the game for nearly every down on Saturday. Like you, I can't understand why he's being limited and he certainly shouldn't be wished into the cornfield in the fourth quarter.
When Lynch was limited as a freshman, we had Arrington. Best played 2nd fiddle to Forsett and Vereen with Best. Hell, Russell White had Anthony Wallace. This team only has Ott. And that reminds of teams that I had to start my Cal fandom rooting for--a few good offensive players, a decent defender or two, and a stud punter. So basically, if this team is going to resemble a mid-1980s Cal team, where everything had to go right in order for us to win a game against a major opponent, then yes, we need our best weapons on the field. A 1985 Marc Hicks versus U$c would be very nice, for instance...
Exactly, totally agree. All those guys you mentioned that ended up being studs had NFL running backs in front of them when they came to Cal. Not the case with Ott. Based on statistics through two games and the eye test, he is clearly our best back, and quite possibly our best offensive weapon. Absolutely mind boggling. And the fact that no reporter even asked about it in the post game press conference is dumbfounding. "Hey coach, your best player through two games wasn't on the field when you desperately needed to sustain a drive. Uhhh, any particular reason for that?"
So in fairness to the staff, we've also seen it before that this team looks blah against the early-season cupcakes and then later becomes bizarrely competitive against the better conference foes. I suspect we'll see something similar again.
But that also means we're likely in line for another 5 to 7 win season, which is not a step forward.
Playing close to the level of your opponent is basically a biproduct of Wilcox's limit-the-total-snaps philosophy and having a bend but dont break defense, and part of why people (or at least me) favor him over Dykes. Fewer emasculating, getting annihilated losses even though the overall W/L ends up the same. But more frustrating wins that didnt need to be as close, or frustrating losses that you wish didn't need to have such a slim margin of error that you cant overcome that one bad play or call that swung the game.
This is actually why Howland was fired from UCLA basketball IIRC, he was taking better talent than just about anyone in the nation and wasting them with his 35 second offense. It's usually a strategy used by worse teams to punch up because the more drives each team has, the more likely it is for the better team to average out to a win. You're opening yourself up to really dumb losses.
Right, and it makes sense against the teams with the talent advantage, but when you have the advantage you should be trying to put them away early before. The scary thing about these two games so far this year is that I got the feeling that Wilcox has finally given Musgrave the license to actually try to jump on these these teams and keep going until we put them away but we couldn't do it, hence the trepidation about the rest of the schedule. We'll see I guess.
And usually we should put the game away in first half and let backups play in the second half on B and C OOC opponents.
Yup. The problem is we can't do that because we are on the razor's edge the whole 4th quarter and can't sub everyone in. So your starting inside linebacker has to cross the field and make a great play to stop the QB scramble on 4th and 2 late in the 4th. Cardiac arrest for the fans who have to witness, needlessly, the game going down to the last play to cement the victory. We should be putting our foot on the accelerator and burying inferior teams. I had an old partner, kind of a Gordon Gekko figure who used to say, if you got in his way, that he would "tear out your windpipe and strangle you with it." Admittedly hyperbolic but nobody would cross him when it came to closing deals. Developing more of a killer instinct would probably allow us to salt away 2 more wins each season.
Plummer missed a wide open Anderson in the flat (he pulled the ball back and scrambled to the right) and then overthrew him in the end zone during 2nd quarter, preceded the 3rd down interception. At the time, and now in retrospect, Anderson scoring there puts up 21-7. It was definitely a chance to put UNLV in a big hole, and all things staying the same, the team wins comfortably 30-14.
But we've seen the pattern before, if Wilcox can't put the game away early, he pulls back into the proverbial "turtle shell" to use Avi's analogy and appears to put every ounce of his decision energy to worry only about defense for however long remains in the game.
We're going to burn out that defense long before we get to Big Game. I can't see that being sustainable.
This 100%, and I've been saying this is Wilcox's greatest weakness. He's a competitor and a great guy, but I feel like he doesn't have that nastiness in him. Kind of like how Tedford was so obsessed that he slept in his office (not saying Wilcox should literally do this). Wilcox has all the pros and cons of a laid back guy, and he needs to be on fucking edge sometimes.
Ott was definitely under used, especially in the 4th.
When Ott dove for that TD into the end zone and got upended...my heart skipped a beat as it reminded me of Jahvid Best doing the same thing in the same spot a few years ago! And he was never the same after that play. Phew!
Despite that he won Pac-12 frosh of the week again.
It looks like Ott's last carry came with over 11 minutes left in the 4th. For some reason, the team is still needing to "spread the ball around" in the 4th quarter when the game is in question?
My only thought on this is that the Cal staff is trying to limit tape on Ott for ND and Pac
This will, sadly, will be Cal football till Wilcox gets a top notch, creative, exciting, offensive coordinator. Mediocre coordinators combined with mid-level talent lead to inconsistent, lackluster, frustrating results. If Cal gets very lucky and is invited to join the Big 10, Northwestern, Purdue, and Indiana will rejoice because the league will have a new doormat. To compete, as his first step, Wilcox will need to add an offensive wunderkind to pair up things with his solid, but undermanned defenses. Knowlton (sp?), the empty suit, will have to be replaced by a dynamic athletics director and the administration will have to get it's head out of its southern parts and commit to football as being a critical component of a university's essence. Otherwise, in a few years Cal will end up in the Greater Central Valley Conference playing the likes of Chico State, Sac State, Sonoma State, and UC Davis and parking will no longer be a problem at Memorial Stadium.
Knowlton the empty suit... love it. I couldn't believe what I was watching when I turned on the Zoom press conference he had in the midst of last year's Arizona Covid debacle. Unprepared, deflecting questions to the SID. One of the reporters actually had to respond with something along the lines of "...but you're the AD." If I was the Chancellor he would've been fired immediately for the optics of that alone. But, you know, we had just extended him through 2029 sooooo... Good lord, Cal Athletics in a nutshell.
Nailed him!!! Well done!
Despite how negative I've been these last couple days, I don't actually think Musgrave is a mediocre coordinator. I'm starting to think Wilcox doesn't actually let his OC's work autonomously and they have to fit within his game script. There's no way any OC with any self-respect calls the game Musgrave did yesterday and just decides not to try to score for an entire half in the interest of burning clock.
not so sure, Musgrave has had lots of lackluster moments and can be very predictable
I like the sound of that...at least in the Greater Central Valley Conference, we would maybe have a chance to play for a championship in the Fresno Bowl?!?
They should probably go ahead and use Memorial for the championship game since it will be the best stadium in the conference.
Will the Sonoma vs. Chico championship game be a bigger draw than Cal games in recent years? It’s painful to honestly consider the answer to that question.
Has Wilcox ever fired someone on his staff? I think Beau Baldwin left on his own to take the Cal Poly gig. He has shown no inclination to part ways with Musgrave or McClure, either. So if you have continual inconsistency and mediocrity with a head coach who will not change things, then why not part ways with the head coach? The Cal administration obviously does not think that way, and I don't think Wilcox' seat will be warm after what I now predict will be a 5-7 season at best. Still trying to figure out where Cal will get three more wins with that O line.
No he hasn't, and you're hitting the nail on the head here. Despite the tough talk and the frustration from Wilcox in his press conferences, I wonder how much of a demand for excellence there really is in the football building. There sure as hell isn't any coming from the athletic department that employs him. Flirt with Oregon, turn them down, and get a raise and extension. Why leave for a place that demands excellence and results on the field when you can pull a sub .500 overall record and get a longer contract and more money from your current employer? In spite of all this, I'd still love to see Wilcox succeed, but he has to have the guts to make changes when we're in year 6 of anemic offense and dumbfounding personnel decisions. If not, cut him loose and hand the program to the guy 80 miles up the road in Sacramento.
How bout Oregon State's Jonathan Smith firing his D coordinator in mid season last year just one day after Cal embarrassed his team. (If a Cal offense puts up 39 points and makes your defense look foolish, it's probably time to pull some kind of lever.) The Portland Oregonian put it this way: "It marked the first firing by Jonathan Smith and serves as evidence that the fourth year coach is willing to make tough professional decisions."
Yep!
Baldwin seemed like an example of a guy being pushed out nicely.
But his "multiple" offense was chock full of guys with the "want to", and on the verge of taking off.
There's no reason to think Cal would be a "new doormat" in the Big 10. We'd likely be in about the same position as we are in the Pac.
But, the 4 teams being replaced on our conference schedule in a given year will likely be a combined higher quality than Oregon State + Washington State + 2 (ASU/UA/CU/UU), so our W/L record likely declines, ceteris paribus. I would look forward to never playing Utah again though :).
Will they be? Utah has been great lately. WSU and ASU have been pretty good. We seem to always be snakebit against Arizona.
Not sure the average four-team rotation from the current B1G would be all that much tougher, in most years. Maybe if it includes OSU/Michigan, but otherwise no.
Sounds like we need one of our intrepid WFC analytics gurus to run some simulations!
Bob,
Please request someone from WFC put these numbers together for us, stat.
Which has basically been the doormat of the Pac 12 north. I can’t remember the last time we finished above 4th in the north.
"Doormat" suggests finishing last, which has not been our usual place. We've typically finished about 4th, in the middle of the pack.
And technically, in 2019 we tied for second place in the North!
There are worse things than being Purdue, who usually qualifies for a mediocre bowl and screws over a few ranked teams in the process.
It's actually a pretty good analogy. Since the end of the Tedford Era the two teams are pretty similar:
Purdue
Screwed over: 2021 - (2) Iowa, (5) Michigan State; 2018 - (23) Boston College, (2) Ohio State, (19) Iowa
Went to mediocre bowls - 2021 (Music City), 2018 (Music City), 2017 (Foster Farms)
Cal
Screwed over: 2019 - (14) Washington, 2018 - (15) Washington, 2017 - (8) Washington State, 2016 - (11) Texas, (18) Utah
Went to mediocre bowls - 2019 (Redbox), 2018 (Cheez-It), 2015 (Armed Forces)
Purdue got a couple bigger gets in there with knocking off two (2)s, but overall pretty similar results. I bet if I go back to Tedford we look pretty good but that's getting to be ancient history, sadly.
How fitting is that a Purdue QB is starting for Cal now.
Wow. This made me sad.
Chico State is still a party school though, right? I'd hate to think they gave *THAT* up!
That's the future of Cal football, is what Rick means.
I'm aware of that Bob. Underscores my point
If it seems like a broken record - it probably is.
you can say that again
Does anyone know why Cal didn't opt for taking a safety by running the ball out of the northwest corner of the end zone, killing 5 to 12 seconds and free kicking from the 20 vs. the -5? Even if it killed 3 seconds, the net gain would have been 25 yards with a pressure free kick. It worked, but seemed like a "better" play call would have been the safety option. Or am I missing something (entirely possible, although I am undefeated from my seat in Memorial Stadium :) )
I thought the same thing. I know Tedford has done that...and Wilcox once, too?
Just curious as to reason for kot doing it. I believe in Wilcox and think there is a side, (maybe from a conservative angle, that suggests it’s not the most beneficial path for that situation, I’d just like to know what it is.
Besides stubbornness or not thinking, I can't think of any reason that would trump all of the risks mentioned by others. Give up 2 points shrinking the lead to 4 but then having the chance for a safe, free-kick to back them up farther down the field.
What you are proposing would be effective game management, and your first mistake is expecting that from Wilcox lol.
I was saying this during the game chat. Absolutely baffling we risked getting a kick off up 6 and gave them better field position. Just bad coaching, Wilcox will learn.
Will he? We're in year 6...
He’s shown the ability to effectively manage late game. Remember, against unc we intentionally took defensive holding penalties to run our clock resulting in an ncaa rule change!
How is that a win/win? I only see winning for Cal.
I think Bob means it would have been a win/win in the sense that Cal would still be up enough points that UNLV would still need a TD to win and Cals defense would potentially have more field to defend as UNLV as would get worse field position as we wouldn’t be punting out of our own end zone.
I thought win win means it's a favorable outcome for all parties involved, and I think UNLV was involved in the game last Saturday.
Maybe the expression had a different meaning 70 years ago.
I will check Wikipedia and provide a link.
I agree, typically win/win means both Cal and UNLV would win in that situation.
I think he meant win/win for Cal in terms of we would still have a large enough lead that UNLV has to score a TD and we get better field position to defense, plus you’re not risking a blocked punt.
In last year's Chargers Raiders game, if the Raiders took a knee to run out the clock and ended in a tie, it would've been a Win-Win, as both teams would've made the play-offs.
"plus you’re not risking a blocked punt"
hold up -- now you're talking about a win/win/win. aka the Triple Lindy of game management decisions. that's a little different.
oh, but wait, you also *lose* the opportunity for your punter to flop into a roughing penalty that would give you a first down, so that negates a win, and we're back to a net win/win. in that case, please disregard what I said above re: 3 wins.
If our defense scores, we might win this game!
I still liked him. He fixed a lot, just couldn't hire a decent DC. In comparison, Wilcox doesn't have the excuses that Sonny had taking over a dumpster fire of a program.
Even with a good DC, that was an uphill battle with the sheer number of snaps your defense had to be on the field. The up tempo Air Raid being the other (and polar opposite) way to punch above your weight..
Did you know that when Dykes became Cal HC, we still had Nick Forbes, Khairi Fortt, David Wilkerson, Chris McCain, Cecil Whiteside, Hardy Nickerson, Mike Barton, Jalen Jefferson, Ray Davidson, Nathan Broussard, Kyle Kragen, Johnny Ragin, Steve Williams, Kam Jackson, Stefan McClure, Darius Allensworth, Cedric Dozier, Damariay Drew, Michael Lowe, Avery Sebastian, Mustafa Jalil, Villami Moala, DeAndre Coleman, Brennan Scarlett, Marcus Manley, Jacobi Hunter, Todd Barr, Tony Mekari still on the roster? That's hell of a talent.
There was a lot of talent, but a lot of locker room issues which is why Dykes basically pushed out a bunch of players who were too entitled or whatever. Tedford basically lost the locker room every year after our first loss.
That's a lot of names! But I still think the Bear Raid put them at a disadvantage, and a couple of those guys like Whiteside (ugh) and Forbes (medical retirement) didn't play a down? And some mightve been, dare I say, overrated. As a team, the Tedford cupboard was generally emptied and there were major cultural issues to fix. And my ignorant Hot Take: Nickerson, Davison, Jefferson were not quality Power 5 level starting linebackers and were for all intents and purposes a major limiting factor of that era's defenses. Wilcox converting Weaver to LB was outside of the box and the Kunaszyk transfer in plus GA's The Takers were a revelation, but still the W/L production and overall trajectory stayed the same, just a polar opposite brand and identity, as it shook out.
I think Forbes only played in 2012. He came in 2010 with all the other talented LBs but they all had their issues. Forbes was the only one that did not have any trouble but he was always injured.
I think Hardy was talented. Jefferson and Davison were serviceable LBs but slow and not athletic enough. They played smart though.
Kam Jackson, Jacobi Hunter and Johnny Ragin were the what could have beens in my memory.
Didn't realize Jr eventually made the NFL after transferring to Illinois. My memory of that era might be a little cloudy and biased!
We are talking about Hardy Nickerson Jr. who played for Dykes and then Bengals in NFL.
Soon after, Williams declared for NFL draft, Whiteside got kicked off the team, Wilkerson transferred after spring practice, McCain got kicked off the team in September, Nick Forbes sustained season ending injury, many others got injured, and a bunch of them transferred after 2013 season. We ended up playing Lapite and Logan.
Some of those guys were very talented, including McCain who had NFL-level skills.
McCain is still one of my favorites of these guys. He was so talented.
The sheer number of injuries to the defensive backs in 2013 and 2014 was ridiculous. Then again, it forced Dykes to play a lot of freshmen and also recruit heavily at that position, leading to the Takers.
Yeah, Avery Sebastian sustained a season ending injury in the Northwestern game. Fortt could never stay healthy while at Cal. Moala never lived up to his potential. I believe Hunter transferred to Houston to be closer to home. A lot of talent on paper but due to academics, injuries, transfers, culture fit, a lot of those guys never reached their potential at Cal or anywhere.
Yeah. Of the guys listed above, I think only Ragin was the incoming guy, but I really liked him in his only year at Cal. He had so much potential but transferred to Oregon after one season. And so was Chad Whitener. Ed Tangy also left the team after two years. Those 3 LBs came together and were talented.
I met him with my Dad during Cal Day several years back. He was greeting fans along with incoming freshman Jared Goff, who shook our hands and said "Hi, I'm Jared". McClure said he wanted to get into broadcasting after his Cal days (he was on the Redskins for a bit) and had a very engaging personality.
How do you not remember these guys? It was fairly recent. Only 10 years ago. They were special players who were dominant when they were on the field. Staying on the field, however, was another issue.
He did take care of the academics
Good fit for Jared Goff.
well, let's first see how he does against P5 competition again
This. He's been successful against G5 teams and the lower half of the P5. He almost never got over the hump against the top teams on the schedule.
That doesn't mean he's bad. He's fine. Just wasn't ever going to get Cal out of mediocrity.
I think he could have if he had the type of support Wilcox currently has at Cal. I feel like he wasn’t a cultural fit because Dykes kept fighting to get more resources for the football program and did so loudly and publicly. One can view his constant flirting with other jobs as disloyal or as a way to try to extract more resources for the program.
Given our experience with COVID last year, I'm not sure Wilcox actually has much more administrative support than Dykes did.
Dykes also had the advantage of having a first-round NFL QB talent on the roster when he arrived. With Goff we should have topped out at more than 8 wins and the Armed Forces Bowl.
I meant Wilcox seems to have more financial support to hire and pay staff more money.
We did beat Texas twice though. It wasn't the great Texas but still a respectable opponent.
We beat Texas twice when they were in the bottom half of their league. True to form for Sonny.
IIRC the only win of his against a good P5 school (one that finished with a winning record) was when we beat Utah on the goal-line stand at Memorial.
Honestly I don't follow them enough to know how good they were, but if we beat them they must be pretty bad.
Actually I just looked up and Texas was ranked #11 when we beat them in 2016. It was only week 3 and that Texas ended the season unranked but the talent must have been there if they started the season that high.
They pretty much fell apart after that.
But I was a bit unfair to Sonny's record. In 2015 he did have some other "good" wins, over WSU and Washington. And San Diego State had a good year after being beaten soundly by Cal. Still, his overall record against decent P5 teams was not good.
Austin is fine. You're probably reading too many republican blogs if you all of a sudden think it's some "dangerous place". Crime rate has actually gone down in the past decade. https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/data-how-has-austins-crime-levels-evolved-in-the-past-decade/
Big eastern cities are also not the boogeyman.
He did recruit successfully defensively, just could not coach them up for the life of him (or his coaching staff). We know this because as soon as Wilcox took over we had a top 25 defense nationally with those same exact players.
And the inverse is true of the offense production going to from good to average to bad the further away Wilcox got from the Dyke offensive recruits.
I think the difference is that the offensive players are systematically leaving Wilcox's Cal teams after being completely mis-/underutilized.
Dykes finally learned to hire a competent defensive coordinator - third time's charm