I’m at a loss. What do you even say after that?
Wake Forest was beyond better. It was pretty clear after a few snaps. With Cal mostly playing its backup offense, our paths to victory were limited, and we were going to have to play S-tier football to get an upset.
But Cal might as well have sent up the surrender flag by the second drive. The Bears were outclassed in every phase of the game.
Execution, decision-making, effort, coaching, make up your own phase, Cal was worse. It’s barely worth looking at the micro elements of this game—every warning flag we’ve put up with Cal’s relative lack of experience in coaching was exposed, as the Demon Deacons ground whatever we were doing into powder.
A confusing and pedestrian offensive gameplan? Check.
A bottled run game with no versatility? Yessir.
A defense that lost individual matchups and gave up explosive plays? Well, this was a bit different; it was mostly in the air this time instead of on the ground. I’ve been kind to defensive coordinator Michael Hutchings for incremental improvements through the year, but his unit has made mistakes all year, and this game was a steep regression.
A coaching staff that made questionable decisions that every normie could question? Oh, we will get to that.
This was a demoralizing experience at Memorial Stadium. A barely half-filled Memorial Stadium emptied out half of its fans by halftime, and then another half of the remaining fans left after the Cal Band halftime show. Those who remained booed, yelled, or stewed. We got less than nothing on Saturday, and now who knows how many of us will be back for non-Stanford activities this year.
We’re in a dark place, Cal family. And it feels like nearly all of what happened Saturday night can be traced to the bizarre quarterback management from head coach Tosh Lupoi.
All Golden Bears were relieved to escape with a win against Virginia Tech last week. But just like with Syracuse, there was a concern this might be fool’s gold, and that our very young coaching staff might take the wrong lessons. Cal escaped as much as they won, and there are only so many tricks you can play with a backup group of emergency players.
And it seems as if Lupoi took the wrong lesson by announcing Jackson Brousseau as the starter last week over the recovering Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele.
Brousseau did very well in the first six quarters he had the reins. He led several very important end-of-game drives and managed the game state. In no world do any serious football minds believe that he is a better long-term option at the signal-caller position than JKS.
This was proven out against Wake Forest, where Brousseau essentially was shut down after his first drive. He averaged a horrific 2.9 yards per pass, which is a worse outcome than Cal’s already bottom-10 FBS rushing attack (3.2). It’s not Brousseau’s fault—he was the backup quarterback for a reason. Facing a playoff contender like Wake Forest, with seasoned defensive minds like Jake Dickert and Scottie Hazelton having actual tape on him to analyze and assess his QB profiles, was always going to be a stark return to reality.
Yet not once in the meaningful period of this game, not at 14-0, not at 21-0, not even at the start of the second half, did Lupoi even consider putting in Sagapolutele. The anemic Cal offense trotted along, threw a dozen passes short of the sticks on long-down situations, picked up a first down here and there, and then punted the ball right back to an unstoppable Wake offense.
So JKS’s eventual appearance in the 4th quarter, against Wake Forest’s backups in meaningless mop-up work, does not make any sense from a football perspective. If he was healthy, why wasn’t he put in earlier, when Cal had a chance to rally? Why was he put in that late, when there was nothing to be gained and the risk of re-injury was always on the table?
My ultimate determination for this logic is that Tosh Lupoi actually believed on Saturday that Jackson Brousseau should stay the starter, will remain the starter against SMU, and Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele will remain the designated QB2. This is generally how most QB rooms operate—the starter plays until the game is out of doubt, and the backup comes in to protect the starter from injury.
If Sagapolutele is going to earn the starting spot back, it’ll have to come by looking like the better quarterback in practice. Because otherwise I cannot make heads or tails of what we just watched.
Why that is now the determination is beyond me. Whether that calculus changes based on the reaction to that chain of decisions remains to be seen. But it puts this team and program in a place they definitely were not planning for at any point this fall, moving the Wake game from absolute embarrassment to a potential self-immolation event.
All of this underlies the same theme: Tosh Lupoi is making very basic mistakes in his first year at coach, with many of them centered around how the Cal coaching staff has managed their top quarterback talent.
Rookie offensive playcaller Jordan Somerville was Lupoi’s choice to bring Sagapolutele to the next level, and he proceeded to install an offensive scheme that was too difficult for JKS to execute.
Additionally, Somerville was incapable of making the right adjustments in-game, leading to a month-plus of offensive droughts that immediately alienated a Cal fanbase that saw nothing worth seeing.
That scheme led Sagapolutele to take more risks than he needed to in hopes of making plays to make the offense to go, leading to injuries against UCLA and UNLV.
Cal rebooted with a new playcaller with Pat McCann, and the offense appeared to find new life. And for some reason, Lupoi decided a healthy Sagapolutele should not be given the same opportunity with this new playcaller in our last home game for a month.
Cal fans, donors, and leadership have to be a mixture of angry, bewildered and—worst of all—increasingly apathetic to what they’re seeing. After all the expectations going into this year, none of them have come close to being met. This is absolutely not something that can happen in Year One for a program that is in win-now mode before realignment kicks off again.
It’s been a series of escalating disasters this season, and Saturday night was a 10 on the Richter Scale for the Cal football program. I don’t know what the aftershocks will bring for Tosh Lupoi. He will have to learn fast, because the product we’re seeing right now threatens to break this team irreparably.
Lupoi’s decision to not start JKS after he successfully was ready to come back from a cheap shot injury will prove to be the nail in the coffin of Cal football, not just in 2026 but for at least 2 years to come. The players have lost confidence in his fairness and judgment. Who is the next talented starter he’s going to throw under the bus? Get ready for a massive transfer of players. And zero wins the rest of the season. It’s shockingly disappointing, but maybe it should not have been. This is Cal football ever since Tedford was wrongfully fired ( by the same biased, unthinking AD who cut 5 sports directly contrary to the written recommendation of a “blue ribbon” Committee appointed to investigate how to best close the financial burden created by said same AD, said Committee recommending that no sport be “cut” unless and until all non revenue sports be given the opportunity to under raise for their sports). This current situation is the result of an accumulation of bad, emotional decisions made by those in charge of the athletic/football programs (football being the only sport that brings in the money to support all other sports)…starting with Sandi Barber: who buried Cal athletics in a massive 500+ million dollar hole before she quit and moved on to Penn State: after their football coach scandal). The entire athletic department continues to be the victim of her incompetence. Our current Chancellor is fighting to resurrect from the almost dead the long term damage caused by Sandi Barber. Its a massive and thankless job.
I don't think this can be blamed all on the coaching. We still don't have the caliber of players to compete at a high level. Our offensive line is still the dame horrible offensive line we had last year. They can't open holes for the run. So the opposing team knows we have to pass. Against VAtech the line did a halfways decent job of pass protecting. Against Wake the QB had no time to pass. We could not throw long to stretch out the defense because there was no time for receivers to get open long. Our defensive line is decent against the run but we still don't have the players to rush the quarterback. Lopez had all the time in the world to find his receivers. We had the same problems under Wilcox. We never had a decent offensive line. In all the years Wilcox was there we never put one in the NFL that I can remember. Once we can run block, it will open all sorts of possibilities. Give the coaches a break.