Weekly Writer Predictions: Cal vs. Duke Blue Devils Football 2025

Presented By Homefield (with a late documentation of the Boston College predictions)

Editor’s Note: Boston College Predictions were delayed from last week, so they’ve been added here as a way to keep them documented.

Welcome to our weekly predictions post from our writers. You’ll see what they expect the score to be and any wacky or rational predictions they expect to see in each game!

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Christopher_h

Scoreline: Cal loses 21-27

Hard to know what to expect here. Duke is prone to a lot more volatility than most. They have a lot of talent and could definitely take down some big name teams, but they also play sloppy at times and could lose to teams much worse than them.

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Callie Wake

Scoreline: Cal loses 20-30

I know I shouldn’t bet against our team, so trust me when I say I am still pulling hard for Berkeley. But I think Cal has some glaring issues that may have been overcome in Boston, but I don’t know if they can be again with Duke. With McCulloch and Crosby out for the season, the struggles with missed tackles, the catching issues that plagued our receivers against SDSU, and our run game not looking particularly strong, I fear Duke will hand us our first ACC loss of the season. In my opinion (and Wilcox’s if I’m remembering him correctly) it will take Cal playing exceptionally well for us to pull off the victory. Overall, I think Sagapolutele will keep our offense working to some degree, and will again stun fans with some magnificent passes, but I don’t know if we have what it takes to stun Duke’s defense into giving up the points we need to win.

I really hope I’m wrong.

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Rob Hwang

Scoreline: Cal wins 38-27

Duke is an enigma of a team. The losses are weird, the wins are against teams they should easily beat. And last week’s win against Syracuse was against a team that lost their starting QB Steve Angeli just the week prior to an achilles injury. If the Bears can force Mensah to throw deep and not short to intermediate over the middle (where he has had the most success), while the combo of Paco and Zeke handle the outside WRs on islands, the team should be able to zero in on their most effective weapon in RB Nate Sheppard.

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TD_24

Scoreline: Cal wins 30-27

Duke is coming off their best game of the season, in a year full of variance in terms of game to game performance. Darian Mensah is very capable and will get his numbers against a Cal defense that will have to figure it out with no McCulloch and Crosby for the season.

I think Cal has one more explosive play than the Blue Devils, against a defense that hasn’t necessarily lived up to its potential for Manny Diaz

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Rex Volcano

Scoreline: Cal wins 26-23

A 10:30 PM ET kickoff for the away team is an underrated advantage that will pay extra dividends against Duke, where lots of players probably have to follow strict bedtime rules.

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Berkelium97

Scoreline: Cal wins 31-30

This one has weirdo ACC After Dark written all over it...

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Ben

Scoreline: Cal wins 34-20

The ACC After Dark Show Continues. It remains tight early, but Cal pulls away late.

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Nick Kranz

Scoreline: Cal loses 27-31

For the first time this season, Cal is playing an opponent that wants to throw the ball down the field with any kind of frequency. Darian Mensah is dangerous, both to his opponent and his own team, and I suspect this game comes down to how many plays he makes vs. how many mistakes his makes . . . or mistakes that Cal can force him into.

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Bentpawn(Don)

Scoreline: Cal wins 27-14

Duke has losses to a good Tulane team on the road, and a very good Illinois team at home. I think everyone is overhyping their 38-3 win at Syracuse. This feels like the Minnesota game, so I’ll take the same final score.

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Ruey Yen

Scoreline: Cal wins 34-24

Cal’s Takers compensate for the defense’s occasional porous defense against the run.

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Boston College Predictions from last week

• Ben - Cal wins 43-3

  • Following Wilcox’s quote of “We’ll see how they show up on Monday” combined with a 4.3 Earthquake centered basically at Memorial Stadium, cosmic things are afoot.

• Piotr T Le - Cal loses 14-24

  • I got over hyped last week on the Minnesota win. This time I am trying to calibrate to what I actually see from the Cal offense: a very flawed set of units highly dependent on a True Freshman QB to make spectacular throws down the field to make things happen. However, since we have nothing else to fall back on to steady the ship, if that doesn’t hit we’re in deep trouble.

• Callie Wake - Cal wins 23-20

  • Imminent revenge game, incoming! I want to see our completion percentage and ypc UP from last week.

• Jesse Miller Gordon - Cal wins 21-13

  • Bounce back game for the boys and Wilcox. A quick chance to exorcise everything that went sideways in San Diego against an opponent that is reeling early in the season. If they can smack them in the mouth early I think you can take the air out of the stadium.

• Christopher H - Cal loses 17-27

  • Neither team is great at running the ball and I think that BC’s secondary will struggle, but after that SDSU game last week, I just can’t feel confident in predicting things going Cal’s way.

• Berkelium97 - Cal wins 24-23

  • ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don’t know what to expect after BC’s faceplant in Palo Alto and Cal’s faceplant in San Diego

• TD_24 - Cal loses 24-27

  • Both teams are a victim of circumstance given their last games and I think BC having an extra week to sit on it thanks to their bye gives them the final edge in this one.