Weekly Writer Predictions: The Second-Half of Cal Football's 2025 Season
Presented By Homefield (with a late documentation of the Boston College predictions)
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 undefeated vs. Bye Week, but it may be close
If we’re predicting Cal’s second half W/L for the second half of the season, I’m sensing a 2-4 best case scenario. An inexplicable loss against a bad UNC team, a win against a one-dimensional Virginia Tech team (a game that’s way closer than it should be), losses to Virginia and Louisville despite Cal having the talent to compete before ultimately losing a close game, a Big Game win, and an SMU loss (but not the blowout it was last year). Cal then goes to some awful bowl game (please not Shreveport again) and again underperforms, dropping Wilcox to 1-4 in Bowl games.
Callie Wake
Scoreline: Cal goes 3-3
Cal picks up their first ACC home win through UNC, beats a listless VTech team, and keeps the axe for a fifth straight year. 7-5 overall and 4-4 in conference play.
Rob Hwang
Scoreline: Cal goes 5-1
I’m just going to play the eternal optimist and say we run the back half of our schedule 5-1. The bye week came at a much needed time and the offense to figure out how to be more consistent and explosive. Our WR rotation gets figured out and despite no real star in the pass rush, the team figures out how to generate pressure without having the spot light on one guy on the edge dominating the line of scrimmage. This probably isnt the realistic take I would give but it’s my ceiling prediction for what it could be if we really did turn a corner during the bye week.
TD_24
Scoreline: Cal goes 3-3
There’s a lot more variance to this Cal compared to recent teams. The highs will be high in games that the Bears can be expected to impose its will but the lows in hard games may be a bit of an eye sore. This would result in a lower tier bowl game, take of that what you will in relation to the staff.
Berkelium97
Scoreline: Cal goes 3-3
Two blowout losses have extinguished all hope that Cal could take advantage of a ridiculously soft schedule to achieve a record not seen since the early aughts. This is a .500 team and I expect the Bears to split remaining games, although I would not be surprised with a 4-2 or a 2-4 finish, depending on our luck (or lack thereof). In any case, I think we’ve seen enough to close the book on the Wilcox Era.
Ben
Scoreline: I said it pre-season and I’m gonna stick with it. Cal goes 4-2 to close out the year.
Beat UNC, Beat VTech on the road to clinch a bowl game. Lose to Virginia. Lose to Louisville. Keep the Axe. And cap it off by beating SMU to close the season out.
Nick Kranz
Scoreline: Cal goes 3-3
The EASY prediction would be Cal over UNC and Stanford, and losing the other four games. But it’s Cal, so it almost feels more likely that Cal will lose one of those games and win something out of the blue.
I really don’t see Cal losing to the single most dysfunctional team in the country, and I have no interest in predicting a Big Game loss. So let’s just say that Cal finishes 3-3 and pulls off an upset over . . . Virginia, because it would be very Cal to derail one of the feel-good stories of the season for no real purpose or gain.
Piotr Le
Scoreline: I think we go 3-3, end the season 7-5
7-5: which would tie the best season under Wilcox but an utterly rancid vibes wise unless changes happen on and off the field as well as with the funding of the football program. Penn State v UCLA showed money isn’t everything, but in other cases it sure does help
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.
I'm predicting we go 4-2 for the remainder of the season. Virginia, who we thought was a doormat at the beginning of the season will probably drop us, even though they will be coming to Berkeley and playing at 5:30 (8:30 EST). And I think our chances in Louisville are not good. That being said, I expect us to handle UNC after a bye week, and while VT will be tough (and fun) in Blacksburg, I expect us to win this toss up battle. Finally, we should be Stanfurd and SMU is just not that good anymore. we go 8-4 and to a mid-range bowl.
Whatever we do this year, whatever our record, it won't prove anything. Cal will not have played anybody that's any good and couldn't even do well with one of the easiest schedules in the country. How do you think Cal would do if it had to play Ohio State, Miami, Indiana, etc.? We would get slaughtered in the first quarter and those other teams would be emptying their bench for the rest of the game with their 3rd strings running up great numbers. Cal is not going to field anything but a 2nd rate football team without a complete revamping of the program that adapts to the DI/Power 4 game as it is played today -- basically as a farm program for the NFL. This is not college football based on the old notion of the student/athlete. It's now just a big business based on money, which has completely corrupted college sports, but especially football. Think high school QB's being offered millions of dollars to play for a Power 4 team. It is simply nuts to think that it's a good thing for Cal teams to travel 2500 miles and back to play football, or worse, for teams that have to play multiple games in a week (think basketball, baseball, soccer, volleyball), to be forced to be away from campus and classes for weeks at a time, or to fly back and forth to the East Coast a ridiculous number of times in a season. Joining the ACC was probably a mistake, but it's all about the TV money, not about what's best for students. In the past, Cal at least had the promise of an outstanding education to offer high school recruits, who if they decided to leave would have to sit out a season before playing for their new team. Not anymore. Kids can shoot through the portal and on to a new team at the end of every season, so without the promise of great exposure and great monetary compensation, there's no reason for these kids to stay if they are really talented -- which makes it really hard to build a program from year to year if a coach has to rely on the portal (sound familiar?). It's also hard on the high school kids who are recruited thinking they've got a shot at playing a particular position, only to be pushed aside by a more experienced player who arrives via the portal. Cal has to decide if this is really the game it wants to play and, if so, then what it is going to do to compete in a business for which it is currently not anywhere close to being competitive.