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!
Christopher_h
Scoreline: Cal loses 17-33
WF is already talking about the ACC title game and a path to the playoffs, which means they're ripe for some Pac-12 After Dark shenanigans. However, if I predict a Cal victory, then it'll definitely not happen, so I am predicting WF cruises to victory like everyone expects and no weirdness happens at all. Wink wink.
Rob Hwang
Scoreline: Cal wins 40-24
Eff it. Let’s have some fun. If our soul is eternally dead. We might as well be grateful we have Cal Football.
Nick Kranz
Scoreline: Cal loses 20-27
On one hand, in many ways Wake Forest's profile is very similar to Virginia Tech, except with better special teams and close game luck, so it's not hard to imagine another upset of an east coast team travelling 3,000 miles.
On the other hand, Wake has been getting better with each game. It's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that Gio Lopez has been a good quarterback, but with the way he and Wake Forest has been playing, Cal could play well and still lose this game.
Berkelium97
Scoreline: Cal wins 31-28
I am once again ready to be hurt by my misguided optimism in Cal football.
Piotr T Le
Scoreline: Cal loses 28-31
Cal has the best outing on offense all year long only to have it go for naught as Gio Lopez has his revenge for last year's loss.
Ruey Yen
Scoreline: Cal wins 21-20
JKS has his best (non-Wagner) game of the season with a new playcaller.
I'm worried that we'll have trouble with a mobile QB who likes to run as much as pass. Will be big challenge for the Defense.
Guys, I truly get the hopeful enthusiasm but WF is a really good football team and Cal has yet to prove that it can play at the same level. We’re not even sure how well JKS can adapt to this new offense — QB2 did well because he used the pocket which allowed our not so great OL to protect him slightly longer than it could JKS who has a tendency to roll out when threatened and is not nearly as mobile as QB2. Plus, if we are still fielding an anemic running attack WF will very likely just eat our lunch with ugly blitzes and we will be looking at a very long evening.