Cal Football: A Retrospective of Justin Wilcox’s First Season at Cal
With the season over, there are many emotions to be felt about Justin Wilcox’s first season as the Cal football head coach.
Now that there’s been time to think about it, I’m not that disappointed with the Cal football season. Of course there is a level of disappointment in seeing the Bears come so close to winning their sixth game only to falter in the final seconds, but it’s outweighed by many other feelings. Mainly, I’m encouraged by the way the team played under first-year head coach Justin Wilcox.
Even though they finished the year with five wins and seven losses, there are some darn good wins scattered in those five. Sure, they beat a North Carolina team that doesn’t come close to the 8-5 Sun Bowl team from the year before, barely squeaked by an FCS team in Weber State, and took care of an Oregon State team that will finish last in the Pac-12. But those two other wins, and some of the losses, really make me believe that these are a different brand of Bears.
Ole Miss was 2-0 before they ran into Cal, and they finished 6-6 in the tough SEC. That’s a team that Cal really had no business beating, especially with the Rebels’ dynamic wide receivers matching up against an extremely inexperienced secondary. And the big one, the pièce de résistance, that win against Washington State.
The Cougars came to Berkeley with a 6-0 record and a top-10 ranking, and Cal had their way with them. They made Luke Falk, a Heisman contender at the time, look like a high school junior varsity quarterback. The sacks, the interceptions, the forced fumbles, the good feelings. What a game that was.
Even in some of the losses, Cal gave me a reason to be optimistic. They gave fifth-ranked USC a run for their money, keeping it tied heading into the fourth quarter before it all fell apart. They took Arizona and their quarterback sensation Khalil Tate to the limit, and lost because Coach Wilcox used his gigantic, um, guts, to go for a two-point conversion and the win in double overtime. They fought Stanford tooth and nail in the Big Game, and were one big play away from snapping their losing streak in the rivalry. And in Friday’s season finale, they overcame more than one deficit to tie the game in the final minutes before the defense faltered.
They were almost never the most talented team on the field, but no one can really deny that they were never outworked. They were always swarming to the ball on defense or fighting for those extra yards on offense. Under the direction of Wilcox and defensive coordinator Tim DeRuyter, their defense was actually respectable. They were one of the worst defenses in school history in 2016, and despite being relatively unchanged up front and more inexperienced in the secondary, they were better. So much better.
In 2016, they gave up 518 yards per game, 6.7 yards per play, and allowed 42.6 points per game. They were literally the second-worst scoring defense in the nation. In 2017, they gave up 430 yards, 5.8 yards per play, and 28.4 points per game. Things didn’t change that much for the Bears, from a personnel standpoint. They were mostly the same front-seven, and the secondary was littered with freshmen. And they improved. A lot. They were much better tacklers as well, a testament to what Wilcox and his crew pounded into their brains in practice.
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It was a bit refreshing to watch a California Golden Bears’ defense that actually had promise. It wasn’t guaranteed points every time they took the field. They got to the quarterback and forced turnovers, too. They actually looked like a Division I college football defense.
And they did all that while missing some key pieces. Senior linebacker Devante Downs, one of those players that had so much promise but could never quite put it all together, won Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Week twice in the season’s first three weeks. He missed the last five weeks with a leg injury. Demetris Robertson was a legitimate weapon as a freshman in 2016, catching 50 passes for 767 yards and seven touchdowns. He was limited to seven catches in two games before an injury shut him down. Cameron Goode, Cameron Saffle, and Tre Watson all missed good chunks of the season, and Melquise Stovall didn’t play a single game.
They had breakout stars, like Patrick Laird, Kanawai Noa, Alex Funches, Jordan Kunaszyk, and Cam Bynum. Laird went from third-string running back and former walk-on to the offense’s biggest threat. With Watson out, Laird took his opportunity and ran with it (quite literally). He ran for 1,127 yards and crossed the century mark five times, including the last three weeks of the season when he racked up an eye-popping 545 yards. He came into the season with 65 career yards, but will go into 2018 as a senior and the top running back option.
With Robertson and Stovall out, it was Noa who became quarterback Ross Bowers’ most reliable option. I’ll admit, the Hawaiian didn’t catch my eye too much in his recruiting class with a lot of other talented receivers around him, but he’s turned into a threat. Kunaszyk took the lion’s share of Downs’ playing time, and the junior became a strong middle linebacker for the club. Funches, a junior college transfer, emerged as the team’s top pass rusher, and Bynum, a redshirt freshman, was impressively sturdy in pass coverage while lined up across from some of the Pac-12’s best receivers.
There’s still work to do, and plenty of it. The offensive line has to get better at pass blocking, and there’s still a lot of room for the defense to improve. Getting guys like Robertson back will help the offense along, giving them the deep threat they lacked this season and open up the entire offense. They have to fix the penalty issue that seemed to rear its ugly head a little too often. Those false starts or holding plays that wipe out good gains and stall promising drives, those can’t happen as often as they did.
We have to figure out what Ross Bowers is. He fluctuated between looking like a young stud with a bright future, and looking overwhelmed with no chance. I’m not sure if it’s fair to judge Bowers based on this season, because he wasn’t working with a great offense. I saw nothing that makes me believe he is the second coming of Jared Goff, but there was enough to make me think he could be a Davis Webb-type. He’s got a great arm, plenty of strength to make a living, but just needs to refine his accuracy. The offensive line didn’t do him many favors in pass protection, and his receiving crew wasn’t all that dynamic, so I’m not prepared to say yea or nay to Bowers, but I am willing to give him more time.
Most importantly, they have to close out games next season. They can’t let the fourth quarter slip away like they did against USC, or they have to make that big defensive stand late, like they needed against UCLA. They need that killer instinct.
And how about that 290-pound fullback, Malik McMorris? Is there any more entertaining player to watch? He’s built like a bowling ball but has feet like a ballerina, and is an incredibly athletic man. He’s a legitimate difference maker no matter what role the team put him in, whether it was in pass protection, run blocking, as a short-yardage back, and as a receiver. It was incredibly fun to see Wilcox have such faith in him, handing it off to him multiple times in short-yardage spots, or letting him run a route and make a crucial catch. I can’t wait to watch him next season as a senior.
This year, I had basically no expectations. Three wins seemed like a hopeful start to the Wilcox era, and if I woke up feeling particularly not miserable, four wins might have even been attainable. But five wins, and putting together a bunch of other great performances? These Bears went way beyond even my wildest expectations this season, and I will adjust my expectations accordingly for 2018.
Next: Bears Lose Heartbreaker to UCLA
How about six wins, including a conference win on the road? That would be a fantastic start. Getting the Axe back would be pretty nice, too.