Head Coach: Justin Wilcox is entering his 9th season as the head coach with the Golden Bears with a 42-50 record. It’s been a tumultuous era to say the least. During his time at Cal he battled with inconsistent investment in the program, particularly during COVID where the program really took a backseat. Still, after a 6-7 season with so many one score losses where they had the lead and lost it Wilcox is facing significant pressure to win. This offseason boosters began making a push for Ron Rivera who is the GM of the program. Wilcox needs his best season yet.
Program Outlook: Thanks to the exodus from the Pac-12 there are several programs who are geographic misfits in their conference, Cal is one of them. While it’s proven annoying for some programs, Cal is a strange program that saw their fanbase reinvigorated by their move to the ACC their fanbase found their wild side and enjoyed sharing it with their newfound cross country foes. This wildness soon became known as the Calgorithm, it was impactful enough to draw College Gameday for the first time in program history. Now it will be intriguing to see what Cal does with this newfound momentum.
How does the 2025 Roster look?: Cal ranks 74th in the country returning 53% of their production per Punt and Rally’s returning production rankings. Key players starts with the QB for Cal, the likely option is Ohio State transfer Devin Brown who has potential but ended getting hurt before he could even get in a rhythm each time he got the opportunity to play. Cal also has star true freshman QB Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele it’s always possible we may see him at some point. Trond Grizzell is the leading receiver back and Cal also added speedy Jacob De Jesus who can break a play from anywhere. On defense Cal is led by a a strong defensive line, Nate Burrell is a great end while the 320lb Aidan Keanaaina is a bigger meatier man who helps stuff the run. Cal also very quietly landed an instant impact transfer in Liberty edge rusher TJ Bush. Cal should be strong at linebacker with Cade Uluave in the middle and they really like the potential of Ryan McCulloch and juco transfer Odero Okaka to become bigger producers for the defense. There’s a lot of question marks otherwise, for one Cal’s RB room was absolutely pillaged by the spring portal, almost their entire room was gone at one point! The portal took a lot of receivers too. The offensive line desperately needs to improve, last year it didn’t matter that Cal had great backs because they had no room to run anyway, they are hoping some portal guys will help. Cal’s secondary is being remade as well, corner Hezekiah Masses (FIU) was a nice pickup to fill one spot and Notre Dame transfer Jaden Mickey could take on the other but they’ll need others to step up too.
Screenshot from FBSchedules.com
2025 Schedule Thoughts: Cal’s schedule is pretty favorable. They open with a road game at former Pac-12 foe Oregon State who is coming off a 5-7 season, Cal then takes on Texas Southern who went 5-6 in the SWAC last year. Their toughest non-conference game is likely Minnesota but it is at home, and early in the year. They wrap up the non-conference slate with a game at San Diego State who is likely in a longer rebuild. It doesn’t get much better than this conference slate for the Golden Bears. They avoid Clemson, Miami FL, Syracuse, Pitt, NC State and Florida State. There’s still potential challenges here especially road games at Louisville and Virginia Tech plus SMU at home but this is about as favorable as it gets.
Final Thoughts: The Golden Bears were really set up for success this year, with this schedule they entered the offseason just needing some improvements on the Oline and to fill some gaps in the secondary and they could have been set up for a special season this year but the spring portal was rough for this program. There’s still no reason they can’t finish with a winning record but this season really could have been setting up for so much more.
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