We spread some responsibilities around last night as I was tied up the second half of the day with game coverage, but it looks like the postgame interviews never got posted. Here they are -- Jesse has a follow-up coming this morning too:

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Sounds about right. Wilcox will slow it down to not get blown out. My predicted score was going to be 28-13

So we’re heading to South Bend on Friday night. (Doing some Chicago stuff on Friday day). What should we do? Where should we brunch before the game and eat after? Any recommendations for Sunday morning?

We’re bringing a crew of four adults and 2 10-year-old boys, so anything more family/chill would be better.

Besides the alumni tailgate, is there any Cal events/tailgates we should seek out?

If you just read a few stats it does not look that bad. If you watch the game we are feeble on O except for Ott. Defense is CPU’s to b minusWe had all hoped for better. An angry Irish will curb stomp us in South Bend, we have no spark as a team. Very disappointed

After the 2022 season


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3-6 last week and 0-1 for my lock of the week: https://cal.forums.rivals.com/threads/lets-pick-the-pac-12-games-week-1.31302/

[home team in italics]

Utah by 45.5 over Southern Utah - Awful lot of points for a non great offense. Southern Utah covers.

Wisconsin by 16 over WSU - Nothing I saw by WSU this weekend suggested that they can keep this close. Wisconsin covers.

Air Force by 13.5 over Colorado - I'm fading colorado all year. Wouldn't be surprised for them to go wineless. Air Force covers.

Cal by 13 over UNLV - No idea how good UNLV is. They have a great wr and a decent qb, but not sure about anything else. Could see anything from a UNLV win to a cal blowout. Guess I'll take the points and UNLV.

UW by 28.5 over Portland State - UW is going to be a good team. Wish we could swap coaches. UW covers.

UCLA by 50.5 over Alabama State - Go Hornets! Alabama State covers.

USC by 11.5 over the Furd - Crazy line. People still think Shaw is good I guess. USC rolls.

Oklahoma State by 11 over ASU - ASU looks better than expected. OSU doesn't. ASU covers.

Oregon by 20 over Eastern Washington - If Oregon doesn't cover this look out below.

Fresno State by 1 over Oregon State - I think Oregon State is good. OSU covers.

Mississippi State by 14.5 over Arizona - Lot of points. Arizona covers.



Non conference lock of the week: BYU by 3.5 over Baylor - Baylor is legit good. Baylor covers.

I dunno, Musgrave might be a dud, his playcalling is annoying, but I can't get a clear barometer on how good he is because he's had to deal with McClure's absolute incompetence.

It's absurd asking this offense to be consistent if they're going to keep playing with three-and-a-half competent down linemen. Plummer had to spend the entire second half escaping the pocket or dumping that ball out quick. The tackle play has been horrendous.

Not one of his recruits aside from the transfers are playing. He's been here three years!

He was bad at UCLA as an O-line coach, he's not much better here, and he's bring nothing dev-wise for his recruits. We're stuck with Wilcox for awhile, so do another reset this winter.

Just an odious performance

I saw in the Merc today that Ott said that Scott was the fastest player on the team. Is he going to play in the NFL? He appears to have the measurables and he looks good on the field.

Is it safe to say that if Cal wins this game every last 4* & 5* recruit they offered will come back looking to commit to Cal?

Cougar Qb wild as a March hare but their offensive plays are confusing the badgers a few are getting open

If O'connell is only marginally better than Plummer, our offense is going to be VERY improved. Watching this Purdue vs Penn St. game, we might be just as good or better at every position than Purdue other than QB and online. I'd take our entire defense and receivers any day over theirs. Lets see if they can hang on and pull off the upset.

Get those picks in!

Here's who is visiting this weekend:

OFFICIAL VISIT

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UNOFFICIAL VISITS

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And 2024 QB Andrwe Maushardt (St. Paul HS/Santa Fe Springs, Calif.) *No Rivals profile

Some final thoughts on Jaydn Ott before today's game ...

I am hoping to be able to watch the UNLV game. Which stations will carry it thank you

From Jesse:

Keenan Allen and others on the list:

Jesse's thorough matchup preview:

I had a late cancellation in my group. These are in the Cal lower level donor section. Row 33. Face value of what I paid for them from Cal.
PM me for details.

Dumping my thoughts on the first game here (sorry for the length!):

I was impressed by Plummer. He’s not perfect by any means (he missed on several deep shots and some out throws came out too late) but he throws with zip and had unexpected escapability. In several plays he went through his progressions well and found the open man. If he stays healthy, I expect we will be very pleased with his overall performance. He reminds me a lot of Dave Barr. I would take that.

The OL was meh. They got better as the game went on, but there were few plays where they looked dominant and mostly looked merely adequate. This will obviously be an issue against better defenses. I’m not sure how much they will improve, we might just have to deal with it and match play calling to it.

As others have said, Ott was very impressive but I was really surprised Moore didn’t play more. Was he hurt? I also don’t like the lack of imagination in the run game, just boring turn and hand the ball off tackle. How about some pitches? With a back like Ott getting him outside more makes sense but they didn’t do that a lot. At some point Ott is going to have a Javhid Best like run where he just hits a hole and takes it to the house - it’s been a long time since we’ve seen that. Just stay healthy, kid.

What is with not getting Terry into the offense? Was surprised he wasn’t targeted once that I saw. He may not be fast but he’s a big target. Latu had some nice catches and Mojarro had a great first down catch. But we will need more production from our TEs this year IMO.

The new WRs looked good. I really liked Mavin Anderson’s TD as he showed a lot of speed and quickness. He needs more targets. Hunter played well and he got great separation on his TD catch. Sturdivent was fine but I always come away expecting more from him as our highest-rated WR recruit. And Young had a nice game, which was good to see. All in all, a great start.

Special teams looked ok, but I expect under Wilcox we will never have a great return game. He just doesn’t see the value in it compared to not making a mistake. FG kicking and punting looked great and coverage teams adequate.

Our pass rush, which I’ve said several times I doubted, looked non-existent at least from our d line. We did have a lot of 3-man fronts though, which surprised me and very little blitzing. Very vanilla. I think they will need to get creative to generate pass rush using targeted blitzes, which of course brings risks to it. But we just don’t have - steel yourselves - an apex predator type player (sorry everybody) at least that I saw. It’s an issue that will likely cost us a couple of games.

LBs looked ok, Sirmon the best of the lot. They weren’t particularly electric though and there was no evidence of an Evan Weaver type maniac (God, I miss him). I think they will be very good but they need to be more dynamic IMO especially in tackles for loss.

I thought the secondary played well with the two picks being obvious examples (Earby looks special) but Scott’s and Woodson’s play was great all around. Woodie did whiff on their big TD run though. Need to shore up on tackling and tackling angles a bit.

I thought the play calling was ok, definitely pretty vanilla (although for a Wilcox team, isn’t that always the case?). I’ve seen exactly one game where we really opened things up - last year’s big game, with trick plays and things we don’t typically do, and that was really successful because what d coordinator doesn’t look at our film and put 8 in the box and play tight to the line man-on-man coverage? More creativity might loosen that up a bit and make other staffs at least have to think a little bit. Maybe it’s coming, but then I’ve thought that for 5 years and it never does. At least they took a few more shots down field but not with a lot of success though. We shall see I guess.

On the plus side, they were aggressive at the end of the half and were rewarded with an important FG going into the locker room. Plummer looked especially good running the hurry-up offense - file that away and make good use of it maybe even during the main part of the game? So un-Wilcox though.

I was impressed that the team rebounded from their absolute debacle of a start on offense. That bodes well as last year’s team may have done the el foldo. I have to give credit to Wilcox for that as undoubtedly he had a hand in keeping them focused.

All in all, it was a good game for Cal. After a week of some unnamed posters putting up threads on people predicting us to be upset or that Davis had their best team ever, we took care of business and got the W by 21 points. Clearly we have some things to work on, but there were some positives in this game that were nice to see - decent defense, getting TOs, good FG kicking, and Ott, Hunter, and Plummer all played well. And the team showed some resiliency. So all in all, I’ll take it.

I don’t expect this team to be awesome or anything and I expect they will simply be overwhelmed against teams with more talent like SC and ND, but I have an inkling that they may be less likely to lay an egg than prior teams. I expect we will win between 5-8 games depending on injuries and how the season plays out, but if I had to guess I’d say 7 wins plus a decent bowl game, which would be a nice season for us. I’m hopeful, which is both a good and dangerous thing as a Cal fan.

As I’m giving a huge update to the database today, feel free to ask me anything about Cal recruiting!