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!

Here are the postgame interview videos after today's win over UC Davis:

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Hey all! I'm in the weekly press conference right now, I'll drop anything interesting down below, follow along!

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Got my vote in right before the deadline today!

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For those of us without P12 network, are there game highlights anywhere? I know there used to be 2 minute videos posted on YouTube and elsewhere, but wasn't sure where to find anything. Thanks!

Justin Wilcox meets with us on zoom at 12:30, followed by coordinators and players. Jesse will be on there and drop anything notable in here.

Jesse will be in here communicating during the game. I have to run to Coliseum for USC-Rice, but I'm recording the game and will watch it back later tonight. Really intrigued to see how Plummer and those young WRs do.

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There is one official visitor on tap for this weekend:

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There will also be some unofficial visitors and I should have those names by tomorrow.

First off glad to be back in Memorial and the, dare we say, hopeful start for the Bears.

There is another area for major improvement, the Game Day experience.

Oreo eating contests? Way too much and over the top on field broadcasting during time outs.
Band time limited, student section participation limited by an ongoing array of bullshit.

I also found the on field “personality” very amateurish and saw (and heard) way to much from her.

just my two-cents

This is a pretty big time pickup right?
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We had two spot-on guesses for the 34-13 Week 1 score. Incredible. For reference, we only had ONE exact guess all last season on the USC board.

@cal1982 and @Ptown Mac11 nailed it and both are getting $50 Amazon gift cards and two months tacked onto their subscriptions. Congrats -- DM me your email addresses and I'll send the digital gift card from Amazon. I'll added the subscription months on after I finish posting this.

@elindsey has generously taken on the task of tallying up the Guess the Score standings and did a phenomenal job. In addition to our winners, we had a lot of very close predictions for Week 1.

SEASON STANDINGS Through Week 1
(the number in parantheses is your season average; the number after the dash will eventually reflect each week's individual score. Obviously, with only one week of data they are the same. But I'll copy and paste this each week and update, so I'm setting the format up now).

Cal1982 (0) -- 0
Ptown Mac11 (0) -- 0
richmondisnotghetto (1) -- 1
spbdoug (2) -- 2
TomBalk (2) -- 2
mike79 (3) -- 3
OskiBear1941 (4) -- 4
sppbears (4) -- 4
dannyroe (4) -- 4
tluv123 (4) -- 4
uplandbear (4) -- 4
joni.a (4) -- 4
hilgardbear (4) -- 4
bearborn11 (4) -- 4
sandmanj (4) -- 4
bear949 (4) -- 4
90Bear (4) -- 4
1calfan (4) -- 4
fjbards (4) -- 4
Ryan Young (4) -- 4
calderon11 (5) -- 5
hessebear (6) -- 6
GoBears93 (6) -- 6
pwbecker (6) -- 6
Rollonyoumatt (6) -- 6
drfunk4316 (7) -- 7
elindsey (7) -- 7
MC415 (7) -- 7
kotaconduct (7) -- 7
bayareabear (7) -- 7
Bearington (7) -- 7
petalumabear (7) -- 7
bluebeargold (7) -- 7
marklog (7) -- 7
gocalbears1994 (7) -- 7
Wookids (7) -- 7
ColoradoBear (7) -- 7
beeasyed (8) -- 8
ilyn (8) -- 8
GoBears96 (8) -- 8
UrsosArctosCalifornicus (9) -- 9
Colonial Bear (10) -- 10
Eugene Choo (10) -- 10
Fire Starkey (10) -- 10
WaterBear (10) -- 10
Bubba_Bear84 (11) -- 11
sflye13 (11) --11
dlit (12) -- 12
Jcharocv (12) -- 12
kairbear (12) -- 12
rathokan (12) -- 12
golden oso (13) -- 13
moonpod (13) -- 13
Harky 4 (14) -- 14
droski (14) -- 14
tanaka7 (14) -- 14
febfeb (15) -- 15
SlugLyfe57 (15) -- 15
DenMaf (15) -- 15
BLbearfan (17) -- 17
lonestarbear (17) -- 17
ayetee11 (17) -- 17
UCB4LIFE (18) -- 18
Bear Derriere (18) -- 18
Ptownbear1 (22) -- 22
JoJoSungy (22) -- 22
icbear (22) -- 22
CaliDrank (24) -- 24
dhemy (30) -- 30
mvpcalbears (35) -- 35

Sounds about right. Unlv has historically been garbage but they showed some signs of life in their first game. Hard game to predict

[home team in italics]

Cal by X over UC Davis - Haven't seen a line.

TCU by 11 over Colorado - Colorado lost an awful lot of kids to the transfer portal, but 11 points on the road for a Dykes team is ridiculous. Colorado covers.

UCLA by 24.5 over Bowling Green - Beats me. UCLA covers.

SDSU by 6 over Arizona - SDSU owns the pac 12 at home. SDSU covers.

Georgia by 17.5 over Oregon - Lots of points for a not great offense. Oregon covers.

USC by 33.5 over Rice - USC historically doesn't cover these big lines. Rice covers (maybe).

Utah by 2.5 over Florida - Utah going into an SEC school and winning seems unlikely. Florida covers.

Oregon State by 3.5 over Boise State - Is Boise supposed to be really bad this year? Boise State covers.

Washington by 21.5 over Kent State - UW puts on a show and covers.



Non conference lock of the week: LSU by 3.5 over Florida State - LSU covers.

There are 17 Power 5 vs. FCS matchups in Week 1. Which FCS team do you think has the best chance of pulling off the upset? —Isaac H.

I’ll go with Dan Hawkins’ UC-Davis Aggies against Cal. They beat a decent Tulsa team last season and reached the FCS Playoffs. Cal lost a bunch of four-plus year starters from last season, including QB Chase Garbers, and could be vulnerable to a Week 1 clunker.


Putting up the bat signal for the angry delusional homer brigade.

Annddd here it is!

We've got one more piece coming out on UC Davis sometime today, but lets get the mailbag rolling so we can move onto the Rebels. Drop any and all questions underneath!

against Notre Dame. That could very well change the trajectory of our season and future recruiting...Way too early I know...Forgive my optimism.

Another story coming from Jesse too.

This has come up a ton in some of the conversations about the start of the season. I personally am on the 8-4 optimism bandwagon, and if that's to be achieved, here's what I want to see:

- I think we want Jadyn Ott to get a TON of play, both to get him comfortable in the offense, but also to show some offensive energy in the highlights. A game against an FCS team like UCD can only be so helpful in terms of expectations and outside thoughts about the team, but showing some juice from someone like Ott could help.
- Plummer should throw at least a few deep shots, if only to work on timing.
- Millner gets 1-2 drives in the fourth quarter.
- I'd love to see a takeaway or two on defense.
- BRETT JOHNSON and Ethan need to get into the backfield.
- We should hold UCD to 1-2 scores while our 1s are in.
- No serious injuries please.

I have serious questions about our OL, and I don't think we'll be able to answer them against UCD. But boy I'll be worried if they don't look good.

It's only one game but I'm liking what I see so far!!!! Roll On!!!!!!!

You could complain about our dominating win. Or you could watch Stanfurd struggle against Colgate.