With the September 1st date for contacting recruits passed, Cal has now put out 50 offers for the class of 2022, per the Rivals database. It's still relatively early in the class, considering none of those 50 recruits have committed anywhere and there's plenty more offers to go out, especially in the wake of junior years to be had, either in the spring or this fall. It's a difficult evaluation for this group, something Justin Wilcox noted in a Zoom teleconference two weeks ago.
"As you know, you rely a lot on their junior season tape," Wilcox noted, "that’s a key indicator, and then you’ll get a chance, a lot of times to watch them work out in the spring. A lot of those guys won’t be playing in the fall, and I think that one is even more challenging than the 21s in a lot of ways."
That's part of why there may not be as many offers out for Cal as other teams have in the 2022 class so far, in particular at the quarterback position. Every quarterback Cal has taken over the past three cycles was offered after their junior year (Spencer Brasch, Zach Johnson, Jaden Casey, and Kai Millner), and this year may be similar, considering the Bears have offered only one quarterback, AJ Duffy.
There are some early trends for this class, one that comes with a ton of uncertainty. In Cal's junior class, there are currently 13 scholarship players, which would hint toward a relatively smaller group for 2022. That said, with the NCAA giving a blanket waiver of eligibility for the 2020-21 season, scholarship management and any decision about upping the scholarship limit temporarily will be interesting.
Offer List for 2022 | Scholarship Chart by Class
Right now, we're looking at how the offers break down so far by state, by position, trends, and who some of the most important early targets are.
By State
(Note, this is by where the recruits were initially playing when the offers came out, not for where they're playing now, some moving due to COVID-19)
California: 20
Washington: 7
Nevada: 6
Arizona: 4
Oregon: 3
Virginia: 2
Colorado, Georgia, New York, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Utah, Hawaii: 1
By Position
QB: 1
RB/APB: 6
WR: 8
TE: 4
OL: 13
DL: 3
LB: 6
DB: 4
ATH: 5 (2 WRs, 2 DBs, 1 RB)
Offense: 35
Defense: 15
Trends
A couple of big things stand out in the distribution of the offers by state and position:
- California holds a plurality of the offers, as expected, but there's emerging trends in the class in other states
- Nevada, which Cal has only had two commits from since Justin Wilcox got to Cal (both in the transition class of 2017), has six offers. Part of that is due to a good crop of players at Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas, but there's also three out in Reno, where Angus McClure was at Nevada prior to coming to Cal.
- The state of Washington, where Cal's had some success, also has a great group of 2022 prospects, especially on the offensive line. Four of the seven offers in the state for Cal have gone to offensive linemen.
- RB recruiting is a little more national in 2022 so far, with offers out to RBs from Georgia, Washington, New York, Arizona, and Colorado, in addition to California.
- Strengths of this class so far appear to be on offense, as there's a ton of strong offensive line candidates along with a handful of talented wideouts and tight ends that Cal is targeting in the early going.