Breaking Down the Cal Coaching Staff: Peter Sirmon

With fall camp fast approaching, we're putting together breakdowns of every coach on Cal's coaching staff. We're continuing with a look at Peter Sirmon, who took over as the Bears defensive coordinator in 2020, after holding the co-coordinator title for two seasons.

Here's a few things to know about Sirmon.

Previous Installments: Wilcox

One piece of history is that Sirmon, like Justin Wilcox, played quarterback in high school, and had an offer on the table to play quarterback for Washington State. The Walla Walla, Washington native instead went to play linebacker at Oregon, having been recruited by former Cal offensive line coach Steve Greatwood.

Here's what Sirmon told Golden Bear Report about his recruiting process last April:

"It really came down to three places to go, Washington State, Oregon State and Oregon, for me at that time, that was the best fit. I really didn’t know much about it. Steve Greatwood recruited me and I went on a visit, that must have been prior to their Rose Bowl, in December. He called me later in December, and said ‘Hey, we’re bringing in some more kids this week, we’re going to offer another linebacker, if you’re not going to take it we’re going to offer somebody else.’ I remember pausing for three or four seconds and saying ‘I’ll commit.’

He says ‘what?”

‘I’ll commit, I’d like to do that’

He says ‘that’s great news, I’m gonna go tell coach Brooks, he’s gonna call you all fired up, so hang tight there.’

I said okay, so we hung up. Rich Brooks never called, and I never expected him to call, but now, I would think that if a player committed and didn’t get some text message or something, it might be taken the wrong way. At that time, I was just happy I had somewhere to go."

An even stranger coda to this story is that Sirmon, had he chosen to go the quarterback route at Washington State, would've followed one of his neighbors growing up, that being former Cougar and longtime NFL QB Drew Bledsoe (a native of Walla Walla). Instead, Sirmon ended up in a pseudo-feud with Washington State QB Ryan Leaf, per a story from the Lewiston Tribune:

During a win against the Ducks in Eugene, Ore., that fueled the Cougars’ march to the 1998 Rose Bowl, Leaf completed a 38-yard pass to a diving Shawn McWashington, then moments later launched into a heated exchange with Sirmon.

"Peter Sirmon, the Ducks’ star linebacker, was particularly peeved at me, saying he expected cheap shots from me,” Leaf wrote in his memoir, “596 Switch” a few years ago. “As a quarterback, I have to say it’s not easy to get in on the dirty side of our business. And that day against the Ducks I don’t recall doing anything outside the rule book. My guess was that Peter may have been carrying a little bitterness around in his back pocket from the year before.

“In that Cougar-Duck game, which we also won, I saw him put a blatant cheap shot on Chris Jackson after a touchdown by Michael Black. As I ran down the field to celebrate the score, I angled toward Sirmon and gave him a drive-by forearm to the back that must have at least sent a few snot bubbles out the other side.”

The passage echoes Leaf’s public comments at the time — and those of Sirmon, who said the WSU quarterback “gets his cheap shots in. That’s what you expect from Leaf. There were a lot of great athletes who can handle themselves well, but he isn’t one of them.”

Sirmon, despite topping the 100 tackle mark twice at Oregon, isn't among the career leaders in tackles at Oregon. Sirmon did lead the Ducks in tackles for two seasons, in 1997 and 1999. He led the Pac-10 in tackles during 1997 with 115, with 17 tackles for loss. Five of those tackles for loss came against Arizona in a 16-9 win. That mark tied him for second for most TFLs in a game by a Duck. Sirmon also led Oregon in sacks that season with 4.5.

Sirmon's performance at Oregon, earning first team all-Pac 10 honors, got him drafted by the Tennessee Titans in the fourth round of the 2000 NFL draft, with pick 128. With his selection, he is one of the 198 players who were selected before Tom Brady in the NFL draft. Sirmon played in Tennessee for seven years prior to retiring in 2007.

Every coach on Cal's staff has some connection to Justin Wilcox prior to coming to Cal. Sirmon is no different, and has the second longest connection to Wilcox of anyone on staff. The two played together for four years on the same defense at Oregon.

Sirmon would then reconnect with Wilcox at Tennessee. After serving as a graduate assistant at Oregon in 2009, Sirmon GA'd at Tennessee in 2010 after Wilcox was hired as the defensive coordinator in Knoxville. Sirmon was promoted to inside linebackers coach in 2011, a role he'd have under Wilcox at both Washington and USC.

At Cal, where Sirmon was hired in 2018 as the inside linebackers coach and co-defensive coordinator, this is the fourth different college where the two former Ducks have worked together.

Since Sirmon got here, the 100 tackle mark has been eclipsed four times by his position group, with Evan Weaver breaking the mark twice, and both Jordan Kunaszyk and Kuony Deng doing it once apiece. Prior to those three eclipsing the mark, only six Bears had broken 100 tackles since the turn of the millenium (Hardy Nickerson Jr., Mychal Kendricks, Mike Mohamed, Desmond Bishop, Donnie McClesky, and Thomas Decoud).

Sirmon has a philosophy of letting guys show their personality, but having a clear expectation of their performance, something he took from his pro experiences.

"I think I ask my guys to behave in a certain way and to be accountable," Sirmon told Golden Bear Report last April, "but I think there’s something about letting everybody be their own person. I think as a player, it was hard to play for somebody where one day, you do a technique and it’s great, the next day you do it the same way, it’s not good enough. That was mixed messaging to me. Obviously coaches have bad days and good days as well, it’s not always about football for them and something may have happened that affects their attitude, but I want my standard to be so high, that when I ask a player of mine ‘is this good, what needs to be corrected,’ regardless of how I’m feeling, they know what the standard is."

That gives them freedom to be themselves, because they don’t get caught in ‘yesterday was good, today it’s not good enough, so I don’t know what to say, coach. I don’t know what’s good.’ I think you’ve got to be consistent if you want people to be themselves."