The Pac-12 appears to moving toward a semblance of a fall season, but before that happened, this week was an opt-in date for Cal's players and the first time Cal's staff had been allowed to get back in the office to watch workouts. With that, Peter Sirmon, Cal's defensive coordinator and inside linebackers coach, spoke with Golden Bear Report about the Bears returning, his defensive group, thoughts on recruiting philosophy and more.

TT: Something Justin Wilcox mentioned when we last talked to him was your use of the term 'alert fatigue,' when describing what the players have gone through with the season being postponed and the unknown, how have you guys handled that?

PS: The way we approached it was, early on with the unknown, we were full speed ahead and we continued full speed ahead, coach Becton did. But the football side of it, the mental side of it, I kind of view as orchestrated ups and downs, (we were) giving them some mental time away from football while they were still physically preparing. Obviously this is a very unique situation in sports and in football we all get trained a certain way to do it, with the calendar. The calendar tells us what our mentality is, if we’re starting to ramp up. Spring, which is teaching and development on the football field, summer is preparation physically, you give them some mental (preparation) but a lot of it is that physical preparation that goes hand in hand with some of the emotional preparation. If you’ve played the game, you know there’s a physical toll, but there’s a mental and emotional toll for three/four months

TT: I don't know how much football you've watched over the last couple weeks, but there has been some sloppy play early on, is that a worry depending on however much time you guys get to get back into things?

PS: Football is a developmental sport, football in my opinion is not a talent sport, and what I mean by that is you’re consistently and constantly getting better, you’re fighting against your own physical deterioration. Even as an NFL player, you’re continuing to get better, that’s why you see guys who continue to get better into their late 20s, it’s not that they’re physically better, they’ve developed a better skill, better technique, better mental approach to attacking the game. Football is that, and I can’t imagine seeing a better product with less development and less practice with anything we do in life. Football is gonna be no different in my opinion with that.

TT: Have you been able to get back on watch workouts at all?

PS: I have, we officially got back in the office this week, prior to that, I was in the office two times from March 11th up until Monday due to public health and university policies. I was able to go up there two times to watch some of the summer work. Not as much as I’d like

TT: What have you guys been able to teach throughout this time, I know players have talked about using Kahoot for quizzes and whatnot?

PS: Kahoot was something we were using early on for some of the test taking, to understand what they’re retaining, what information they weren’t getting that we needed to touch upon and do a better job of teaching. That was more of an exposure of what they can really retain, for us, that’s what a test is, and for me as a position coach, as a coordinator, I want everyone to have the answers. It’s not a teaching progression where I’m trying to be tricky. From there it’s a lot of install meetings, we watched a lot of film, talking about different techniques and reinforcing it. Now we’re fixing to get ramped up again so we’ll start those (meetings), we had a defensive staff discussion the other day, we were all outside, socially distanced, talking about what’s going on moving forward, yesterday was before the momentum was going as fast as it is. We’ll see how it all goes, but we’ve already put forth the plan of installation and meetings, we’re ahead of the game.

TT: The defense is going to look different for you guys this year without Weaver, without Luc Bequette and probably without Cam Bynum, who do you see stepping up in place of the latter two?

PS: We’ve still got a lot of experience. It frustrates me, it’s really hard to understand that if we play this fall, Luc Bequette and Cam Bynum aren’t with us due to some of the decisions made earlier, those are two very influential people and to not have them with us, it wasn’t due to injury or anything else, that’s challenging. But our guys are prepared to move forward, we have some really good young players at those positions. I think the greatest thing we have at Cal is that the guys care about each other and they play extremely hard. Those are the things, regardless of the age right now, coach Wilcox has done a really good job with the culture of this team, the guys who we’ve recruited have bought in and exemplified that.

Obviously, I think Chigi (Anusiem) has prepared for significantly more playing time, he’s showed us glimpses of what he can do, and we signed a really good young class of DBs coming in. I haven’t had the opportunity to be on the field with all of them, we had a couple of sessions in the spring with Trey Paster, there’s some guys that can do it. At the defensive line position, Brett Johnson will continue to develop, Braxten Croteau, JH Tevis, those are some guys who have played multiple positions, guys that I think will continue to develop. Then on that interior defensive line, AB, coach Browning did a great job (of signing) Ethan Saunders, Stanley (McKenzie), and Ricky (Correia), those are all big body guys who have an opportunity to help us.

TT: One of the biggest things I notice when talking to recruits is a focus on versatility for where you guys are going to play them. How important is that versatility for what you guys want to run?

PS: It’s about what you want to do defensively. If you want to run a four-down quarters system, you don’t need a lot of versatility, everything is relatively position specific, but with what the conference is doing, we’re going to be fixing to see a trend toward 12, 13, 21, 22 personnel a little bit more frequently than we have in years past, but in the next week you still have to line up against Wazzu, and it’s not gonna be exactly like Mike Leach, but there’s some similarities. I think the versatility is paramount to philosophically and structurally defend things you want to, but also have enough time to get it all taught. With the kind of kids we’re recruiting here, with the academic standards and the character standards we’re looking for, that hasn’t been a huge concern for us, but now it’s about finding those physical characteristics so that they can survive and thrive in a couple different positions for us.

TT: Does going against an offense that will be running more of those bigger personnel grouping help you guys make that transition to being versatile against bigger teams?

PS: It does, anytime you have an outlier, going against the spread in practice, early on (when the spread started to spread) if you weren’t a spread team, you saw a lot of different, I guess ingenious ways to practice against tempo spread. You saw two huddles coming at a defense, (to focus on) how you get lined up. You found that with teams that played against it every day, it wasn’t as much of an advantage as it was (against) teams that were still playing huddle football, it was a huge challenge for that. I think any time you get the outliers, which for us in the past have been the big people, 12, 13, even UCLA last year ran some 14 personnel, creating some E/F gaps, you don’t traditionally see that. That’s helpful (that Cal is moving toward a bigger offense), the kids have an extensive background in the spread because that’s what high school football is, so the spread and tempo is being taught from youth football and defensively a lot of the alignment concerns are already being taught in high school. We talk about 21 personnel and Pro-near, Pro-far, I-backs, you look at the kids and they don’t feel completely comfortable, fullback, quarterback under center, watching the skill players distribute out of a huddle, shifts and motions, those are the things that are a little more foreign to guys coming out of high school.

TT: For your position group, you have Kuony Deng returning at 6'6" and 250 lbs, what have you seen from him during this time, where he's transformed his body and stepped into a leadership role?

PS: Kuony’s done a great job, even though he wasn’t gonna be with us this spring, rehabbing a minor injury, but I think Kuony is a perfect example of why football is a developmental sport. From VMI, to Independence, to early enrollee at Cal, and I think he’s been here for 18-20 months, since December of 2018, you see how much a body can develop from a player that is all in. We talked (Wednesday) night, and what I took from the conversation was ‘what do you need from me to help the team’ and that’s what you’re looking for from the leaders, because in this situation, the leadership might be a lot of different things. It might be encouragement, it might be getting guys refocused, ‘hey guys this is still going to happen,’ and some guys don’t work really well (with) the unknown, that’s a hard way for people to work, ‘what am I working for,’ some people need that proverbial finish line.

Without that, it might feel like you’re working in futility, but what we’ve continued to tell the kids is developmental, we came here to win as many games as we can and put forth a championship effort when we play again. To develop physically, you don’t take six months off at a time, that’s not how the 18-22 year old body works. And Kuony is ready to step up in any way he sees that can help the team.

TT: Has anyone stood out enough during this time to definitively grab the spot next to Kuony?

PS: I think that’s still left up for them to decide. Evan Tattersall has worked very hard and he’s been groomed for that opportunity, I’m excited that he continues to mature physically, mentally, and emotionally. THen I think we’ve done a good job of attracting some younger players, with Blake Antzoulatos, Muelu Iosefa, excited about Andy Alfieri, Ryan Puskas, and Kyle Smith. There’s talent in that room, it’s inexperienced, but inexperience doesn’t concern me as much as lack of talent.