Spring has sprung, the sun is out and the sunshine stories are pumping in for Cal football.

Certainly, there is a lot to be excited about, but as we are now officially under a month from spring practices beginning (April 6th is the official start date), it’s about time to hit the brakes a bit.

In recent pieces, there’s been a general theme that we’ve danced around: uncertainty.

In reality, while it is all well and good to theorize about how bright the future is for the Bears, it remains true that there is no clarity of direction or goals from the program at the moment. For the past few years, Cal has been a low variance, middle of the pack program. Where that runs into issues is when that low variance output keeps them on the wrong side of bowl eligibility.

The Bears will need to do something drastic, sooner rather than later. With Justin Wilcox getting an extension through 2027 and the offensive and defensive coordinators returning to Berkeley in 2022, there should be no doubt in what is to be expected from the on-field product.

But instead, doubt is all that’s left.

The players on the field will change this season, but many of the existing structures on offense and defense will, presumably, remain the same. There’s always the chance that a team will shift with fresh personnel, but there’s also a chance that nothing changes. That would be cause for concern to many. But before the first snap in spring football is taken, all that’s left is questions that the fan, the reader and the writer must spiral endlessly about.

Here are a few of them.

There exists a phrase in the coaching and greater football world that says “offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships.” The goal, of course, is to have a defense so good that it wins you a championship and sells tickets, a la Georgia this past year. But even the most stellar defenses fail to reach that lofty goal from year to year. So, the offense must generate explosive plays and lots of points to draw fans in. Whether that is the best way to win a game is debatable, but at the very least it sells tickets.

That last point should be very important to Cal.

To many, Cal’s offense is boring. Just to call it what it is, the average fan probably does not care to see the Bears come out in 13-personnel and run their gap scheme game to a T every week.

Thankfully, the average fan is not calling the plays on Saturdays, but it does raise some interesting questions.

The Bears will start one of either Kai Millner and Jack Plummer at quarterback in the fall, but either way the starting quarterback will have last played a game in a system that is vastly different from the Bears offense. Skipping talk about scheme, both Millner and Plummer played in offenses that would be classified as ‘open gun’ squads. This means that the QB is mostly (or exclusively) in the ‘gun’ and not under center; ‘open’ refers to having no tight end attached to the offensive line.

Now, both quarterbacks have plenty of experience with tight ends attached (especially Plummer), but it is an important difference. Angles, processing and timing are all affected by which targets are in and where they are.

This is where the conflict begins. In 2021, Bill Musgrave was much more multiple in his formations (lots of empty, 2x2 open looks mixed with heavy TE, under-center action), but there didn’t seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason to it all the time.

With two quarterbacks who are both less limited than their predecessor and who have more experience in these more multiple and ‘modern’ formations, will there be a structural shift to seeing more of what they're familiar with in 2022? And if there is, how will he manage getting his best athletes (specifically Keleki Latu and Jermaine Terry) on the field while adjusting to the quarterbacks’ preferred play styles? This philosophical question is one that should be on the minds of everyone going into 2022.