Welcome back to Cal Rivals’ Signing Day coverage! This column aims to give you a good overall look at the main storylines of this class – if you want more on each individual player, feel free to sift through our positional overviews, which we’ve linked below:

Skill Positions | Front Seven | OL | DBs

1) We don’t quite know.

And I want to be clear what I mean by this – this class, and also the next ones in 2022/2023, are going to be mysteries for everyone involved. We can all take our best guesses at what is to come – and I’ll do that – but with most of these players not playing senior ball as of signing time, a lack of official visits, and now multiple years removed from direct evaluation, we are entering the greatest unknown of all.

There has never been a recruiting class that has been assembled under these conditions, which makes everything even more murky than normal.

That’s not a complaint, but a statement of fact. It will be tough to tell as much as usual, because the staff is also operating off of junior tape, and by the time most of these guys hit the campus in June, they will be nearly two years removed from playing an actual game (if they don’t get spring seasons).

It is what it is. All schools are recruiting under the same realities.

2) But we do know some things…

And that this is the most highly regarded group Cal has brought in under Justin Wilcox, based on offer, star quality, and general perception, as well as our own eye test here at Cal Rivals, which can (and often has) disagreed with the scouts at headquarters. (See one JOHNSON, BRETT.)

Look at these stats Trace has kept on the class’ offer list:

2020: Median P5 Offers - 5, Mean - 5.96

2021: Median P5 Offers - 9, Mean - 9.67 (not including Nate Rutchena, a 2020 greyshirt who was announced with the class today)

*Here is my normal disclaimer and acknowledgement that the recent trend for CFB programs nationwide is to give more offers overall.

But even in acknowledging this, the Bears were also in the mix for several other high-tier prospects that they likely could have pulled in under non-COVID conditions: Jacob Schuster and Yanni Karlaftis among them; not to mention the big prize, running back Byron Cardwell, is still looming in February.

Recruits are definitely taking notice of what Wilcox has built, and they believe in it. They may never be able to have as many advantages as Oregon or USC – one and two in the recruiting conference rankings this year again, of course - but being competitive in the Pac's top third, combined with development is a sustainable path for success.

3) The Big Boys

Cal’s recruiting in the front 7 this year has shifted considerably - where there are six guys at 6’4, 250+, who could conceivably slot in anywhere depending on need and response to future strength and conditioning.

I’ve posted this chart before, but here it is again, with X’s denoting places I believe this player could potentially play, and the highlight denoting where I personally believe this player would be the best fit:

Is this an absolute nightmare to project? Absolutely.

Is it also immensely exciting? Also, absolutely. Collectively, this group offers a really high athletic ceiling – many, over previously recruited Cal front 7 players – and many are part of the next tier of prospect Cal wants to regularly compete for.

Wilkins, in particular, is a feather in the Bears’ proverbial cap, as they stole him right out of Stanford’s clutches. Rare, are the prospects who get admitted to Stanford who choose not to go – we should know this well, since we’ve had a bunch of them decommit recently for this reason.

4) The Receivers

While they’ll undoubtedly aim to add the stockpile in years to come, Cal has more or less finalized the immediate future of the wideout position this year by signing two more possible “number one” guys in J Michael Sturdivant and Mavin Anderson. The former was hotly pursued by nearly every program in the country, and the latter posted incredible sophomore film when uninjured, drawing easy to see comparisons to Makai Polk. Together with the already assembled 2020 class – Jeremiah Hunter, most notably – there should be plenty of talent for Chase Garbers and whoever comes after him.

I have mentioned that I expect this 2020-2021 core of receivers to be comparable to the Treggs-Lawler-Harper-Davis core one day, and while I don’t think they’ll surpass the statistical achievements of that group, I am still standing by that statement overall. That’s how much accumulated talent they have on hand.

5) NorCal is back!

If you want some evidence that the Bears are on the rise again, check out the backbone of the class, which is 61% California based (11 of 18), and of that California based group, 63% (7 of 11) could reasonably be considered Northern Californian in nature.

Some of this is likely attributable to guys wanting to be closer to home amidst such uncertainty, but I think it still speaks to Cal’s rising relevance as an option for them. Recruiting your local areas isn’t always feasible for every program, especially in areas where there aren’t often many backyard programs producing D1 talent, but this is not the case for Cal, which is a stone’s throw.

Making themselves an increasing factor in this area, particularly with a talented group of 2023ers upcoming, is a must when aiming to complete their return back to Pac-12’s elite, an endeavor that got put on hold this year but can reasonably be expected to continue with (hopefully) a more normal 2021 season.