The Golden Bear Mailbag: May 31st
Ending the month of May, we opened up the mailbag to questions from subscribers to Golden Bear Report, discussing a number of different topics as we move into the summer months before Cal Football starts up once again.
In your opinion, what needs to be done to vitalize the Bay Area to root for Cal football again?
The easy answer is winning.
That said, in conjunction with winning, there’s two big areas in my opinion, that need focus, and those are outreach and accessibility. The first of those is being done with younger kids and the Patrick Laird Reading Challenge. I don’t think there’s a better person to lead it this year than Mike Saffell, and like a year ago, it should create some new Cal fans. Safell can at least teach the kids how not to burn down their dorm rooms while attempting to cook.
Jokes aside, the outreach arm has to be more than just to the kids. Getting out, talking to people, being representatives in the community, and most importantly giving people reasons to care about this team and the players on it, is something that can bring people in. Along with winning.
Same with accessibility, in two forms. The cost of nearly everything is high in the Bay Area, so affordability is a big deal. It can work. If you can give families an affordable cost option at a reasonable time, they’ll go, as long as there’s a product worth going to. One example I’ve seen of this working is with First Fridays at the Chabot Science Center in Oakland. Obviously a different product, but there’s a mass of humanity there during those days and it’s easy enough for families to take part in.
Even more than that is making the game easy to get to. You’re not going to move Memorial Stadium, and traffic is what it is in the Bay Area, but there have to be alternatives encouraged via public transportation and otherwise. This is something that would ostensibly be worked on at a municipal level between Jim Knowlton and the city of Berkeley. The relationship between the school and the city hasn’t always been pretty, but under Knowlton, there’s been much more in the way of outreach between athletics and academics than in the past.
At the end of the day though, winning and sustained winning is what’s going to create the most excitement in the area. Even for the Oregon game a year ago, the stadium started to fill up thanks to a ranked matchup. Win, and people come.
Addendum: While writing this, the SEC is now allowing alcohol sales at games. Cal should do that, outside of the club levels.
I'm looking for reasons to believe in this year's football offense. What lessons did the staff learn last year? Are they planning any modifications to the scheme for this year's squad and schedule?
This is the big question, something that will separate Cal from another 7-6 year and a potential 10 win team, if the Cal offense can be somewhere around average. If the defense’s health can hold up, this will be the best Cal defense of the modern era.
On the offensive side, from watching how the Bears have recruited to how they prepared in spring, here’s what the staff has seemed to learn.
1. More immediate help was needed at the skill positions, resulting in bringing in Trevon Clark, Kekoa Crawford, Deshawn Collins, and Devon Modster.
2. This group of offensive linemen is more mobile than the last group, so get them moving more to create holes for the RBs to cut off.
3. Have the guy calling the plays coaching the quarterbacks more closely.
4. Utilize the TE more, as McCallan Castles got used as a threat over the middle more frequently in the spring.
5. Continuity at QB, as Chase Garbers has had more time to develop, both as a player and a leader.
6. Get your explosive threats in space more, which correlates with more trust being had in WR Jeremiah Hawkins. Hawkins saw more in the way of jet sweeps and screens once he stopped dropping as many passes and started gaining more confidence.
There’s a couple areas which will be clearer when we get closer to the season, as Beau Baldwin likes to play coy with reporters on things like tempo or personnel, and almost everybody in college football runs something similar to what Cal is doing, but we’ll see where the Bears can make the biggest improvements in fall camp when they have everybody in action.
Wilcox has stated multiple times that he likes kids who play multiple sports in HS. What other sports did our '19 class play (besides Johnson being a wrestling bully), and what other sports do our current commits and targets play, if any?
Off the top of my head, there aren’t as many kids committed to Cal in 2019 that did sports other than football. Brett Johnson’s obviously the big one, as he was a state champion in wrestling, but Spencer Brasch also competed in track (triple jump, 4x400 relay), reaching the state title meet in the triple jump. Kuony Deng played basketball before deciding to make the jump to football full time.
For 2020, there’s a few more kids who play multiple sports. Longtime commit Everett Johnson plays basketball for Turlock. DB target Trey Paster runs track, and a track meet he competed in as a kid is why he’s called Cal his ‘dream school.’ TE target Jake Overman plays rugby along with teammate and OL target Ender Aguilar (kids on the Servite football team are required to play more than just football). QB target CJ Stroud is an excellent basketball player as well. There’s more than that among the group, but a lot more kids are pursuing more than one sport, which is good in an era of extreme specialization.
Additionally, how does Wilcox feel about them continuing a multi-sport collegiate career?
To paraphrase what he’s said about guys doing track/baseball, he’ll gladly work around their other sport, as long as they’re willing to put in the work for both. Brandon McIlwain’s the biggest example of this, despite breaking his foot midway through baseball season. He did as much as he could during the spring while balancing baseball practice/games, and it’s something that Wilcox welcomed with Ashtyn Davis and Malik McMorris.
Whether that could apply to basketball is a different story, just because the two sports run up against each other so much more. Whether you could have a true Tony Gonzalez type again is up in the air, but if the right player came along, I don’t think Wilcox would be opposed.
Who’s going to fill in for Malik McMorris?
You can’t replace Malik McMorris. McMorris is in a category of athletes that probably will never be seen at Cal again, just based on skillset (he’s in the same category as WR Vinnie Strang and OLB Jarred Price in the annals of Cal history). Wilcox has said that they’re not going to find another 5’11”, 290 lb fullback with soft hands and great blocking technique.
Just at the H-back spot though, Gavin Reinwald seems like a likely candidate to take some of those reps. Reinwald’s up to 240 lbs and looks completely different from when he came in two years ago.
How much involvement did Baldwin have in Spencer Brasch's recruitment? What about the perceived recruiting misses at QB last cycle, how much of that was on Baldwin? And what does he have to do to prove his recruiting prowess this cycle?
Beau Baldwin was one of the main recruiters for Spencer Brasch, as Brasch fits a lot of what he likes in a QB. He’s a mobile kid who can run the option, has a big arm, and has a solid frame to add weight onto so he doesn’t get folded in half. Baldwin’s also mentioned his tenacity in the past, in coming back from a 21 point deficit in a playoff game.
One anecdote that I may be getting a little off, Baldwin was part of the crew that took Brasch bowling on his OV. From what I was told at the time and remember, Baldwin won among a crew that included Brasch, Charlie Ragle, Marques Tuiasosopo, and Gavin Reinwald.
As far as the perceived QB misses, that’s a hard question to answer, as while Beau was involved in QB recruiting a year ago, he was also working on tight ends as well as the offense as a whole. Having more success on offense would’ve helped, but recruiting’s enough of an inexact science in my book and we don’t know how well guys will translate to the next level, unless your name is Trevor Lawrence.
What Beau needs to do this cycle is get his guys, two of them, lock them down, and have a successful season. Just keep it simple. That’s all that needs to happen.