Spring is in the air, as sunshine and football once again descended on California Memorial Stadium.
Cal had their first spring practice on a sunny morning in Berkeley, as change, especially on offense, underscored a ho-hum session, with the Bears still a handful of practices away from full pads.
Housekeeping Notes to Start
In the aftermath of practice came injury news, as OLB Cameron Goode (upper body), ILB Kuony Deng (upper body), ILB Ryan Puskas (upper body), and OL Gentle Williams (lower body) will be out for the spring. Williams is still recovering from an injury that kept him out all of 2019.
In addition, Justin Wilcox announced that Peter Sirmon and Tim DeRuyter will swap their roles, with Sirmon assuming the defensive coordinator and playcalling mantle, while DeRuyter becomes the associate head coach.
"Coach Sirmon and coach DeRuyter are at their same positions," Wilcox noted, "but they are swapping roles. Coach DeRuyter will be our associate head coach and co-defensive coordinator, while coach Sirmon will be our defensive coordinator and will call plays. It won't look different, but that'll be a small adjustment we've made."
Wilcox noted that they have a collaborative process for their defensive playcalling, noting that things may not change much.
"Continuity on the staff," Wilcox said about why the change happened, "we are fortunate to have four guys on that side of the ball who are excellent coaches, they're all on board with their roles, from Tim with his experiences, and Peter, Marcel Yates has been a defensive coordinator, Andrew Browning is a fantastic D-line coach, we're fortunate they all want to be here, bought in to how we're doing things, they all bring value. It's always going to be collaborative on that side of the ball, and it's best for our program, best for the people in the room."
The biggest piece Wilcox mentioned was how complete of a roster the Bears had. Usually a team will lose plenty in the offseason and not have the mid-year guys around to make up the numbers, but there's a relative level of depth that the Bears haven't had in the past.
"We have a full roster, the most complete roster we've had in any spring," Wilcox said, "because we had only thirteen guys leave after the bowl game, and we've added nine, so still a pretty complete team."
