Cal88 said:
calumnus said:
bearsandgiants said:
calumnus said:
Cal88 said:
calumnus said:
Cal88 said:
Yes, Wilcox has had a mediocre plateau, stumbling mainly with lackluster personnel choices on offense, but on his 9th year, it looks like things are finally on the way up.
This is a fresh start, enjoy the ride.
If we have a good season it will largely be due to the weakest Cal schedule in my lifetime and it will likely be in spite of Wilcox, not because of him. Like Gilbertson's 9-4 Alamo Bowl team in 1993, as good as they were, I will always think they would have been better with a better head coach. The best thing I can say about him as a coach is that Sagapolutele likes him.
I think Gilby was the worst coach we've had the last 50 years, even worse than Holmoe, because he took what was the 2nd best program in the western half of the US and ran it to the ground. 1993 was going to be our first good challenge at the national championship with Jake Plummer and Rashan Salaam under Snyder, if it wasn't for Bockrath.
You do have to give credit to Wilcox for having put together a very good coaching group after years of futility and instability, that is the reason he was able to land JKS, twice, and to put enough talent and structure around him to get us in position to be able to take advantage of our schedule.
1. As you know, I was not a big fan of Harsin as a coach for Cal and my understanding he and his firings/hirings is the reason we lost most of our offensive skill players to the Portal this Spring. While his playcalling has been good, I prefer good playcalling with top talent. I said the same thing about Mark Fox.
2. If you are going to hire them, Rolo and Harsin were unemployed last year. He could have hired them then. Instead he stuck with his promoted OL coach as OC even after he bombed in the bowl game. Then he didn't even bother to backfill the OL coach job. Just lazy and incompetent for year 8, wasting a huge opportunity our first year on the ACC with an incredibly easy schedule. We don't have years for him to waste. The energy around college Gameday wasted. Maybe if we had an OL coach the OL plays better? Then he proceeded to lose game after game adopting the same losing strategy when we had a 4th quarter lead, again squandering the opportunity we had. We should have won 10, instead he gave us his 5th losing season in a row. 8 years with only 2 winning seasons and zero winning seasons in conference, losing almost twice as many as he wins.
This year we would be building on last year instead of rebuilding.
3. For the last 7 years, Sirmon was the second highest paid coach on the team. Defense seems better without him, or at least as good.
We fire the position coaches on offense that recruited well, but retain for 7 years a DL coach that doesn't for a position that is 95% about recruiting.
4. So if Wilcox gets his first winning season in six years, what happens if Harsin and Rolo get HC jobs after the season? Why is Wilcox the guy you want coaching the team and hiring his 5th OC in 5 years in year 10? Do you only keep him if Harsin, Rolo and Sagapolutele stay? Or do you like him so much you give him year 10 even without those guys.
My bigger question is: do you like Wilcox enough to extend him? Because that is what we are really faced with.
I don't think this is fair. Our losses weren't just because Wilcox turtled. We missed field goals, Mendoza missed wide open game winning touchdowns, and we couldn't run the ball. Imagine if we couldn't run the ball against Minnesota in the second half, or missed a field goal or two, leaving great field position? We have better staff and better players and he's in charge of that and made it happen (with help from RR). A lot will be learned in our next two games
Missed FGs because Wilcox wouldn't give a scholarship to Mateen who was lights out the year before?
Maybe it would have helped our OL and our run game if we had an OL coach? Whose fault was it we didn't? We had 2 DB coaches and effectively 2 DCs.
Can't blame Mendoza for last year. Wilcox was damn lucky NR Mendoza turned out to be as good as he was/is given how bad his QB recruiting has been his first 7 years (until Sagapolutele). Did any Wilcox QB recruits ever even start a game for us until Mendoza?
A better head coach would have had a MUCH better record last year. 2-6 against that conference schedule?
Yes Wilcox did underachieve last year, but after a lot of errors, shortcomings and outright failures he seems to have finally gotten his ducks in a row, so why not enjoy this season for now.
And no he shouldn't get a 10 year extension, or the same kind of excessive buyout clauses. I think we're in good hands there with Rivera overlooking his future contract or an eventual situation where both Rolo and Harsin get HC positions elsewhere, that's why Ron was hired as a GM.
As usual, we jump too quickly to the "he's finally over the hump" conclusion as we seem to do every year..
But you are both being at least a little disingenuous with the stats. Overall numbers don't mean anything when you have such a long tenure, though I do think the point of how bad the guy is that has received that long tenure is relevant. But rather than show overall records and talk about how the non-conference scheduling has or has not changed to his advantage, (it clearly has, we never played FCS teams or their equivalent like we do every year) you can just look at the conference record to see what that does:
Frank Wickhorst: .143, tenure - 1 year
Marve Levy: .238, tenure - 2 years
Sonny Dykes: .278, tenure - 4 years
Tom Holmoe: .290, tenure - 5 years
Joe Kapp: .291, tenure - 4 years
Keith Gilbertson: .344, tenure - 4 years
Justin Wilcox: .348, tenure - 9 years
I don't know about Frank Wickhorst's one year in 1946 before the modern era, but everyone else below Wilcox got fired. In a program that has basically known futility, his record in conference places him 14 out of 20 among Cal coaches who coached a team that played in a conference. Roger Theder was vilified (justifiably), forced to hire an OC he didn't agree with, (stupidly), and then fired (justifiably) with a .404 conference record. (actually, in fairness his conference record was .458 his first 3 years before the AD forced him to hire a gimmick OC who did not mesh with Theder's offense at all when Theder was a top OC in his own right).
We can debate non-conference scheduling strategy, but your conference is made up of your peers that you play every year that you need to be successful compared to if you are going to be successful at all. By that metric, Wilcox is down with the dregs of the Cal coaching fraternity. It is bizarre that he has lasted this long. I would argue that it is mostly tied to Cal's continuing apathy and a very stupid contract extension with large buyout, but it is also partially due to an attitude that year after year he beats up on cupcakes and watches Cal fans prematurely declare he has turned the corner.
