heartofthebear said:

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bross said:

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Uthaithani said:

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philly1121 said:

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I agree. nothing I saw today from the QB leads me to believe he will be any better. It's been 8 years and we keep saying the same thing over and over "we're 1-2 recruiting classes away from competing with the big boys". Uh - yeah, ok.

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Agree. "Wait till next year" is the slogan of mediocrity.

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It's Justin Wilcox's first year, with massive injuries and limited talent/depth left from the previous coaching staff. Not sure what you were expecting in year one.

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I wouldn't say we've had massive injuries.
We've had too many key injuries.
But most of those didn't seriously impact Cal.
It was when Downs went down that things really went south.
I don't know how much Hudson would have improved our offense or how much Rambo would have impacted our secondary, but Laird and Noa effectively played next man up to the losses at those positions. The loss of Robertson as a deep threat was not a factor because Bowers could not throw that far anyway and Robertson's productivity was down as a result.

Massive injuries applies to only 2 conference teams, USC and OSU.

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You don't think the injuries have had a serious impact? Well then agree to disagree.

heartofthebear said:

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bross said:

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Uthaithani said:

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philly1121 said:

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I agree. nothing I saw today from the QB leads me to believe he will be any better. It's been 8 years and we keep saying the same thing over and over "we're 1-2 recruiting classes away from competing with the big boys". Uh - yeah, ok.

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Agree. "Wait till next year" is the slogan of mediocrity.

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It's Justin Wilcox's first year, with massive injuries and limited talent/depth left from the previous coaching staff. Not sure what you were expecting in year one.

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I wouldn't say we've had massive injuries.
We've had too many key injuries.
But most of those didn't seriously impact Cal.
It was when Downs went down that things really went south.
I don't know how much Hudson would have improved our offense or how much Rambo would have impacted our secondary, but Laird and Noa effectively played next man up to the losses at those positions. The loss of Robertson as a deep threat was not a factor because Bowers could not throw that far anyway and Robertson's productivity was down as a result.

Massive injuries applies to only 2 conference teams, USC and OSU.

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Cal lost Zeandae Johnson before the season, same with Rambo. Robertson, Watson, Hudson were all starters. Laird has been a great surprise, but Watson was a good player. Devante Downs and Cameron Saffle were maybe the Bears 2 best defensive players and certainly their best pass rushers and Cameron Goode has been lost these past couple weeks. These 8 starters represent over 1/3 of the projected starters. Perhaps USC and OSU lost more players, but Cal lost impact players. Additionally Cal has had several others miss games due to injury.

Complaining about injuries just means you haven't recruited enough depth which is a fair enough criticism of our team. Hopefully Wilcox et al can fix that. But I would wager if you looked at our injury profile we were average maybe only slightly higher than average for the year va the rest of the P5. Injuries are a reality in P5 football. Why you always need to be 'crootin.

As far as improvement, JMO there's no question the floor of the program has been raised. Fundamentals are improved. Line depth is being addressed and developed. Tackling much better. Not as many mental errors seen. OTOH we saw an astronomical drop in the performance of the offense. Lots of excuses but in the end it's excuses. However I don't THINK we are gonna stay as offensively impaired going forward as we were defensively under Dykes.

The question is the ceiling. And sure, if Bowers is the QB next year and we don't see any appreciable improvement in his play.....yeah tread water more or less. One would hope that either he continues to develop or he gets passed up. For sure explosiveness at WR needs to improve but as noted not sure how much it matters unless bowers gets better at the long ball. RB depth always needs to be addressed. Sure Laird and Watson look like a great pair on paper for next year but what if one or both goes down? Also we could use a true playmaker on D. Don't really have an obvious one coming back. A guy that the opposing O coordinator schemes against. But that stuff is all relative to the ceiling which is an unknown at this juncture. But it's pretty safe to say the floor has been raised

moonpod said:

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Complaining about injuries just means you haven't recruited enough depth which is a fair enough criticism of our team. Hopefully Wilcox et al can fix that. But I would wager if you looked at our injury profile we were average maybe only slightly higher than average for the year va the rest of the P5. Injuries are a reality in P5 football. Why you always need to be 'crootin.

As far as improvement, JMO there's no question the floor of the program has been raised. Fundamentals are improved. Line depth is being addressed and developed. Tackling much better. Not as many mental errors seen. OTOH we saw an astronomical drop in the performance of the offense. Lots of excuses but in the end it's excuses. However I don't THINK we are gonna stay as offensively impaired going forward as we were defensively under Dykes.

The question is the ceiling. And sure, if Bowers is the QB next year and we don't see any appreciable improvement in his play.....yeah tread water more or less. One would hope that either he continues to develop or he gets passed up. For sure explosiveness at WR needs to improve but as noted not sure how much it matters unless bowers gets better at the long ball. RB depth always needs to be addressed. Sure Laird and Watson look like a great pair on paper for next year but what if one or both goes down? Also we could use a true playmaker on D. Don't really have an obvious one coming back. A guy that the opposing O coordinator schemes against. But that stuff is all relative to the ceiling which is an unknown at this juncture. But it's pretty safe to say the floor has been raised

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We all know and agree that injuries are a part of the game. However, we have lost an unusually high percentage of our impact players/best athletes. If that is complaining, so be it.

Again I would venture that we probably in terms of not just numbers but starters as well were about average or just slightly higher than average. No I haven't looked it up but last time I did it mid season we were pretty much average to slightly below average in both starters and overall numbers again it gets back to why you always need to be recruiting depth.

The one team that got absolutely massacred with injuries this year was UNC they lost a ridiculous number of projected starters and starters to injuries

JimSox said:

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Uthaithani said:

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philly1121 said:

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I agree. nothing I saw today from the QB leads me to believe he will be any better. It's been 8 years and we keep saying the same thing over and over "we're 1-2 recruiting classes away from competing with the big boys". Uh - yeah, ok.

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Agree. "Wait till next year" is the slogan of mediocrity.

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5-7 or 6-6 are mediocre by definition. What matters is improvement and exceeding expectations. [uh..to what end?....repetitive improvement and exceeding expectations without consistently proving anything does not matter.] Losing by three as a 14-point dog is clearly the latter. [...only in the very short run.]As is the whole season. Will next year be better, worse or the same? [about the "same." Looks like groundhog day to me.] Don't know. But it seems a bit premature to write the whole program off. [Probably so...but...what about the program and how Cal's administration perceives the program has really changed from anything over the last 57 years? I say nothing has, thus I see no progress per se. Cal could do well for a season, maybe two, but I don't see
too much changing allowing for consistent success (e.g., Rose Bowl....or even a divisional championship.)]

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moonpod said:

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Again I would venture that we probably in terms of not just numbers but starters as well were about average or just slightly higher than average. No I haven't looked it up but last time I did it mid season we were pretty much average to slightly below average in both starters and overall numbers again it gets back to why you always need to be recruiting depth.

The one team that got absolutely massacred with injuries this year was UNC they lost a ridiculous number of projected starters and starters to injuries

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Yep. We certainly had some problematic injuries to some key guys but we also escaped the injury bug in some key areas too. The majority of P12 teams had to go to a 2nd (or even 3rd) team QB because of injuries but we got fortunate there. I'm pretty sure Forrest threw fewer passes and played less than any other 2nd QB in the conference. This season could have seriously gone off the rails if Bowers had gone down. Also, despite a couple guys getting banged up on the OL, we had pretty good consistency there too. Could have been much worse.

Blueblood, I know where you're coming from. I've seen this before too. However when Wilcox was hired I decided to put Cal football on the Snyder plan (with one exception). I'm willing (sadly) to continue with mediocrity for a few years as Wilcox improves his team. I'd like year five to be a New Year's day bowl game year with a top 10 ranking. The exception is I expect Wilcox to beat Stanford !!! Who knows, it could happen.