Was Sonny oriented to be offense minded or was it easier to recruit offense players, particularly wide receivers, than good linebackers, nose tackles and safeties? Most highly successful teams recruit and place their best athletes on defense. Defensive players, like DEs and DTs, are often at the top of the First Round of the draft. Nick Saban has made a living from having the most highly rated defensive linemen and linebackers. Tosh has continued to fulfill that dream for St. Nick. SC is another program that seems to attract great defensive players annually. It's the active ingredient in a pill that cures all your ills. I see Wilcox is following this formula. Let's hope it works.

In fairness to Dykes, he did recruit and get commitments to some productive defensive players in 2016. For instance he got commitments from Goode, Bynum, Kunaszyk, Weaver, Paul, Beck, and Franklin. Perhaps too little, too late to save his job and reputation.

Bear8 said:

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Was Sonny oriented to be offense minded or was it easier to recruit offense players, particularly wide receivers, than good linebackers, nose tackles and safeties? Most highly successful teams recruit and place their best athletes on defense. Defensive players, like DEs and DTs, are often at the top of the First Round of the draft. Nick Saban has made a living from having the most highly rated defensive linemen and linebackers. Tosh has continued to fulfill that dream for St. Nick. SC is another program that seems to attract great defensive players annually. It's the active ingredient in a pill that cures all your ills. I see Wilcox is following this formula. Let's hope it works.

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That was probably part of his problem: Sure, he wanted good defensive players (he's not an idiot), but, what with his reputation, he struggled to attract them, so there were probably cases where he went with one more 4-star receiver, rather than a low-3-star defensive player, hoping it might make more of a difference.

Not trying to make excuses for him: He owns his time here.

Bear8 said:

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In fairness to Dykes, he did recruit and get commitments to some productive defensive players in 2016. For instance he got commitments from Goode, Bynum, Kunaszyk, Weaver, Paul, Beck, and Franklin. Perhaps too little, too late to save his job and reputation.

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It wouldn't matter if Dykes recruited 20 5 star defensive recruits...because he wouldn't know how to use them. You can't develop an offensive system that basically puts your defense in a bad spot the entire game. There's something to be said with ball and clock control and the effect it has on your own defense.

Big C said:

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Bear8 said:

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Was Sonny oriented to be offense minded or was it easier to recruit offense players, particularly wide receivers, than good linebackers, nose tackles and safeties? Most highly successful teams recruit and place their best athletes on defense. Defensive players, like DEs and DTs, are often at the top of the First Round of the draft. Nick Saban has made a living from having the most highly rated defensive linemen and linebackers. Tosh has continued to fulfill that dream for St. Nick. SC is another program that seems to attract great defensive players annually. It's the active ingredient in a pill that cures all your ills. I see Wilcox is following this formula. Let's hope it works.

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That was probably part of his problem: Sure, he wanted good defensive players (he's not an idiot), but, what with his reputation, he struggled to attract them, so there were probably cases where he went with one more 4-star receiver, rather than a low-3-star defensive player, hoping it might make more of a difference.

Not trying to make excuses for him: He owns his time here.

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Similarly, and a most important first step, he wanted good coaches on his staff too. The 4 and 5 star type talents are thinking NFL possibilities, which leads them and their family to ponder what coach and staff can best help realize such dreams...

How many on our coaching staff then, including SD who didn't play football, played on Sundays and/or coached at that level? How many coached in the Pac-12 or other P5 programs, ideally with some success in the position hired? I remember comparing our staff to others in the Pac-12 during those years, and it was clear that there was little to assure student-athletes and their parents that Cal was the place to go to be groomed for the professional game. The HC and staff did not have the most appealing of resumes when hired, and certainly did very little when here to improve upon such.

How many 4 / 5* road-grader type offensive lineman would want to come to Cal with its backpedaling big guys coached by an unknown who was just previously a GA, before that at a HS as I recall? We were after more of the twinkle toe types, light on their feet, as compared to the pancakers. Or, how many stud RBs want to be behind such a line, QBs too of course... Tight end talent wouldn't be so interested too. And this is all offense, where we didn't suck. On D, it was so apparent, for years, that we lacked basic fundamentals...

Cal is increasingly in the conversation for better and better talent because of the current HC and staff, and how we played last season. There are now a more compelling reasons to chose Cal.

In the area of assistants, my (possibly faulty) recollection is that Art Kaufman said that with his personnel, he needed to play a basic defense, and I think they did: very little blitzing, for example. Maybe what he left unsaid was, "and given that, with Sonny's offense, we'll be on the field 3/4 of the time...". But with largely the same personnel in 2017, Cal blitzed more and effectively and certainly made a big leap. So, rightly or wrongly, it seems like Kaufman didn't have a lot of confidence in his players, or the situation his defense was in, or both.

With respect to the "awesome" offensive machine that Sonny put together, it was never awesome against the good teams, only against the mediocre ones. It's ironic for me that the most memorable play of the Sonny era was the defense's goal-line stand against Utah. At the time, I hoped that would be a turning-point, but it turned out to just be an aberration. That's not a slam on the players, but more on the coaching staff who couldn't generate any leverage from that.

HearstMining said:

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It's ironic for me that the most memorable play of the Sonny era was the defense's goal-line stand against Utah. At the time, I hoped that would be a turning-point, but it turned out to just be an aberration. That's not a slam on the players, but more on the coaching staff.

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Truth.