Back From Official Visit, Texas DB William Jones Commits to Cal

Again, I want to know your definition of good. Good to me is that a defense performed and performed well regardless of ratings. Sure scheme does hide some deficiencies, however, scheme isn't enough if the players aren't capable of executing in the first place, and that requires some level of competence and talent that already existed. It's like arguing that the Top 25 UCLA classes were good relative to their talent despite ranking outside of that in their defensive and offensive production the last three years.

This. BB certainly hasn't set the world on fire with our offense this season but the statement you accurately disputed is simply untrue. He has not been using the same offensive personnel as did his predecessor.

packawana said:

---

Again, I want to know your definition of good. Good to me is that a defense performed and performed well regardless of ratings. Sure scheme does hide some deficiencies, however, scheme isn't enough if the players aren't capable of executing in the first place, and that requires some level of competence and talent that already existed. It's like arguing that the Top 25 UCLA classes were good relative to their talent despite ranking outside of that in their defensive and offensive production the last three years.

---

Is it that hard to answer a simple question? I'm not the one claiming that Dykes recruited well. All you need to do is identify which of those classes are the good ones.

15 is where I'd say we've had the most disappointment but Hawkins continues to be very good as was Cam Saffle before he was injured.

16 was good and that's where most of the current starters are drawn from. It gave us Bynum, Beck, Goode, Drayden, Weaver, and Kunasyck. Franklin was a decent corner for us and Paul has come up strong the last year on the outside. Note that we got that group to really come out around the time they were expected to (their third year) and that's even with a new scheme.

17 is a wash because of how small it is but Funches was solid, Patton (who was recruited and couldn't qualify academically) ended up starting at K-State, and Hicks committed pre-Wilcox so most of that work seems to have been done during Sonny's time.

So I'd say the 15 class was meh, 16 was good, 17 was a wash due to how weird it was but the Dykes staff still identified and secured the commitment of good DBs and LB(s) for us.

Now will I contend that Sonny recruited game breakers defensively? No. But he recruited well defensively in the latter half of his tenure for the production we have now.

I'd like to understand what you'd consider recruiting well though if recruiting a couple of classes that make up a Top 25 defense isn't recruiting well.

Dykes recruited good offense at the beginning, likely because thats what his staff was good at. He tried very hard to recruit good defensive players at the end and was somewhat successful doing so. In recruiting D at the end, the O recruiting took a hit. His classes weren't balanced.

packawana said:

---

15 is where I'd say we've had the most disappointment but Hawkins continues to be very good as was Cam Saffle before he was injured.

16 was good and that's where most of the current starters are drawn from. It gave us Bynum, Beck, Goode, Drayden, Weaver, and Kunasyck. Franklin was a decent corner for us and Paul has come up strong the last year on the outside. Note that we got that group to really come out around the time they were expected to (their third year) and that's even with a new scheme.

17 is a wash because of how small it is but Funches was solid, Patton (who was recruited and couldn't qualify academically) ended up starting at K-State, and Hicks committed pre-Wilcox so most of that work seems to have been done during Sonny's time.

So I'd say the 15 class was meh, 16 was good, 17 was a wash due to how weird it was but the Dykes staff still identified and secured the commitment of good DBs and LB(s) for us.

Now will I contend that Sonny recruited game breakers defensively? No. But he recruited well defensively in the latter half of his tenure for the production we have now.

I'd like to understand what you'd consider recruiting well though if recruiting a couple of classes that make up a Top 25 defense isn't recruiting well.

---

Dude, recruiting is one piece in a very large puzzle. You can't just say this year's defense is great, therefore Dykes' recruiting must have been great. If recruiting was everything, UCLA wouldn't be mediocre dreck almost every year. Recruiting is important, but often development, scheme, mentality, chemistry that the staff develops, etc. contribute as much. At every level you will find teams that are just better at these things. In baseball, you will find franchises whose farm system is almost always loaded with "talent" even when their drafting and signing doesn't appear to be any better than anyone else's. In the 70's, the Raiders were notorious for taking other team's castaways and making them productive in their system. They were also notorious for trading guys who looked awesome on the Raiders and then did squat when they left. So much so that teams just wouldn't trade with them anymore. Same thing happened with the 49ers in the 80's.

There are many solid programs in college football that have a system for taking midlevel talent, developing their technique, giving them a scheme that works, creating real chemistry among the coaches and players, giving them a team philosophy and mentality and making them something that is much greater than the sum of the parts. That is what Cal has on defense right now. Cal is not out talenting people on defense. They are out working, out scheming, out bonding, out developing.

Dykes had position coaches that were as underqualified as any I've seen. He was really crappy at developing chemistry. His idea of motivation was a buy in chart.

And if you want an "expert" opinion on Dykes' defensive recruiting, ask Sonny. Right before the Big Game (without even being asked) he went into a long diatribe on "Don't blame me for the defense, my players suck. What I need to do to improve the defense is get better players" And I'm barely paraphrasing.

These guys were never going to develop into this defense under Dykes. EVER. If Dykes had hired DeRuyter as his defensive coordinator, hell, if he'd hired Wilcox as his defensive coordinator, the defense was still going to be a steaming pile. It started at the top.

He does not get to fail to motivate, fail to provide qualified position coaches, throw his player's under the bus repeatedly (and back the bus up over them again) and then get any credit for a unit that goes from worst under him to first under the next guy.

The current coaching staff has taken over a group of guys who were not highly rated out of high school, who were not developed in college, who were made to run a stupid vanilla scheme, and who had their pride stripped week after week. They instilled pride and chemistry. They gave them a scheme that maximized their ability. They got buy in by the force of what they were teaching, not by trying to humiliate them with a buy in chart. That is why they are good. If the talent was overflowing, the scheme would have made them a great defense LAST YEAR. Instead, the team made great progress to mediocrity, but it took 2 years to develop these guys into a great defense.

It is not because Sonny was brilliant at identifying defensive diamonds in the rough. You know why Sonny's early classes weren't as good on defense? Because they had to play for Sonny.

Sonny's defense at SMU is ranked 110 in points per game. That is now three programs he has butchered on defense. Giving him any credit for Cal's defense is so moronic it is embarrassing that anyone could type that, look at it, and not realize just how stupid it is on reflection.

Beardog26 said:

---

This. BB certainly hasn't set the world on fire with our offense this season but the statement you accurately disputed is simply untrue. He has not been using the same offensive personnel as did his predecessor.

---

If Webb doesn't come to Cal, we had a real chance of repeating the results of Sonny's first year. No way we win more than 3. Basically a passing offense without a passer.

Honestly, I wonder sometimes how people just pay zero attention to what is going on with the roster and two deeps. Dykes built an offense that relied on some really talented, very experienced guys and 2 NFL draft pick QB's. He was not replenishing that stock either at QB or at receiver, and definitely not at RB. As the guys who made up the offense his first year as really young players started graduating, they were not getting replaced with anything close to equivalent players in talent and experience.

I have no doubt that the offense would have been better with the old staff - it was built for their system. It wouldn't have been good though. Doubt it would have been average.

Doesn't absolve Baldwin. He has done a poor job. I think he has it in him to be an excellent OC, but he has not trusted his personnel to execute his scheme. He has gone massively conservative which doesn't breed success and it doesn't allow your personnel to get better. He needs to let it loose in this bowl game. There is no reason to think our offensive personnel is going to get appreciably better short term. He needs to stop running scared. If we don't see more imagination, I have to conclude that either I'm wrong and he doesn't have it to give, or he doesn't have the cajones for the job.

Ironically, let's target this qb for 2019!

https://www.google.com/amp/www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/25519933/smu-mustangs-qb-ben-hicks-transfer%3fplatform=amp

I think we have different definitions of talent/recruiting well. To me recruiting well is bringing in people who are capable of executing a scheme, performing within that scheme, and can fit well in the place they're going to school. It is not necessarily 'out-athleting' people as it were. There are teams that recruit whole years worth of players that cannot be developed and cannot perform acceptably (think the basement Oregon St., Edsall's Maryland, or Rutgers). That, to me, is recruiting poorly. But Yogi's argument is that Sonny just didn't recruit well at all defensively whereas I would argue that he recruited well enough to produce a good defense, but didn't have the proper people or management to develop and scheme with his talent. We can agree to disagree on this.

As for Sonny, look, I get it, you dislike him as a coach and the way he runs a program. But don't let your vitriol for him get in the way of the fact that he did do good and bad things that got us where we are today. As per player chemistry, people around the program at the time like FiatLux who have consistently stated that the team had a strong bond, but I'm pretty sure that there were outliers too. The team chemistry was probably not any worse or better than it is most years. And before you cite specific Dykes quotes, we have former players under Wilcox and Baldwin who called Cal coaches snakes. It's easy to paint a picture of problems on either side here. It's also disingenuous to discredit Dykes for inheriting Goff and his WR corps and getting them to perform well and for crediting Wilcox for taking Dykes's bad defense and getting them to perform well. Let's not pretend that this is a black and white scenario where Wilcox = good and Dykes = bad. As always it's more complicated than that.

For the record I believe the overall trajectory of the program is good and I think that we have the right people in charge. But I don't like oversimplifying the narrative. It's just lazy.

packawana said:

---

16 was good and that's where most of the current starters are drawn from. It gave us Bynum, Beck, Goode, Drayden, Weaver, and Kunasyck. Franklin was a decent corner for us and Paul has come up strong the last year on the outside. Note that we got that group to really come out around the time they were expected to (their third year) and that's even with a new scheme.

---

2016 was not good.

I won't even get into the question of whether guys that transfer out of your program, but played meaningful minutes should count in your favor or not. If they played meaningful minutes at all, they will count.

On that basis, guys who played meaningful minutes:

RobertsonE
Stovall (though I maintain he is massively overrated for the little bit he actually did)
Kunaszyk
Weaver
Veasy
Curhan
Beck
Drayden
Becker
Bynum
Paul
Goode
Williams
Duncan
Franklin

15 guys who have done something meaningful for the program. Looks good on its face. But then look at all the guys who did absolutely nothing.

Echols
Viramontes
Edmonds
Wallace
Yaghi
Laris
Kobayashi
Gamble
Clark
Gilliam
Juarez

That's darn near half the class.

2 out of his 4 stars did nothing. A third left the program. The fourth hasn't done very much for us. So his four star recruiting did nothing for us.

9 out of 17 3 stars did nothing.

The one saving grace of the class is that 4 out of 6 two star recruits have either made significant contributions or showed the talent to do so. The jury is out on Williams and Udeogu at this point.

So am I going to say Sonny Dykes did a good job on this class because he got well above expected results from the bottom end of his class while doing poorly with his 3 and 4 star recruits?

No, I am not.

Congrats William Jones on a fine education and playing for a kick ass defensive staff in a great city!

packawana said:

---

I think we have different definitions of talent/recruiting well. To me recruiting well is bringing in people who are capable of executing a scheme, performing within that scheme, and can fit well in the place they're going to school. It is not necessarily 'out-athleting' people as it were. There are teams that recruit whole years worth of players that cannot be developed and cannot perform acceptably (think the basement Oregon St., Edsall's Maryland, or Rutgers). That, to me, is recruiting poorly. But Yogi's argument is that Sonny just didn't recruit well at all defensively whereas I would argue that he recruited well enough to produce a good defense, but didn't have the proper people or management to develop and scheme with his talent. We can agree to disagree on this.

As for Sonny, look, I get it, you dislike him as a coach and the way he runs a program. But don't let your vitriol for him get in the way of the fact that he did do good and bad things that got us where we are today. As per player chemistry, people around the program at the time like FiatLux who have consistently stated that the team had a strong bond, but I'm pretty sure that there were outliers too. The team chemistry was probably not any worse or better than it is most years. And before you cite specific Dykes quotes, we have former players under Wilcox and Baldwin who called Cal coaches snakes. It's easy to paint a picture of problems on either side here. It's also disingenuous to discredit Dykes for inheriting Goff and his WR corps and getting them to perform well and for crediting Wilcox for taking Dykes's bad defense and getting them to perform well. Let's not pretend that this is a black and white scenario where Wilcox = good and Dykes = bad. As always it's more complicated than that.

For the record I believe the overall trajectory of the program is good and I think that we have the right people in charge. But I don't like oversimplifying the narrative. It's just lazy.

---

If you have a choice between a hamburger cooked by a chef with 3 Michelin stars and expensive steak cooked by a McDonald's fry cook, take the hamburger. And it isn't because the hamburger is better than the steak. I agree that judging recruiting doesn't end on signing day, but you can't just say that because a player plays well in one scheme for one coach that it is all on recruiting. Plenty of coaches take middling recruits and consistently overperform with them. It isn't because they are always finding diamonds in the rough. There aren't that many of those out there these days.

I never said Wilcox was all good. I like it so far, but his offense sucks.

Sonny was a terrible coach. Was he all bad? No. To paraphrase Billy Crystal, he was just mostly bad. He did some good things. He inherited Goff and some great receivers, but he had to develop them. What was becoming clearly questionable was whether he was able to recruit ENOUGH of his own guys to keep that up because the offensive personnel going into last year sucked. But one thing I will tell you about the good things Dykes did. None of them occurred on defense. None. Zero.

I'm not going to comment on Fiat Lux because I haven't seen his statements directly, but let's just say I have sources that would absolutely not agree with the sentiment you are attributing him and by and large the response from the players about Dykes leaving was in the words of the immortal Ariana Grande "Thank you, next."

And I'm going to say this about personnel and results. I'm not a football genius by any stretch, but I do pay attention. It was pretty clear when Dykes was hired that we had a dearth of talent in the upper classes but that we had a lot of talent in the frosh/soph ranks. The one benefit of that is those guys were going to get a ton of experience because they needed to play right away. The trajectory of Dykes career was obvious based on the personnel. It was always going to be Year 1 - struggle, Year 2 - decent, Year 3 - good, Year 4 - okay now we see what the coach has brought to the table. I expected a good coach to go 3-4 wins, 7-8 wins, 10-11 wins. I had optimism that Dykes could pull that off. It was clear after year 1 that overall he wasn't a good coach and that he wasn't filling enough of the holes in the lineup with his own people. He overperformed some on offense, but he disastrously underperformed on defense. So I downgraded my trajectory to 5-6 wins and 7-8 wins and then we drop off. Predicted it over and over and every year. Basically the trendline was the same, just lower. It was obvious. Dykes last year was set up to be an absolute disaster until Webb came because the only unit that was well stocked relied on having a QB that could get them the ball. Turned out we got Webb and did only poorly. Last year would have been like Holmoe's last year. The offensive personnel was going to be the weakest since Dykes took over. What stopped it from going that way was Wilcox overperforming on defense in a way that Dykes never would have and that making up for an underperformance on offense. But the personnel on that roster was not good.

My feeling is any coach should be able to take moderate personnel and put up an average to below average unit by year 2. We did not do that with our offense. That is an underperformance and it needs to be rectified. But no one predicted the defense based on the personnel.

See, that is the thing that I find ridiculous. People consistently have a view of the personnel going in and then change it based on the results. You know what? Normally that isn't because the personnel changed so much. It is because the coach overperformed or underperformed. Bottom line. Coaches do not get credit for the next coach's success.

As for the "oh you guys are all so unfair to Dykes" mantra - do you think Dykes gives a rat's ass what anyone here says or thinks about him. Do you think he has given one thought to Cal fans after Mike Williams let the door hit him on the ass? Why even go here. We have a coach. It ain't Dykes. He gets 100% of the credit and blame at this point. I have zero interest in blaming Dykes for any part of 2018, but if you are going to start crediting the guy, we need to get real about the personnel and why we are succeeding.