HoopDreams said:
Speaking of kickers, do we know who our starting kicker/punter will be?
Cal coaches are throwing the dice now to pick a kicker!??
As to Cal's first game, the big departure hit to UDub was Head Coach Petersen leaving
. Washington quickly and smartly hired a new head coach Jimmy Lake. Note, although being a head coach will be new to him, the team will not. He has been the Huskies defensive assistant coach for almost six years, so he knows the team.
The next big departure was QB Jacob Eason moving on to the NFL.
As I pointed out previously, Lake attempted to be Johnny-on-the-spot with a quick QB replacement. He thought he could immediately bring in flashy Wake Forest grad-transfer Jamie Newman, but alas, Jamie chose Georgia instead.
The above
oh-darn outcome look to leave UDub with a very young and inexperienced QB situation.
When spring practice started, the Huskies tried out three inexperienced scholarship signal callers: redshirt ****sophomore Jacob Sirmon (6-5, 234), redshirt ****freshman Dylan Morris (6-0, 196) and early enrollee ****freshman Ethan Garbers (6-3, 190) [you know who his brother is]. Of this group, only Sirmon has thrown a pass in mop-up duty last season...poor UDub, right?
Hold it! Bear sunshine pumpers don't bring out your forks and knives just yet. Word on Seattle streets was Coach Lake still might have a Plan B up his sleeve. Well, it turns out he did.
Coach Lake went to his Plan B and pulled in an experienced 6-2, 200 grad-transfer QB named Kevin Thomson from Sac State. I know most of you are saying "Sac State?"
You may think that he may not be good enough for the Huskies, but his performance stats indicate otherwise. Thomson was voted 2019 Big Sky's Conference offensive POY while taking Sac St. to an overall 9-4 record.
Last year, Thomson completed 265 of 450 passes (59%) for 3,216 yards and 27 touchdowns; granted, these stats may not completely impress in and of themselves, but more importantly, he showed that he's a running QB to be reckoned with in that he also rushed for 619 yards and a team-best 12 rushing TDs! He has close to 4.5 speed!
If some of you are still smirking thinking Thomson's commit is nothing for the Bears to worry about, think again.
Note, last season against common opponent UC Davis, Cal barely beat the Aggies 27 to 13 with Garbers at the helm, but note, Sac St. too similarly beat UC Davis 27 to 17 with Thomson. Garbers threw for a very commendable 238 yards and rushed for 18 more yards, but Thomson in the Hornets' game threw for 300 yards and rushed for 116 yards!
Whomever is QB, he should have plenty of Dawg targets to throw to, but for some reason, such hasn't been the case over the last two seasons. I mean, UDub has recruited well in that the Huskies' roster is dripping wet with **** WRs, but they tend to drop the ball a lot?
For example, their stellar receivers group dropped a nation-leading 52 passes in 2018.
Lake isn't putting up with this habit anymore; case in point, he's hired a new WR coach who has coached WRs at pass-crazy Boise State and Eastern Washington.
Needless to say, this has been good news for what many are calling the west's premier wide receiver class in 2020, that is, ****Jalen McMillan (6-2, 182), ****Rome Odunze (6-3, 205) and ** Sawyer Racanelli (6-2, 208).
(Sawyer is listed as ** because he missed his senior hs season due to injury, but it must be noted that as a sophomore and junior he led his HS to back-to-back Washington 2A State Championships in 2017 and 2018, eclipsing 1,000 receiving yards in each of his first three seasons, was named to the all-state team as a junior in 2018 and was just the fifth player in state history with 100 or more receptions in a season.)Sorry for dwelling on the above QB and WR intrigues, but everything else for the Huskies seems to be in a wait-and-see mode for the time being.
I mean, UDub should again have a fair to middling defense.
Washington returns nine defensive starters from the unit that defeated Boise State 38-7 in the 2019 Las Vegas Bowl and that finished 15th nationally in scoring defense, allowing 19.4 points per game. This unit will NOT be anchored by (6-3, 293) senior DL Onwuzurike, who was named to the All-Pac-12 first team in 2019 because about a month ago he opted to turn pro..
As for offense
, quien sabe? The Huskies have a rookie head coach and a rookie offensive coordinator, so no one can say anything for sure about what to expect from UDub but passing looks to be their game. Cal's DBs will definitely be tested early.