Cal Football Thursday Zoom With Wilcox
With fall camp over and practice now closed to the public and media, Cal head coach Justin Wilcox met with local media via zoom today to field questions nine days from the season opener vs UC Davis.
Two of the biggest questions coming out of fall camp and heading into the season are the QB battle between returning starter Fernando Mendoza and senior portal transfer QB Chandler Rogers along with who will start the season on the offensive line after a couple of weeks of players rotating in and out with the first team.
Wilcox didn’t add any clarity as to who might start either position group but rather elaborated on what goes into the decision.
"Really like the quarterbacks and what they've done this camp," Wilcox noted. "Those three guys have gotten significant reps, probably upwards of 400-450, 500 each when you look at team (periods) and seven on seven. And I tell you what, all of them, starting with Fernando, have made huge strides. And we've got to keep them doing that.
"We don't have anything to announce right now, but Fernando, Chandler, CJ, all those guys have had really, really strong camps, and I think the thing I'm most excited about is just their decision making on where to go with the ball. The ball is going to the right spots. And I think there's always some things to work on, and each of them have specific things, but really pleased with the group overall."
The offensive line started fall camp with a fairly set lineup of OTs Nick Morrow and TJ Session, guards Sioape Vatikani and Bastian Swinney and center Matthew Wykoff and performed fairly consistently in the first week. But after Vatikani went down with a foot injury that could potentially sideline him early in the season or perhaps longer, the staff has rotated in portal transfer OL Will McDonald at guard and center, portal transfer OL Rush Reimer at guard and tackle and to a lesser degree, OTs Frederick WIlliams and Victor Stoffel as well as switching Swinney and Wykoff between guard and center.
Wilcox was asked how they balance finding out who’s best suited to start and be in the rotation vs building continuity and chemistry by choosing as early as possible to get the line on the same page heading into the season.
"Well, we think about that a lot, and it's balancing (the idea that) you want to have your best players on the field if something were to happen, because in a perfect world, five guys would line up to start fall camp, and if those are your best five, they play together throughout the entire season,” Wilcox said. “Unfortunately, as we all know, football is a physical game, and injuries occur so you want to make sure that when you have to sub somebody in, you're subbing in your next best player, and not always just your second team person at that position.
“So we do consider the chemistry aspect and can a guy learn multiple positions? And if he's a young player, is that too much for him or or not? And so we never want to, for lack of a better phrase, rob Peter to pay Paul. But we also want to make sure we got our five best players on the field. So we do consider it and Coach Bloesch does a good job of teaching those guys, and we'll have a really good rhythm throughout the week of getting the guys work together. But as I mentioned before, things happen in football, whether it's a guy goes down for a play or two, or needs a needs a series or a rack of plays to catch his breath, whatever it might be, you have to be able to play more than five guys, and finding those right five is an art more than it is a science."
Related:
Cal Football Fall Camp Practice 17
Cal Football Fall Camp Day 15 - Scrimmage #2