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Cal Football

What to Expect from Cal's 2025 Offense

July 4, 2025
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Overview:

There are new sheriffs in Berkeley running the Cal offense.  New Offensive Coordinator Bryan Harsin comes from long success on that side of the ball at Boise State before an ill fated turn as the head coach of Auburn.   Nick Rolovich, the senior offensive assistant for the Bears was the ultimate gun slinger as a QB, then an OC and as a head coach.

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Discussion from...

What to Expect from Cal's 2025 Offense

3,784 Views | 14 Replies | Last: 5 days ago by BearlyCareAnymore
bear2034
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What an awesome Premium article about Cal's new offense!
Too bad it had been sucking for the last 8 years!
Strykur
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"What to expect" = More BS
Rushinbear
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All new everything on O. I expect that they will keep it simple and try to run relatively few plays well.
Bobodeluxe
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Rushinbear said:

All new everything on O. I expect that they will keep it simple and try to run relatively few plays well.
If they had kept last year's offense, it would be "all new" to the present team members.
bluehenbear
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I mean, what did we see at the spring game? I have low expectations.
Rushinbear
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Bobodeluxe said:

Rushinbear said:

All new everything on O. I expect that they will keep it simple and try to run relatively few plays well.
If they had kept last year's offense, it would be "all new" to the present team members.
but, last year's offensive design and plays were lousy. Hopefully, the new coaches, with their own system (we hope) will have had a chance to recruit players better suited to it than the holdovers would have.

If the new system is more straight ahead power on the ground, the old group would not have been able to execute it, anyway. If the new system has WRs blocking more, the same can be said for the old WR group. Can the new group do it? Can't be much worse. 'Course, the new system may not have as many swing passes as the old.

People were clamoring for more passes to Ott, but I don't think that Ott recovered from his injury last year. Has he yet? His game depends on elusiveness, but we'll see if he has been able to recapture it. Maybe the UCLA OL and WRs can block for him.
Bobodeluxe
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That's a lot of maybe, but, maybe.
Grrrrah76
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Ott is heading to Oklahoma, not ucla. Javian Thomas has gone to ucla.
Rushinbear
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Grrrrah76 said:

Ott is heading to Oklahoma, not ucla. Javian Thomas has gone to ucla.
I stand corrected.
calumnus
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Rushinbear said:

Bobodeluxe said:

Rushinbear said:

All new everything on O. I expect that they will keep it simple and try to run relatively few plays well.
If they had kept last year's offense, it would be "all new" to the present team members.
but, last year's offensive design and plays were lousy. Hopefully, the new coaches, with their own system (we hope) will have had a chance to recruit players better suited to it than the holdovers would have.

If the new system is more straight ahead power on the ground, the old group would not have been able to execute it, anyway. If the new system has WRs blocking more, the same can be said for the old WR group. Can the new group do it? Can't be much worse. 'Course, the new system may not have as many swing passes as the old.

People were clamoring for more passes to Ott, but I don't think that Ott recovered from his injury last year. Has he yet? His game depends on elusiveness, but we'll see if he has been able to recapture it. Maybe the UCLA OL and WRs can block for him.


The swing passes to Ott last year were generally terribly telegraphed and Mendoza was often off target. Mendoza was best throwing 20 or 30 yards downfield between the hashes. Would have liked to see him play in a Spavital Air Raid offense again last year.

It will be interesting to see how Ott does at Oklahoma and how the Jet does at UCLA. The Jet was my favorite player and I'm going to watch UCLA games just to see how he does. Could have been a hometown star and central to our marketing, IMO.

We will see about Harsin. His first year at Auburn he had the #68 offense and that was with a team loaded with high level recruits and talent including junior QB Bo Nix (third in Heisman voting after transferring to Oregon and a 1st round draft pick Denver), Tank Bigsby (3rd round draft pick Jacksonvill) at RB, and two guys the Raiders signed: Shedrick Jackson at WR and John Shenker at TE.

Harsin had the #68 offense with Bo Nix and then Oregon had the #9 and #2 offense with Bo Nix.

We have to hope that the success he had at Boise State vs the Moutain West is more applicable.
Rushinbear
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calumnus said:

Rushinbear said:

Bobodeluxe said:

Rushinbear said:

All new everything on O. I expect that they will keep it simple and try to run relatively few plays well.
If they had kept last year's offense, it would be "all new" to the present team members.
but, last year's offensive design and plays were lousy. Hopefully, the new coaches, with their own system (we hope) will have had a chance to recruit players better suited to it than the holdovers would have.

If the new system is more straight ahead power on the ground, the old group would not have been able to execute it, anyway. If the new system has WRs blocking more, the same can be said for the old WR group. Can the new group do it? Can't be much worse. 'Course, the new system may not have as many swing passes as the old.

People were clamoring for more passes to Ott, but I don't think that Ott recovered from his injury last year. Has he yet? His game depends on elusiveness, but we'll see if he has been able to recapture it. Maybe the UCLA OL and WRs can block for him.


The swing passes to Ott last year were generally terribly telegraphed and Mendoza was often off target. Mendoza was best throwing 20 or 30 yards downfield between the hashes. Would have liked to see him play in a Spavital Air Raid offense again last year.

It will be interesting to see how Ott does at Oklahoma and how the Jet does at UCLA. The Jet was my favorite player and I'm going to watch UCLA games just to see how he does. Could have been a hometown star and central to our marketing, IMO.

We will see about Harsin. His first year at Auburn he had the #68 offense and that was with a team loaded with high level recruits and talent including junior QB Bo Nix (third in Heisman voting after transferring to Oregon and a 1st round draft pick Denver), Tank Bigsby (3rd round draft pick Jacksonvill) at RB, and two guys the Raiders signed: Shedrick Jackson at WR and John Shenker at TE.

Harsin had the #68 offense with Bo Nix and then Oregon had the #9 and #2 offense with Bo Nix.

We have to hope that the success he had at Boise State vs the Moutain West is more applicable.
I'm curious to see how Rolo will fit into all of this.
Grrrrah76
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All new coaches plus all new starters isn't a recipe for success. A fairly functional offense is about all one can hope for that can start to hit stride mid season. It still starts with the offensive line, which has been mediocre for years. The air seemed to go out of the program in the fourth quarter against Miami last year. So CAL.
Golden One
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As long as Wilcox is our head coach, we will continue to have a boring, ineffective offense. Offense tends to mirror t h e personality of the head coach.
BearlyCareAnymore
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Rushinbear said:

Bobodeluxe said:

Rushinbear said:

All new everything on O. I expect that they will keep it simple and try to run relatively few plays well.
If they had kept last year's offense, it would be "all new" to the present team members.
but, last year's offensive design and plays were lousy. Hopefully, the new coaches, with their own system (we hope) will have had a chance to recruit players better suited to it than the holdovers would have.

If the new system is more straight ahead power on the ground, the old group would not have been able to execute it, anyway. If the new system has WRs blocking more, the same can be said for the old WR group. Can the new group do it? Can't be much worse. 'Course, the new system may not have as many swing passes as the old.

People were clamoring for more passes to Ott, but I don't think that Ott recovered from his injury last year. Has he yet? His game depends on elusiveness, but we'll see if he has been able to recapture it. Maybe the UCLA OL and WRs can block for him.
I'm truly not understanding why the new coaching hires are seen as saviors by some that can overcome a mass exodus, beyond "Hey! I've heard of that guy!"

Harsin had an excellent record at Boise, taking over a team that finished no worse than second place, and usually first, for 15 straight years. He finished first 5 times out of 7 and second place the other two times.

He got a job at power conference team where he crashed and burned, got a reputation as a total hard ass, saw a mass exodus of players, was fired and was home eating cheese burgers when Cal called.

He came, and after Spring practice most of the key players on offense left.

Record seems very similar to a guy who took over a Nevada basketball team that finished first the year before, and proceeded to put up an excellent record there, finishing first 4 of 5 years and second the fifth, before moving on to a power conference team where he slowly proved mediocre, got a reputation as a hard ass, got fired after many years, and was home eating cheeseburgers when Cal called. Came in, talked to the players and suffered key personnel defections.

And I'm really not understanding why 28-27/15-17 at Hawaii and 5-6/4-3 at WSU is moving the needle

There are reasons to think Harsin could turn out really good and there are reasons to think it could be a disaster, and everything in between. I would feel better if Spring didn't happen, but it did.

Rolovich is just a special assistant, and his record doesn't indicate greatness in any case.
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