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Cal Football
The Five Big Questions facing Cal Football in 2025
There’s never been a season more difficult to project during the Justin Wilcox era than this year. On paper, a cakewalk of a schedule, a huge amount of staff and roster turnover with Cal’s best four offensive players leaving via the portal and four defensive stalwarts leaving for the NFL. One can easily see the staff being improved and a slew of solid, experienced if not hugely talented reinforcements joining the team leading the team to relative success. Regardless of how bullish or bearish one feels, there are five crucial questions that must be answered for the team to win 8+ regular season games.
The Questions:
1.). Justin Wilcox: Is Cal going to get the very best Justin Wilcox, a coach who now has his most accomplished staff, with a new boss who understands football and wants him to succeed, and an opportunity to do what he does best as the de facto DC of the team? He looked awfully relaxed this Spring, and a relaxed Coach Wilcox could well be a much better head coach.
Or is he the Justin Wilcox we’ve seen for eight seasons? A smart, high character teacher and leader who always seems to find a reason not to do all that is truly required to create a winning program. Bad staff hires, not replacing coaches who are not succeeding in a timely manner, not pushing hard enough on the administration to get the support he needs, and in game coaching that too often seems to be about trying not to lose and never seeming to provide his team with enough passion and fire.
The single biggest correlation of success in College Football is the head coach. Justin’s resume suggests this team will finish between 5 and 7 wins despite the schedule. Has he grown and has the support around him, set him up for success? That’s the biggest question facing the 2025 Bears.
2.). Will Cal get solid Quarterback play? You have to have it to win in college football and the Bears had good enough QB play in 2024 to do so yet it’s less clear heading into 2025. Devin Brown’s time in Ohio State suggests he’s not elite, but whether he’s solid is TBD. His first Spring in Berkeley did not provide a clear answer.
True Freshman don’t often help teams win 9+ games, but it can happen and those that do often have resumes similar to JKS. 5 star recruiting accolades, a big arm, a poised demeanor and otherworld accuracy are often the traits needed for an 18 year old to make it happen in their first year in college. And those are certainly part of Jaron Keawe Sagapolutele’s toolbox. On the other hand, he played in a highly simplified high school offense and his fundamentals are awfully raw.
OC Bryan Harsin and Special Assistant Nick Rolovich have often been cited as QB whisperers and they will need to prove that’s true to get one or both of the above players to avoid bad mistakes, make the easy throws and when required make big plays.
3.) Will the offensive line make a big jump? It’s not in the least a stretch to say that had Cal had simply average OL play in 2024, the team would have won 9 or more regular season games. The group was consistently bad, offering very few running lanes and giving up pressure, sacks and TFLs like they were a charitable organization for the betterment of opposing defenses.
In 2025, the group has a dynamic young coach in Famika Anae who is coming off a tremendous year in New Mexico and a host of new players, almost all of whom were starters in the previous stops with a solid level of success. There are some promising returners as well and this Spring, the unit looked improved, albeit with plenty of room still to grow.
Given the offensive skill talent is not obviously in the top half of the ACC, the success of the offense is likely to come down to how well the OL plays. That’s particularly true given Bryan Harsin’s power running and vertical passing game background.
4.). Is there enough top tier talent in the two deeps? Over the past eight years, no one is going to mistake Cal’s roster for Ohio State’s or Alabama’s. That said, the transfer portal has been good for the Bears and a handful of home grown HS recruits have flourished. Last year saw four Cal defensive players drafted and 2025 looked to be the season where something similar would happen on Offense as Mendoza, Endries and Ott were consensus projected 2026 draft selections. Alas, those three along with three other talented offensive players (Thomas, Hunter and Martin) decided to take their talents elsewhere. The replenishments in this years portal are down a notch in terms of rankings and there’s a real question as to just how talented the 2025 version of the Bears will be.
Cal has plenty of players with impressive HS recruiting resumes on the roster and quite a few transfers with solid if not better production at the Group of 5 and FCS level. Depth would appear to be a strength, yet the question remains whether there is enough top tier talent left for the Bears to take advantage of their schedule.
5.). Can the Bears Special Teams stop being so “special”?
The last few seasons, no unit on the team has better embodied the notion of finding a way to lose more than Cal’s Special Teams group. While there have been aspects that have been solid including punting and last year, the Kickoff team, for the most part, this group has failed to do the easy and expected.
Placekicking has been particularly atrocious, and arguably cost Cal three games in 2024. That unit has clearly had talent and often pedigree, yet has not been able to find its confidence and consistency. In 2025, Cal will have to break in a new longsnapper, punter, placekicker and KO specialist. There are new sheriffs in town to lead the group including a new PK coach and that may well be the tonic the Bears need.
Given the caliber of opponent Cal will face and Wilcox’s propensity to play close games, the fate of the 2025 team could well come down to the effectiveness of its Special Teams play.
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