Another Preseason ACC Projection Shows the Uncertainty of Cal's 2026 Season

USA Today preseason ACC football projections released Tuesday follow a pattern, namely that no one seems to know how the Bears will fare this season.

The USA Today projections were released in advance of ACC Football Kickoff football media days, which begin Wednesday in Charlotte, North Carolina. Cal head coach Tosh Lupoi and three selected players – quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, running back Adam Mohammed and cornerback Ricky Fletcher – will be featured on Friday, the final day of the media event.

USA Today predicts Cal will finish 11th among the 17 ACC team in its preseason projections, which seems like another blind shot in the dark.

Preseason college football magazines have been all over the map in their predictions for Cal in 2026, and it’s for good reason.

Cal has a new head coach who has never been a head coach at any level. Both of Cal’s coordinators – offensive coordinator Jordan Somerville and defensive coordinator Michael Hutchings – are young coaches pulled from the NFL who have never been coordinators before.

Cal is loaded with transfers who will play a critical role in 2026, and it is virtually impossible to predict a starting lineup at this point beyond the fact that Sagapolutele will be the quarterback, Mohammed presumably will be the starting running back and wide receivers Ian Strong and Chase Hendricks will play prominent roles.

The defensive depth chart is completely up in the air.

The fact that Cal will face only nine ACC opponents in 2026 adds to the uncertainty, especially since Cal will not play preseason ACC favorite Miami or Louisville, which is expected to challenge for the conference title.

As reported earlier, the Phil Steele preseason guide was the least optimistic about Cal’s 2026 season, projecting the Bears to finish 14th.

However, Lindy’s and The Sporting News projected an eighth-place finish for Cal, a rather wide gap from what Phil Steele expects. Athlon was in the middle by projecting Cal to finish 10th, which is close to USA Today’s guess that Cal will wind up 11th.

None of those magazines had a single Cal player listed in its preseason first- or second-team all-ACC squad, and USA Today did not have any Cal players in its all-ACC team either. The only player who received honorable mention from USA Today was tight end Dorian Thomas. And it remains to be seen what Thomas’ status will be during the season with tight end Mason Mini coming off a surprisingly successful 2025 season for Cal.

There are a lot of promising signs for Cal’s 2026 season, but there are too many questions to be sure of anything.

It will be interesting to see where Cal is slotted in the ACC’s projected order-of-finish media poll, which is scheduled to be released several days after the ACC media days.

All this unpredictability about Cal’s upcoming season raises the interest in Cal’s September 5 opener against UCLA, another team with a new head coach (Bob Chesney) and an unpredictable 2026 season forecast. The game is a virtual tossup, with Cal a 1.5-point favorite at home as of July 14, according to FanDuel and DraftKings.

That game will reveal a lot about Cal’s offensive and defensive style and the Bears’ personnel.

Premature conclusions will be drawn based on that one performance, but it will provide a starting point to gauge the Tosh Lupoi era at Cal.

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