What is The Path From a 2-2 Start to the Season Cal Wants?

Cal still has eight games left on its football schedule, exactly two-third of its regular-season slate. The Bears play Saturday afternoon at UNLV in their final non-conference matchup before a run of seven straight ACC contests.

But in the wake of last Friday night’s 24-10 loss to visiting Clemson, we wonder about the Bears’ prospects for a successful season in coach Tosh Lupoi’s debut.

The historical reality is that over 100 previous seasons, Cal has opened with a 2-2 record — or worse — 52 times.

Among those, the Bears have wound up with a winning record just six times.

Six.

Yes, that’s over a full century of play.

Two of those six seasons came back-to-back and ended with 6-5 records.

In 1970, the Bears suffered road losses to Oregon, No. 2 Texas and Rice in their first four games. They finished strong, posting victories in four of their final five outings, including a 13-10 win at No.18 USC and a 22-14 victory at No. 11 Stanford.

In 1971, Cal started 2-2 with road losses to No. 7 Arkansas and No. 14 Ohio State. Turns out the Bears played five games against Top-25 opponents and lost all five of them by a combined margin of 158-30. They won each of their other six games.

It’s Cal’s other four seasons that started slowly but wound up more memorable than 6-5 that concern us here. They happened in 1958, 1975, 1990 and 2003, when each of those teams had something in common with the current Golden Bears.

Those teams had a special player at quarterback: Joe Kapp, Joe Roth, Mike Pawlawski and Aaron Rodgers.

Those four players were equipped with more than just strong throwing arms. They brought leadership, toughness and inspiration to their teammates.

The job ahead for this Cal team certainly doesn’t land only on the shoulders of Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele. Everyone on the roster needs to amp up his performance for the Bears to become more than we have seen so far, as wide receiver Chase Hendricks explains in the video at the top of this story.

But JKS is viewed as a special player and just how special remains to be seen. Can the sophomore left-hander help elevate his team just as Kapp, Roth, Pawlawski and Rodgers did?

Again, it’s not solely the responsibility of Sagapolutele to rescue Cal’s season. But his contributions, tangible and otherwise, will surely be a necessary ingredient.

Here are the four previous examples of Cal transforming a modest first chapter into a happy ending:

Joe Kapp | Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

1958: Coming up Roses

On the heels of going 1-9 the year before, there weren’t big expectations for the ’58 Bears. Those prospects didn’t improve after Cal opened with a 24-20 loss to Pacific, then a 32-12 defeat at No. 4 Michigan State.

But the Bears won seven of their next eight games, including by one point over Stanford, two over USC and three over UCLA and earned what remains their most recent Jan. 1 Rose Bowl appearance.

Kapp threw only two touchdown passes all season, but was the Bears’ leading rusher and chief distributor of grit while earning All-America honors from the Football Writers and Time magazine.

Cal lost 38-12 to Iowa in the Rose Bowl, but finished 7-4.

Joe Roth | Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

1975: From 0-2 to Pac-8 co-champs

The Bears opened 0-2, losing 34-27 at Colorado and 28-10 to No. 20 West Virginia. But their offense was just warming up.

Cal won four in a row, lost on the road to No. 19 UCLA, then won four more, capped by a 48-15 rout of Stanford in which All-America running back Chuck Muncie ran for four touchdowns and threw a fifth.

The Bears finished 8-3, co-champs of the Pac-8 and ranked 14th in the final AP Top-25. But the Rose Bowl invite went to UCLA, which upset No. 1 Ohio State in Pasadena.

Roth was the pilot of an offense that led the nation with an average of 458.5 yards per game. The junior quarterback led the Pac-8 with 1,880 passing yards and 14 touchdowns.

Mike Pawlawski | Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

1990: Cal ends an 11-year bowl drought

Cal was smartly patient with coach Bruce Snyder, but in Year 4 that paid off. The Bears started 2-2, including losses to No. 10 Miami and Washington State. They got things pointed in the right direction with four straight victories — scoring at least 30 points in all of them.

Russell White and Anthony Wallace each rushed for 1,000 yards and first-year starter Pawlawski completed nearly 60 percent of his passes for 2,069 yards and a conference-leading 17 TDs.

The Bears were rewarded with a berth in the Copper Bowl at Tucson, Arizona, where they topped Wyoming 17-15 to complete a 7-4-1 season and provide momentum for the 10-2 campaign that followed in 1991.

Aaron Rodgers | Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

2003: An all-time QB great is born

Rodgers only landed at Cal after coach Jeff Tedford couldn’t take his eyes off him while recruiting a tight end on his Butte College team. But the future Hall of Famer wasn’t greeted with instant success at Berkeley.

The Bears started the season 1-2 and Rodgers didn’t even get his first start until Week 4 against Illinois when he passed for 264 yards in a 31-24 victory. He also broke his finger in that game, the week before leading the Bears to an early lead in a triple-overtime win over eventual national champ USC.

Rodgers found his rhythm over the final three games, completing nearly 70 percent of his attempts for 1,101 yards and eight touchdowns in wins over Washington, Stanford and Virginia Tech.

Tyler Fredrickson’s 35-yard field goal with no time left clinched the 52-49 win over Tech at the Insight Bowl in Phoenix, giving Cal a final record of 8-6. But it was Rodgers’ star that was rising fast.

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