QB Chase Garbers Comfortable Being the Face of Cal Football
Chase Garbers is 22 year old. He graduated from Cal in May and is in a graduate certificate program in business organization management. He has been Cal’s starting quarterback since the seventh game of the 2018 season, when he was a redshirt freshman.
Garbers is comfortable and expansive with the media, in sharp contrast to the laconic, guarded person he was in front of cameras and reporters as a freshman.
“Comes with experience,” he said Tuesday. “Night and day difference from where I was four years ago.”
Garbers’ picture accompanies every advertisement for Cal football tickets.
Chase Garbers is, quite simply, the face of Cal football at the moment. He’s comfortable with that and seems mature enough to handle it.
“That definitely comes with the territory of being the starting quarterback,” he said.
His outstanding play in the final four games of the 2019 season, when Cal ended a nine-game losing streak to Stanford, was the reason Cal finished that season 8-5 and brought high expectations for him and the Bears in 2020.
Garbers’ so-so play in 2020 was part of the reason Cal finished a disappointing 1-3 last season, and why Garbers is getting little preseason hype this year and why the Bears are not expected to contend for a Pac-12 title.
Garbers knows that Cal’s success this year will be tied directly to his success.
“For any team to be successful, the quarterback play has to be pretty dominant,” he said.
Everyone has to do his part, as Garbers notes, but it’s no coincidence that the best college football teams also have the best quarterbacks.
The prevailing theory is that the pandemic, which limited Cal’s practice time in the new offense installed by offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave, had a negative impact on Garbers and the Bears’ offense last season. Cal finished 11th in the Pac-12 in points per game last season after finishing last in scoring each of the two previous seasons. Garbers was ninth in the conference in passer rating.
There are no such limitations this year. Forced to scale down the offensive playbook last year, Musgrave is putting it all in this year.
“It’s bigger,” Garber said of the playbook. “He really opened up the playbook for us, going back to his days in the NFL. It’s a fun playbook to be a part of.”
Asked whether the playbook is twice as big as last season, Garbers said, “It’s a lot bigger. I couldn’t give you a multiple, but it’s a lot bigger.”
Musgrave claims Garbers is better this season.
“More confident,” Musgrave said of Garbers. “He’s had more time on task with our system and our language after four games, so he’s four games ahead of where he was last year.”
The biggest fear among Cal fans is a Garbers injury. They saw the Bears’ 2019 title chances die when he missed four and half games in the middle of that season with a broken collarbone suffered when he scrambled out of the pocket.
Musgrave trusts Garbers knows when to get down and when to get out of bounds when he scrambles.
“His judgment is impeccable,” Musgrave said.
Garbers is in his fifth season in the Cal program and is entering his fourth season as a starter. But because the 2020 season did not count against players’ eligibility, he will have the option for returning to Cal for a sixth year in 2022.
“I can come back for a sixth year,” he said. “Definitely haven’t thought about it. Not looking too far in the future, just worried about this season.”
Garbers’ performance this season will determine whether he is in position to enter the 2022 NFL draft. If he does so, it would suggest Cal has had a pretty good 2021 season.
Follow Jake Curtis of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53
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