Cal Football: Evan Weaver on His 173 Tackles This Season -- `Nothing Amazes Me'
One-hundred-seventy-three.
That's the number of tackles Cal senior linebacker Evan Weaver has accumulated in 12 games this season. It's a staggering number that leads the nation and works out to 14.4 per game.
Asked this week if the number 173 amazes him, Weaver scoffed at the notion.
"No . . . it's pretty cool, though," he said. "It doesn't really amaze me. Nothing really amazes me. You've really got to do some wild stuff to amaze me.
"After walking around this campus for four years, nothing amazes me anymore. Three years ago, maybe. Numbers don't really amaze me.
A consensus All-American, Weaver enters next Monday's Redbox Bowl against Illinois at Santa Clara needing 21 more tackles to eclipse the all-time single-season NCAA record of 193, set by Lawrence Flugence of Texas Tech in 2002.
"I told the guys on defense, `Just hold 'em up but let 'em inch forward a little bit so they don't blow the whistle and I can come over and get a little assist,' " Weaver said with a smile. "We'll see if that game plan actually gets put into fruition. Probably not . . . I hope it does."
If collecting 21 tackles in a single game sounds outlandish, remember that Weaver has done that three times this season. He had 21 vs. Oregon State and 22 each vs. Ole Miss and Washington.
Weaver's total of 173 tackles broke Hardy Nickerson's single-season Cal record of 167, set in 1985. He has 26 more tackles than anyone else in FBS, although it's interesting that No. 2 this year is Illinois senior Dele Harding with 147.
Weaver is currently tied for ninth on the all-time NCAA single-season list. He needs just four tackles to move ahead of Bay Area native Ben Burr-Kirven, who set the Pac-12 Conference record of 176 last season at Washington.
