Cal Football: Report: Chase Garbers One of Five QBs Who Could Have Breakout Year
Cal quarterback Chase Garbers made dramatic improvement in 2019 after a mediocre redshirt freshman season in 2018. Now Cal hopes he can continue that improvement into 2020.
At least one media outlet expects Garbers to come up big in 2020, as he is one of five quarterbacks across the nation that could have a breakout season, according to rivals.com.
Here is what rivals.com said in an article written by Mike Farrell:
The skinny: Garbers committed to Cal in late June, soon after returning from a visit to Washington. He continued to receive interest from several top programs and dealt with a coaching change in Berkeley, but stayed true with the Golden Bears. In 2019, despite injuries that kept him out of several games, he passed for 1,772 yards, 14 touchdowns and only three interceptions. Expectations are high that a fully healthy Garbers can lead Cal to a big season this fall.
Farrell’s take: Garbers was a four-star out of high school with good size and a powerful running style. His arm was solid but his accuracy was up-and-down. He’s developed nicely so far and is making some excellent decisions. Garbers was always a smart decision-maker in high school and he’s starting to show more of that. His bowl game performance against Illinois was very impressive.
The biggest concern is whether Garbers can learn the new offensive system being installed by new offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave. Spring practice was cut short, so Garbers had only four spring practices with the new offense as it was being phased in.
So Garbers undoubtedly will study the new offense via film and discussion with coaches, but the valuable time on the field may be lost.
As we have noted many times here, Cal was 7-0 in 2019 in games in which Garbers played more than one half. Of course, there's no way of knowing whether the Golden Bears would have won the games against the two best teams in the Pac-12 -- Utah and Oregon -- if Garbers had played.
In case you are interested, the other four quarterbacks that Farrell listed were Sam Hartman of Wake Forest, Michael Penix Jr. of Indiana, Spencer Rattler of Oklahoma and Zac Thomas of Appalachian State.
Here is Garbers talking about the new offense after one of the early spring practices:
Here is Garbers (No. 7, sleeves rolled up) and other quarterbacks going through spring drills. Devon Modster (6), Spencer Brasch (13), Robby Rowell (15) and early enrollee freshman Jaden Casey (18) are the other quarterbacks:
