Cal Not Making Major Position Changes to Prepare for Possible Absences vs. ASU

No official word on the status of Saturday's Cal-ASU game as of Wednesday morning, but Bears are not planning to switch players' positions to fill spots vacated by contact testing

Any speculation that Cal might change the position of a lot of players in case an entire position group was unavailable for Satuday night's game at Arizona State apparently is unfounded.

As of Wednesday morning we still did not know whether Cal's game against ASU would be played, but Bears defensive coordinator Peter Sirmon said Wedneday that Cal is not making "wholesale" changes on defense to compensate for possible absences.

"We have not gone through a wholesale change of moving positions, of guys moving a position, we have not gone through a wholesale change of that," Sirmon said during a midday interview Wednesday. "The way we are preparing is the eventuality of getting the quarantined players back to play their natural positions, the ones they've been trained to play."

In other words, Sirmon is not going to take, say, a linebacker and try to make him a defensive lineman in one week to give the Bears enough defensive linemen to play ASU if a number of Cal defensive linemen are not available.

It has been widely reported that a Cal defensive lineman is the player who tested positive for COVID-19 last week and that all the Bears' defensive linemen are being quarnatined in contact-tracing protocol. It is the players' involvement in the contact tracing that caused the Washington-Cal game to be canceled and has put the ASU-Cal game in doubt.

It seems Sirmon is assuming that if the game is played, the defensive linemen in quarantine will be able to play Saturday.  That is a logical assumption since there seems to be no way that the game would be played if the quarantined defensive linemen could not play.

The one position change that might be significant is the move of sophomore Erick Nisich from the offensive line to the defensive line this week. He is listed as a third-string nose guard on this week's depth chart.  But the defensive line was already thin before the virus-related issues struck, so that may not be a result of the contact-tracing quarantine issue.

Sirmon is preparing as if Saturday's game will be played, and said he could not comment on whether he thought Saturday's game would be played.

It still leaves him with the chore of preparing a defense for a game it may or may not play.

"Our job as assistants is to get the kids and get the plan ready to go," said Sirmon, who expanded on that preparation in the videos below:

Sirmon said the players are handling all the ups and downs of the odd 2020 season pretty well.

If the Arizona State game is canceled, Cal would have no more than four games before the participants in the Pac-12 title game would be determined. That would make it difficult, but not impossible, for the Bears to qualify for a berth in that game. A game against Pac-12 North favorite Oregon would still be on the schedule for Dec. 5, and the 14-day quarantine period for the players in contact tracing would be over by next week, making them available for the Nov. 21 game against Oregon State.  That assumes no more virus-related issues occur.

Follow Jake Curtis of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53

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