Cal Football: 2019 Season Following Same Path as Past Two Seasons
Streaks and trends are for the media and fans, while coaches and players are better off ignoring them, but it’s impossible for those of us on the outside to dismiss the eerie similarities of Justin Wilcox’s first three seasons as Cal’s head coach.
Maybe it's just concidence, and maybe it's just the way the schedule fell all three seasons. But it's interesting just the same. And as you will see later, the Bears would now like the similarities to continue through this weekend.
Here's how things have gone under Wilcox.
Cal won its first three games in Wilcox’s first season, in 2017, then lost three in a row. The Bears started the next season with three wins, with a nice road win over BYU in the second game. Cal earned a No. 24 national ranking and promptly lost three straight.
This season Cal (4-3, 1-3 Pac-12) won its first four games, and that included a road win over then-No. 14 Washington in the second game. That season-opening run gave the Bears a No. 15 national ranking, but they have since lost three consecutive games with a tough road game against No. 12 Utah looming Saturday night.
This year’s losing streak coincides with the absence of quarterback Chase Garbers, who is expected to return sometime this season.
But if the trends of the past two years are an indication, Cal may be headed for an upswing.
Cal upset eighth-ranked Washington State 37-3 to end its losing streak in 2017, and the Bears dominated Oregon State in Corvallis 49-7 to stop its skid last season.
Can the Bears do something similar in Salt Lake City?
Well, the Bears probably would have to pull off the upset with a third-string freshman quarterback who has never started a college game, not to mention a college game at night in cold Salt Lake City against a nationally-ranked team that has one of the best defenses in the country. Devon Modster, who has started the past two games at quarterback for Cal, has not been ruled out for the game, but it is looking more and more as though freshman quarterback Spencer Brasch will make his first collegiate start Saturday.
That will make it more difficult for Cal to duplicate the trends established the past two years.
Wilcox does not subscribe to the trends the media likes to point out.
“Every game is unique to itself,” he said in the video. “We don’t talk about that. I know you guys [in the media] want to and I understand that. It fits an easy narrative. I understand that, but we don’t talk about it like that. Whether we’ve won them all, lost them all, we’re going to approach it the same way.”
Nor does the knowledge of how the Bears ended those streaks the past two years provide any mental advantage this year.
“If we need narratives about losing streaks and those type of things, then we’ve probably got the wrong people,” Wilcox said.
He’s right, of course. But we in the media like to point out interesting little trends that may or may not matter.
