S.F. Examiner: Cal hopes newest hire ushers in era of tough football, beating rivals

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

Berkeley isn’t Tuscaloosa, or Ann Arbor. Cal is known for academics, not athletics. Then again, so is Stanford, and therein lies the challenge for the new guy with the Golden Bears, Justin Wilcox.

To win a game now and then from the Cardinal, to restore a sense of respectability to the football program, maybe even — to dream — make it to Pasadena on New Year’s Day.

Read the full story here.

©2017 The San Francisco Examiner

Cal coach: Easier to beat Grambling than USC

By Art Spander

BERKELEY, Calif. — The man is wonderfully forthright, which is to be admired, even if the results of his team’s last three football games are not. Cal won its opening five, which was both leading and misleading.

Now it’s on a losing streak.

Now the opponents are tough. “It’s easier to beat Grambling than USC,” affirmed head coach Sonny Dykes.

And the Golden Bears, indeed, beat Grambling 73-14 in their first game this 2015 season, then San Diego State 35-7, then — and these games were against better schools — Texas, Washington and Washington State. Up in the national rankings. A sense of satisfaction. Followed by disappointment.

Three consecutive defeats. Utah, UCLA and Saturday at Memorial Stadium, USC, the virtually unbeatable Trojans, with all that talent on the field, with all those band members in the stands, irritating and relentless in both cases. Rat-a-rat, rat-a-tat.

USC won again Saturday, 27-21. Not a rout, like two years ago when the score in Dykes’ first season as Cal coach was 62-38. A good game maybe. A close game certainly. But a 12^th straight loss for Cal for against USC and a first loss at home this season for the Bears.

Beautiful weather, a so-so crowd of 52,060, a rotten result for most. Again.

“We got all those turnovers earlier in the year,” reminded Dykes, who didn’t have to remind us that they came against lesser teams. “We just haven’t gotten them now. We couldn’t get USC’s offense off the field.”

There’s been chaos at USC this year: Steve Sarkisian removed as coach after reports of his drinking;  unhappiness with athletic director Pat Haden, who hired Sark, a 3-3 record after six games. But now that record is 5-3, the same as Cal’s, and with interim coach Clay Helton in control, the Trojans could run the table.

“They’ve got as good athletes,” said Dykes, “as anybody in the country.”

Those athletes bulled and powered and ran with spectacular efficiency at times Saturday. Trailing 7-0 in the opening minutes of the second quarter, second and nine at the Cal 13, USC did what any coach would love — blocked so well that literally no one touched Ronald Jones until he was into the end zone and the congratulatory pounding began. 

Those old NFL videos of Vince Lombardi talking about sealing off the defensive line? They came to life on this one.

Twelve in a row. There’s supposed to be a balance in college football. But USC-Cal is imbalanced. The team that started the season with takeaways, recovering fumbles and taking interceptions, on Saturday had all the giveaways, three turnovers (two Jared Goff interceptions and one fumble) to none for USC.

Dykes is an offensive specialist, but his offense Saturday hardly was special.

“I think we all are frustrated,” said Dykes. “We should be playing better.”

Oh yes, the shoulds and coulds and the might-haves, words of those who can’t quite get where they hoped to be. People look at how close they came to beating, say, Novak Djokovic or Jordan Spieth, or Ohio State or the Patriots or Warriors, and insist they should have done more. Dreamers.

As opposed to winners, who make the right play or the right shot or the big putt at the opportune time. Which USC did and Cal didn’t.

“We had them hemmed in third and one the end of the game,” Dykes said when USC had the ball on its own 42 with around two and a half minutes left. “I would have liked to have seen what would happen if we got them on the ground.”

But Tre Madden, seemingly trapped in his own backfield, broke free for 14 yards. First down. Last call. What he saw, what we saw, was Cal unable to stop USC when it was needed.

“I thought we played good defensively,” said Dykes. “They scored an offensive touchdown, and we let them get out on a couple of screens, but USC has some good players.

“Winning and losing has a lot to do with who you play. Our schedule has been backloaded the past two years. We have played some really good people this year, and we are trying to get to the point to where we can beat those really good people. Good teams are just harder to beat.”

Or as USC has been, impossible to beat.

Cal can't keep composure — or the football

By Art Spander

BERKELEY — So this was the year Cal had a chance against Stanford, the year the Golden Bears had a defense and had tenacity. What they didn’t have one play into the game was their starting strong safety.

What they often didn’t have after that was discipline. Or, more critically, the football.

The air shooshed out Saturday virtually as the balloon was inflated. All the excitement, the hopes, the possibilities, disappeared in moments.

An ejection. A rapid 10-point deficit. Dejection.

The sun came out above Memorial Stadium after a morning rain, but the day metaphorically was dreary for most of the less-than-capacity crowd of 56,483.

The Cardinal was too much for Cal, maybe not as much as 2013 when the score was 67-13, the most one-sided in the history of a series that now has reached 117 games, but plenty nevertheless.

The final this time was 38-17, and the way the Golden Bears played defense, made penalties and threw interceptions, you never felt Cal had a chance. Both teams entered with 5-5 records, but there was no question one was superior.

“Frustrating” was the primary word tossed around in the Cal post-game comments, followed by “disappointing.” No one expected the Cal people to be pleased. Yet the remarks are becoming litany, and for the faithful, the Old Blues as Cal alumni designate themselves, agony.

The game overall was a bewildering mix of mistakes and official video reviews. In the third quarter alone, Cal had three touchdowns overruled on three consecutive plays. But good teams overcome all that incidental stuff. Bad teams don’t.

Was it a shock that on the first play from scrimmage Cal strong safety Michael Lowe was penalized and ejected for what the official believed was “targeting,” driving his helmet into Stanford tight end Austin Hooper? Of course.

“In 20 years,” said Cal coach Sonny Dykes, “I have never seen something like that happen the first play of the game. I wish that something like that wouldn’t affect us as much as it did. It affected me, and I think it affected our players.”

Which tells you perhaps as much you need to know about Cal. It is an improving team but also a fragile team, working its way back from a 1-11 record in Dykes’ first season. One blow knocked it off kilter.   

Not that Stanford’s defense and a Cal offense, which lost four turnovers — against a team that only had nine takeaways all season — weren’t major factors.

“They are a physical team,” Dykes, painfully honest about his program and other programs, said about Stanford. “And they laid some pretty good hits on us. They did a nice job tipping a couple of passes, and you have to give them credit for that. We have to make sure we move the pocket and make space.

Starting quarterback Jared Goff threw a couple of those, which were tipped and picked. His alternate Luke Rubenzer also threw two interceptions. Running back Daniel Lasco fumbled near the goal line, Stanford recovering. And there you have part of the tale of self-destruction.

“Our kids really wanted to play well,” said Dykes. “We really wanted to play well as a coaching staff. Our fans wanted us to play well. We didn’t make a very good showing today, and I am really disappointed about that.”

Goff, the sophomore, broke his own single-season record for passing yards. He had 182 Saturday on a so-so 16-for-31 completion mark and now has totaled 3,580 for the season with a game left to play against Brigham Young.

“They’re playing Savannah State,” quipped Dykes. “Probably winning 120-0, getting their confidence.” (It was only 64-0, but his point was understood. BYU gets a lot of points. And the Bears give up a lot of points.)

Goff, said Dykes, didn’t have one of his better games. “When you face a good defense,” reminded Dykes, “you have a small margin for error. Five turnovers are pretty significant errors.”

And 113 yards in penalties (Stanford had 21) are no less significant.

“I am disappointed in the way we played,” said Dykes. “I anticipated us playing better football. It was a bit of a strange football game, and it certainly didn’t start the way we wanted it to start.”

It didn’t end the way they wanted either. Stanford has won the last five years, half a decade. Somehow, Cal has to find a way to keep the other team out of the end zone — Stanford’s Remound Wright tied a Big Game record with five touchdowns — and, no less importantly, find a way to keep its composure.

Stanford makes points, Cal makes promises

By Art Spander

STANFORD, Calif. — The figurative laundry list for Cal was as as big as Stanford’s point total, the largest by either team in the history of the Big Game, which has been held 116 times.

The Cardinal won this one, destroyed Cal in this one, embarrassed Cal in this one, 63-13, on a sparkling Saturday afternoon in late November.

Attendance was announced as a sellout of 50,424 at Stanford Stadium, although there were plenty of empty seats, perhaps tickets held by Cal fans who couldn’t bring themselves to view a mismatch greater than anybody imagined.

Sure, Stanford, 9-2 and headed for a bowl, whether it be Rose or Fiesta or something else, was a 32½-point favorite. But the eventual spread was 50 — OMG, 50 — and the Golden Bears, after losing starting quarterback Jared Goff with a shoulder separation, couldn’t score a single point after halftime.

It was understood Cal had no defense. The Bears were last in the Pac-12 in that category and then Saturday allowed Ty Montgomery to catch five touchdown passes and Stanford to gain 603 yards.

But supposedly Cal had an offense.

That supposition was disproved, Cal gaining only 383 yards and after the opening four minutes getting only two field goals.

After Cal (1-11) finished with an 11-loss season for the first time in a football history that goes back to the 19th century — yes, teams didn’t play 11 or 12 games until the last few years — head coach Sonny Dykes took the blame and then took a stand.

“My job is to get the team ready,” said Dykes, who was hired last December from Louisiana Tech, “and I clearly didn’t do a very good job.”

Someone tried to get Dykes to allude to the many injuries to Cal players during the season. He made an acknowledgement, then took the high road.

“Yeah,” he conceded, “I can find a bunch of excuses. It is what it is. You guys can look at the depth chart. That’s up to you guys (the media) to draw your own conclusion.

“I think we got a bright future. There’s some things we got to fix. But yeah, we’re going to work tomorrow and get them fixed. Actually we’re going to go to work (Saturday) night.”

After having been worked over by a Stanford team that even with a mammoth lead in the closing two minutes was throwing, backup quarterback Evan Crower hitting Francis Owusu for 14 yards and a touchdown with 1:51 remaining.

Asked if he thought Stanford, which was running up the score, was indeed running up the score, Dykes answered, “Not at all. That’s part of football. Our job is to stop it.”

They couldn’t. They couldn’t stop anything or anyone. In any game, other than one against Portland State, which Cal won 37-30.

Cal gave up 63 points to Stanford, 62 to USC, 55 to Oregon, 52 to Ohio State. 580 points overall in 12 games. Ridiculous.

When somebody wondered what Dykes would say to Cal partisans, he responded, “I don’t have much to say. I wish it was better. It’s on me. That’s all I can say.”

Not all. Visibly dismayed, Dykes promised improvement. Everywhere.

“Blocking,” he began, then halted. “Well, no, we’re going to learn to pick up our locker room. We’re going to learn how to go to class. We’re going to fix our graduation rates.”

Cal, it was disclosed earlier this month, had the worst graduation rate for football players of any school in the Pac-12 — maybe, for the highest-ranked public university in America by several polls, a greater shame than a 1-11 season.

“We’re going to appreciate being a Cal student,” continued Dykes, “be supportive of other Cal students.

“We’re going to get faster, stronger in the weight room. We’re going to get bigger and improve our diet. We’re going to be more committed to getting sleep, rest and recovery.”  

And then the two that actually might make a difference.

“We’re going to learn to play on offense and defense.”

Dykes pointed out he had been coaching for years, been “lucky to be successful,” at every level. Until this year, until a year that terminated with a rout by Cal’s cross-bay rival.

“Never seen anything like this,” said Dykes. He was referring generally to the season, but neither Cal nor Stanford fans had seen anything like Saturday. No team in the Big Game ever had scored more than 48 points. Now one has scored 63.

“I haven’t been a part of it,” sighed Dykes. “Obviously haven’t done a very good job dealing with it. It’s on me to figure out how to deal with it, and go from there.”

He knows the problem. The solution will not come quickly.

Cal coach: ‘I knew it wasn’t going to be all rainbows’

By Art Spander

BERKELEY — It was an interesting comment from Sonny Dykes, on the day of his 44th birthday, on the Saturday afternoon his Cal football team was beaten — no, embarrassed — by USC, 62-28, at home.

“I expected to walk out after halftime,” said Dykes, “and see nobody in the stands. The fans stayed. It was really inspiring.”

The first season at Cal for Dykes. An awful season at Cal for Dykes, a team with too many freshmen and not enough self-belief, a team lacking a defense and even now, after losing eight of its nine games, lacking experience.

The Trojans, always the curse of the Coast no matter how competent Stanford or Oregon or even UCLA become, had their own troubles early in the schedule. So athletic director Pat Haden changed coaches, ousted Lane Kiffin and replaced him for the rest of the season, at least, with Ed Orgeron.

USC again looked like USC, maybe not right but full of speed — the Trojans returned three punts for touchdowns Saturday, tying an NCAA record — and agility.

Cal looked like a lost cause, even after cutting an immediate 21-0 deficit to 21-14. At least to our vision. But Dykes saw something else, a future, and reasons for that future. He’s a realist, certainly. A 1-8 record is unacceptable, even if it is understandable.

He’s also an optimist.

“I knew when I took this job,” said the man who replaced Jeff Tedford, “it wasn’t going to be all rainbows and puppy tails. Did you watch Stanford beat Oregon (Thursday night)? Stanford had 15 seniors on defense. Of our top 44 players on offense and defense, we only had three seniors.”

Maybe the numbers are not specifically accurate. Maybe there are a couple more Cal players or fewer Stanford players, but the idea stands. Championships are won by veterans, athletes who know the whys and wherefores. Mistakes are made by freshmen.

“Experienced grown men win football games,” Dykes said for emphasis.

Fewer than two minutes into this football game, USC’s Nelson Agholor, a letterman last year, took a punt return 75 yards into the end zone. In the second quarter Josh Shaw would pick up a partially blocked punt and run a short 14 yards for a score; then, still in the second quarter, Agholor would return yet another punt for a touchdown, this run 93 yards.

“I’ve been dong this a long time,” said Dykes, “and that (punt coverage) has always been a strength of ours. Our team last year at Louisiana Tech led the entire nation in net punting. We start three practices every week with our punt returns. We’re using freshmen. At Louisiana Tech we had one freshman who played half a game, that’s all.”

There are no excuses in sports, even when excuses are allowable. If someone goes down, it’s next man up. Or next kid up. Dykes doesn’t want sympathy. Only perception, which from the reaction of the Cal fans who stayed to endure, he already has.

“We were forced to play a lot of young players before they were ready,” he said. “We were decimated by injuries. A young team, and we lost games early. We lost confidence. It’s OK. It’s been a tough year, but it’s going to pay off.

“They are going to get tougher and have been game tested. In a weird sort of way, the experience they have gotten this year and the hard luck will help our team respond faster.”

Cal has a freshman quarterback, of course, Jared Goff, although it could be argued that after nine games he’s almost a sophomore. The trouble is Goff hasn’t had the reassurance of success.

He’ll play well a few downs — he did throw three touchdown passes Saturday, two to Kenny Lawler, also a freshman — then sputter.

“We try not to look at the scoreboard too much,” said Goff. But looking at the scoreboard is what everyone else does, on television, at Memorial Stadium, from the flanks of Tightwad Hill.

The coaches and players rate progress. The rest of us judge results.

Goff threw for 288 yards, Cal gained 483 yards running and passing, not too far behind USC’s 499 yards. Then there were the three Trojan punt returns for touchdowns not included in that total.

It is defense where Cal has faltered most. The Bears were last in the Pac-12 in scoring defense before USC. Then they gave up 62 points more. 

“Hardy Nickerson went down early,” Dykes said about the starting middle linebacker — who is a freshman but also a star. “He makes all the (defensive) calls for us. We were down to one middle linebacker, Chad Whitener. We were trying to make contingency plans. We missed a lot of checks and rolled coverage the wrong way.

“But we are going to get this thing right. I feel more strongly about that right now then I did December 5 when I was hired.”