Cal football question: Has defense improved enough?
Cal believes unit, Pac-12’s worst last season, will hold up its end in 2015
BERKELEY — Even in the Pac-12 Conference, with its annual collection of top-flight quarterbacks and high-octane offenses, one football reality slammed Cal in the face last season: The best teams play defense.
The eight conference schools that allowed the fewest points played in bowl games. The other four stayed home.
Cal, which ranked last among that group, giving up 39.8 points per game, is determined to provide its offense a credible complement on defense in 2015.
“We’re going to have to play a lot better defense to have the kind of football team we want to have,” Cal coach Sonny Dykes said.
On the heels of going 1-11 and 5-7 in Dykes’ first two seasons, the Bears have designs on playing in their first bowl game since 2011. They believe their defense is deeper, more talented and more experienced.
No one is a bigger believer than quarterback Jared Goff, who says the push up front and play in the secondary are on a different level from a year ago.
“If they’re doing it well against us, I’d like to think they’ll do it
well against almost anybody,” said Goff, who directed the Pac-12’s secondmost potent offense a year ago. “It’s going to be fun to watch them make plays in a real live setting.”
Dykes understands the real tests begin Sept. 5, when the Bears open their season at home against Grambling State.
“It’s still early, but I’ve been pleased,” Dykes said. “The coverage is much tighter. I feel like we tackle better. It’s just experience. The guys keep getting better.”
There is nowhere to go but up after last year, when Cal allowed more passing yards (4,406) and touchdown passes (42) than any team in FBS history. The situation was desperate enough that Dykes used a coaching vacancy to hire a second defensive backs assistant, assigning veteran John Lovett to tutor cornerbacks. Certainly Cal knows it cannot count on winning 60-59, as it did last season at Washington State. That game marked the college debut of cornerback Darius White, a JC transfer who was injured on the first day of fall camp and had just one full practice under his belt when he took the field on the second series of the night.
WSU immediately lit him up with a 90-yard touchdown pass. “It was kind of bad for me,” said White, whose confidence never was fully restored all season.
But White also represents the Bears’ turnaround. The coaches say that from spring ball through now, White is perhaps the most improved player on the defense, and he has secured a starting job.
“Darius White is a totally different guy than he was,” defensive coordinator Art Kaufman said.
Added Dykes, “It’s a different team.”
Junior Hardy Nickerson says the improvement begins with the continuity of having Kaufman back for a second straight season as defensive coordinator.
“That’s a first for me at Cal,” said Nickerson, who had played for three coordinators in three previous seasons. “We already know the plays, we already know the scheme, what the coaches are trying to achieve. Now we can focus on getting better.”
Among a linebacker corps that goes nine deep, Nickerson, Jalen Jefferson and Michael Barton have started a total of 54 games, giving the Bears experience in the middle they couldn’t dream of last fall.
A year after the defense featured just one fifth-year senior, there are seven on that side of the ball, three of whom could be starters.
One of those is tackle Mustafa Jalil, a returning starter who will anchor a defensive front that otherwise has a new look. Kyle Kragen, back after missing last season because of mononucleosis, will start at one end, opposite DeVante Wilson, a JC transfer and one-time USC signee, who has emerged after an uneven spring.
The biggest revelation is tackle James Looney, a 6-foot-3, 280-pound sophomore transfer from Wake Forest, who combines strength and quickness with a playful off-field persona. Said White, “Looney’s like his name — Looney Tunes.”
“He’s something else,” Jefferson agreed. “I didn’t know he was going to be this good. He’s blowing stuff up, getting to the quarterback.”
The Bears were last in the Pac-12 with 16 sacks a year ago — only one by a defensive tackle — and hope that more pressure on the quarterback will benefit a secondary that appears improved but remains a question mark.
No group had the influx of talent that the defensive backfield enjoys with seven newcomers — five high school signees and two JC transfers. “There’s so many,” Barton said early in camp, “I can’t even keep track of their names.”
At safety, while awaiting the return to full health of projected starters Stefan McClure and Griffin Piatt, the coaches have been surprised by Luke Rubenzer, who played quarterback last season, and Damariay Drew, who was banished from the campus for a year while resolving a legal issue.
Kaufman, in his 34th season as a college coach, knows better than to make any bold predictions. But greater experience and depth, he says, should lead to confidence and execution.
White, his own confidence now regenerated, understands Cal fans will withhold judgment until the evidence is in.
“They’re probably holding their breath,” he said, “but come Sept. 5, they won’t be holding their breath no more.”