Energetic Reading of Cal Football - 2017 is Going to Suck

So I thought I’d have some fun and do an energy reading of the Cal Football team. (Cal being by alma mater, and I have been a fan through thick and thin for more years than I'd like to admit.)

I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is Cal’s new coach Justin Wilcox is a good hire.  He and his assistants will be an improvement over the previous set of coaches and things will get better.  Wilcox will have success at Cal, he will have winning seasons, bowls and even get the Axe back from rival Stanford.

The bad news is none of that will happen this year.

In fact, 2017 Cal Football will play noticeably worse than 2016.  They will win fewer games and be less competitive in their losses.  In short, the team is going to look bad with a few flashes of good play and a lot of questions in the offseason.  It’ll be a stressful year for Coach Wilcox and an unhappy one for Cal fans.

The energy in 2016 was that of an inverse pyramid.  The team had strong “upper chakra” energy and almost no root.  Thus the great academics, good offense and overall good “heart,” and really lousy defense.  The pyramid “crashed” at the end of 2016 and the root is not going to be strong enough to support much of an energetic foundation. 

This is a nice way of saying the team’s gonna look pretty bad in 2017.  Like, really bad.  The old unsustainable foundation had to be destroyed to build something stronger and more capable of winning week-in, week-out. 

More bad news: academics are going to slip under the new regime.  They will recover, but the next 12-14 months are going to be very stressful for the new coach.  It might even mean the end of Athletic Director Mike Williams’ tenure (which would certainly help football in the long term). In short, the season is going to end with a LOT of questions and more than a few people calling for the firing of Coach Wilcox and AD Williams. 

Wilcox will (probably) survive and (certainly) grow from the experience, but some players will probably not.  I sense the starting QB in 2017 will not be on the team in 2018.  Or if he is, he’s been demoted to third string or worse.

Here’s the breakdown:

Offense – will be poor in all aspects, with a mediocre running game and very inconsistent passing game.  Fans will criticize the starting QB from game one to the very end of the season and beyond.  But it’s not his fault.  The energetic root of a football team is line play, and the line play on both sides of the ball will be young and ungrounded.  This will make for a rough season for everyone.  Offensive Coordinator will be on the hot seat after the season, but will survive (barely).

Defense – Will have some flashes of brilliance, particularly in the secondary (we will see a lot of interceptions from this team), but fundamentally unsound.  Lots of bad penalties, poor judgment, missed assignments and poor execution will undo the progress in some aspects and numerically the defense will be not much better than 2016 (which is to say – awful).  Changes are happening under the surface, but nobody will be able to point to them in numbers.

Special Teams – Will actually be a solid aspect of the program.  Will play a big part in keeping some games close and allowing the team to scratch a few wins.  Some new talent will shine in kickoff and punt returns, punt blocks will be special and coverage will be good.  There will be a lot of discussion as to whether this was “dumb luck” or Wilcox is a “special teams guru.”

Game by Game predictions:

Date	Opponent	Predicted Outcome
Sat, Sep 2	@North Carolina	Close Loss
Sat, Sep 9	Weber St	Big Win
Sat,	@Ole Miss	Close Loss
16-Sep
Sat,	USC	Big Loss
23-Sep
Sat,	@Oregon	Big Win
30-Sep
Sat,	@Washington	Big Loss
7-Oct
Fri,	Wash St	Close Loss
13-Oct
Sat	Arizona	Big Loss
21-Oct
Sat,	@Colorado	Big Loss
28-Oct
Sat,	Oregon St	Close Win
4-Nov
Sat,	BYE
11-Nov
Sat,	@Stanford	Close Loss
18-Nov
Fri,	@UCLA	Big Loss
24-Nov
Season Total		3-9 with 5 blowout losses

 

So yah.  Not a lot of fun this year.  The first four games will actually give fans a lot of hope (except for USC, but everyone already expects that game to be ugly.  A blowout win over Oregon (who will be surprisingly bad) and two oh-so-close games against UNC (mediocre) and Ole Miss (bad, but they still win) will have fans thinking the season is turning a corner.  And it will – right into the toilet. Blowout loss to UW, a barnburner loss to WSU, then getting trounced by U of A (who will be surprisingly good) and Colorado (who will be very good) and there goes the season.  The Bears will eke out a win against Oregon State, lose a heartbreaker to Stanford (who will be surprisingly bad, but apparently not bad enough) and thorough trouncing at the hands of UCLA (who will be mediocre, but Cal will look like they don’t care), and think about 2018.

How did I arrive at these predictions?  Mostly pendulum testing.  Is this an accurate way to predict the future?  No.  If it were, I’d be a stock market billionaire.  It is good for assessing accuracy of energy readings now.  Trying to gauge the changes in relative energies between now and the various game times is far beyond my capacity.  So in other words, my predictions are about as accurate as anyone else’s at this point. 

Regardless of the actual number of wins, and against whom, the energetic trajectory seems pretty set.  The team has a very weak root and strong “head energy.”  This is not hard to see from looking at 2014-16 seasons where the team was great on offense, poor on defense and line play, and very good in the classroom.  The problem is, as with any energy, it’s unsustainable.  Energy is drawn from the root – it keeps us grounded and provides the foundation.  In order to strengthen the root of someone or something that is “top heavy,” you often end up shattering the entire energetic structure.  Which in football team terms means you’re probably going to have a dumpster fire season.

My assessment is it won’t take long for Wilcox to turn things around.  I see 2018 as being a winning season and from there a sustainable winning program with a firm foundation and a high ceiling – assuming Cal fans don’t get an itchy trigger finger.  There will be pretty strong pressure to “fire someone” after the 2017 season, especially after the poor academic reports come out.  My hope is they take that energy and direct it towards firing AD Williams (who isn't all that bad, but his loss won't be much of a blow, either), but I wouldn’t put it past Cal fans to do something dumb and fire a good coach before he has the chance to prove himself.  The energy of most Cal fans is at the level of Trump-Deranged "#resistance" people (which unfortunately most are), which is to say a toxic mess.  Makes it hard to create a successful program.  Thus, Cal.

My advice to Cal fans – find something else to do on Saturdays this fall.  Just pretend the season was cancelled and come back in 2018.  (Oh and, seriously, get off your crack addiction to politics and hating everyone who disagrees with your opinions. Get a real hobby, because you're only hurting yourselves.)