In his weekly appearance on local radio station KNBR on Thursday, Cal general manager Ron Rivera had frank comments about Tosh Lupoi's first season leading the Golden Bears.
“The biggest thing I can tell you guys is — again, I know expectations were very, very high, and I know there’s the comparison to UCLA, but the thing everybody’s gotta understand is UCLA brought in a current head coach that came and brought probably half of the team that he had that went to the playoff to begin with,” Rivera said, via SF Gate. “Tosh came in as a first-time head coach. He did bring a couple of inexperienced coordinators with him. Things didn’t work out the way we needed them to work out on offense."
After sleeping on a park bench to secure Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele's commitment for the 2026 season, Lupoi paired him with first-time offensive coordinator Jordan Somerville. The 30-year-old, who worked on the same Oregon staff as Lupoi for one season, had never been a coordinator and was the assistant quarterbacks coach for the Tampa Bay Bucs over the previous three seasons.
Fast forward to November: Cal ranks 121st in yards per play, 110th in scoring, and 137th in rushing, and JKS is 53rd in passing efficiency, down from 16th as a true freshman.
“He has bumped his head a lot. We have talked a lot, tried to give him a lot of advice, point him in the right direction. Some of it, he’s been very receptive, and other portions of it, he hasn’t. And it’s those things that sometimes you’ve gotta learn for yourself before you think, ‘Oh wow, this is it.’ But I’d like to continue to stress that this is a guy that’s learning, growing. But now it’s time," Rivera continued. "These last three games, hopefully four, the trajectory has to be going north. We have to show that we are growing, there has been some growth and development of our players, our team, and the culture is getting stronger. Those are all things that you have to have going forward.”
Cal is 3-6 on the year, 2-4 in ACC play, and each of the six losses have been varying degrees of ugly. The Bears were outscored 42-0 in the second half of a 59-20 loss at SMU two weeks ago, and were hammered 31-10 by an NC State team that had just fired its coach earlier in the week.
The Golden Bears are off this week before a return trip east to play Virginia on Nov. 14 before closing with rival Stanford and Pittsburgh at home. UVa has lost three straight and four of five; Stanford is 4-5 and has allowed 50-plus points in each of its last three losses; and Pitt just halted a 3-game losing skid by beating last-place Georgia Tech.
It's an open question what happens to Lupoi Cal doesn't finish 6-6, or at least a better-looking 4-8 or 5-7. Why the focus on Lupoi and not the GM who hired him?
That's a fair question, but not the one being asked right now.