Zhorn96

He has been an OC in the past and had a rep since he coached at SC and UW... both fan bases were delighted when he left. Started at Cal as QB coach if I remember right... dicey. Shifted to TEs... meh. You’d hope he’d have decent NW or Poly connections for recruiting... meh. Hard. Pass. Cal’s total assistant pool is under $4m I think and $400k for TE coach grates.

Hahahahahaha oh my fucking god no. Cal fans would do backflips to get him out of town. So so recruiter, so so coach, so so many mehs. On the plus side, he’d be cheap, I think he makes $400k or so at Cal. jesus, whoever suggested that should punch themselves in the face

DeRuyter would be a vast improvement over Sirmon from a pure DC perspective... but Texas can do better than either. DeRuyter is an excellent playcaller and runs a solid 3-4 D. He, along with Becton and Wilcox, turned the pile of steaming dogshit left by Sonny Dykes into a functional defense in 1 year and a pretty salty, if marginally talented defense in 2 years. Problem with TDR is that he doesn’t recruit for shit. He doesn’t like it, he’s not very good at it... it’s one of the reasons why Wilcox wanted to ease him out. Sirmon is an outstanding LB coach... look at what he did with Evan Weaver and Jordan Kunasyk before that. The TDR system means your ILBs get tackles and those 2 LBs piled up 160-180 a year. But he has a shit rep as a play caller. Failed at Louisville and at Mississippi State. As I said previously, he and Wilcox are as tight as they come. They played together at Oregon, they coached together numerous times, their families are basically one extended unit... Sirmon is a good recruiter but not a world beater. He recruits the Northwest for Cal and has pulled some really solid guys. But does Texas need to dip into Washington? Nope... there are only a couple guys a year they might want so can’t imagine it would be worth it. Sirmon transitioned to play calling this season but Cal only got 4 games due to COVID... small sample size and not terrible but nothing special... Texas needs to move on from any thoughts on Sirmon. TDR would be a solid choice in the short term IMO but expect zero recruiting from him...

Harsh but fair in all seriousness, Cal's football culture under Wilcox is all about the OKGs "Our Kind of Guys". Smart, team oriented, love football and love smashing people in the face. No quitting. So maybe fewer high star guys but once they play hard and for each other. Becton drives a lot of that off the field and off season.

yup, thats it exactly

First post...Texas grad but I come from a Cal family and grew up in the Bay Area so I follow Cal and the Pac 12 closely. As I was wading through this post, I saw a bunch of Cal mentions. For those interested... Peter Sirmon has a lot of Sark connections but he is besties with Wilcox at Cal and their families are super tight. Wilcox pushed out Ted DeRuyter at DC so Sirmon could take over despite the excellent job TDR did. Sirmon is an excellent LB coach but is seriously meh as a DC Torre Becton is a fucking home run for Sark. That dude is a badass and is a big part of the culture at Cal. He takes no shit from the players and demands toughness, grit and accountability. No prima donnas allowed... Cal is short on talent but every team they play hurts afterwards. SC tried to poach him in '19 and he turned them down, not surprised he has been picked off, he is one of the best. Saw some questions on who Tosh Lupoi got to Cal. Basically, all the big names Cal got during his 4 years there ('08-11). Keenan Allen would be the headliner but there were a bunch of others. He also had Cal lined up for a monster class in '12. Cal didn't/doesnt pay and Sark picked him off to go to UW for an extra $150k. Story is, Tosh confirmed the deal in his car, walked into Shaq Thompson's house for an in home and before telling Jeff Tedford that he was leaving for UW, proceeded to trash Cal and poach Thompson to UW. Shaq was considered a Cal lock before that and Cal was in line for a top 5 or 6 class nationally that year before Lupoi jumped. It wouldve included Arik Armstead and 4 top 50 national players, 6 or 7 top 112. The class fell apart after that...they kept 2 of those dudes. re: Sark... I hope the alcoholism was why he was so incredibly mediocre at UW and SC because he was really average. Shit in game coach. Maybe he has learned and/or maybe the booze was the cause but he was pretty underwhelming before. And dont give him too much credit for turning UW into a 7 win team 2 years after they went 0fer... they have a ton of cash and always have had excellent facilities. Willingham sucked but they had some decent players... Anyways, just my 2 cents