Cal Football: Will Elijah Hicks Replace Evan Weaver as the Voice of the Team?

Hicks' position has changed, but he remains a passionate player willing to say what he thinks
Cal Football: Will Elijah Hicks Replace Evan Weaver as the Voice of the Team?
Cal Football: Will Elijah Hicks Replace Evan Weaver as the Voice of the Team? /

The media loved Evan Weaver. He was funny and self-effaing. He would say exactly what he was feeling after every game, sometimes wallowing in the dismay of a loss or getting giddy after a win. He was not afraid to say his team played poorly if that was the case, and he said so in no uncertain terms.

Weaver is gone now, but Elijah Hicks returns. Hicks is playing safety rather than cornerback this spring, but his personality has not changed. He could provide the voice for the team in 2020 like Weaver did in 2019.

You can still count on Hicks to call 'em as he sees 'em. He had a habit of trash-talking a bit as a cornerback, and seems to enjoy his time with the media, as you can tell in the video above.

He loves talking to his mates in the secondary, and still communicates all the time with last season's safeties, Jaylinn Hawkins and Ashtyn Davis.

Hicks can tell you all you want to know about the difference between playing cornerback and safety.

"At corner you're a lot more focused and zoned in on your task, on the hip and try to really lock this dude up," he said. "But at safety you got to have a big picture -- , a big picture of what's going on with both sides of the formation, reading run-pass keys a lot more often, ready to adjust and give a call when motion is happening, knowing the personnel when they come into the game.

"These are things corners pay attention to, but at safety this is everything every play every down, things that you got to be paying attention to. And I'm getting that down, and I'm loving it."

So can Hicks be the vocal leader and team spokesman that Weaver was?

"I'm just being me," Hick said. "I'm a passionate player. Now that I'm at safety and I get to interact with my players, my teammates a lot more, so if I seem them make a play I'm going to tell them that I like that. If they didn't I'm going to tell them how they can fix it. 

"I'm always passionate and juiced up, and always bringing that energy, so that's just me."

And every team needs one.


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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.