Cal Football: It's Only April 5, But Justin Wilcox Says The Urgency to Improve Never Ends

The Bears' season opener at North Texas was just 150 days away as of Wednesday.

Cal coach Justin Wilcox isn’t exactly counting the days until the Bears’ season opener at North Texas on Sept. 2. But he has a strong sense of just how soon that will arrive.

For the record, the Bears tackle the Mean Green exactly 150 days from Wednesday, when they began the second half of their spring workouts.

“There’s always that sense of urgency,” Wilcox says in the video at the top of this story. “The magic to all this is you feel that each and every day as a player, as a coach. Making the most of those so you’re not wasting a rep or a period of practice is something we always talk about. They generally do a really, really good job of that.”

Cal, determined to change course after a 4-8 season in 2022 that was the program’s third straight losing season, returns to Memorial Stadium on Friday and Saturday. The Bears then practice Monday, Wednesday and Friday of next week before their Spring Showcase scrimmage event on Saturday, April 15.

For Wilcox, the emphasis is that every moment adds up to the finished product the Bears hope to become next season. And it probably feels like there just aren’t enough chances in the meantime to get it all done.

“All this is part of it. This next week and a half is critical,” he said. “The (off-season) conditioning and summer workouts, then those summer meetings and, obviously, fall camp.

“It’ll happen quickly. But each of these moments we’re together, anytime you have a chance to be out here as a team, you’ve got to take full advantage of that.”

Wednesday’s first workout following spring break brought good effort and focus but was less than satisfying for Wilcox.

“Coming off of a little longer break like that there’s going to be a little transition back to the physical part. The want-to, all that was good,” Wilcox says in the video above. “But we’re going to need to look a little bit quicker on Friday. We will.”

The two-hour session featured a lot of red-zone work and exposed some persistent issues.

“I thought the offense did a good job of putting the ball in the end zone, which was great,” he said. “We had a couple turnovers, which we need to clean up. We’ve got to protect the football better . . . always but especially in the red zone. And defensively, just focusing on forcing field goals or getting fourth-down stops.”

Cover photo of Cal coach Justin Wilcox

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo