UNC Scouting Report: The California Golden Bears

As part of our coverage during college football season, we are going to put together a scouting report for the North Carolina Tar Heels upcoming opponent.

For this week, we will spotlight the California Golden Bears who will come into Chapel Hill for the season opener on Saturday.

The Golden Bears enter the game with a brand new coaching staff, making the switch from Sonny Dykes to Justin Wilcox. The program announced the hiring of Wilcox in January, marking his first head coaching job.

But what will the Golden Bears bring on Saturday? Your guess is about as good as ours.

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UNC head coach Larry Fedora touched on facing a new staff on the opposing team for the second-straight season during his Monday presser and told the media that the Tar Heels staff is looking at tape from Wilcox’s previous stops as well as coordinators Beau Baldwin and Tim DeRuyter.

Both teams enter the game with a lot of question marks.  For Cal, they are looking to improve on the defensive side of the ball.

Defense

DeRuyter has installed a 3-4 defense that he carries over from his time at Fresno State and hopes to change things for the Golden Bears early.

The team returns eight starters from a defense that gave up 42.6 points per game, second-worst in college football in 2016. They struggled to stop opposing offenses from marching down the field, yielding 518 yards per game in total defense last season, ranking 125th in all of college football.

Yikes.

Cal’s secondary was plagued by injuries in 2016 but does return both Marloshawn Franklin and Darius Allensworth at cornerback. Safety Luke Rubenzer is also back, giving Cal three starters returning from 2016.

But the Golden Bears have some hope for a quick turnaround with DeRuyter and a defensive minded head coach in Wilcox. They have some experience coming back and a new  3-4 scheme might work out better for DeRuyter and his defense as they get their first test on Saturday.

The Golden Bears don’t know exactly who will start at quarterback for UNC just yet as Fedora has left all options open.

Plus, the Tar Heels offense is a big question mark going into the game. UNC losses 98 percent of their offensive production from a year ago.

The matchup to watch will be Cal’s secondary vs. UNC’s wide receivers who are a little inexperienced. The receiving core has plenty of question marks and is going up against an experienced Cal secondary.

Offense

On the offensive side of the ball Cal is led by Ross Bowers who was named the starting quarterback by Wilcox earlier in the week.

The redshirt sophomore will make his first career start on Saturday after redshirting in 2015 and sitting behind Davis Webb in 2016. He was a highly-touted recruit out of Washington and has a pretty good arm.

Baldwin brings in an offensive system that put up monster numbers at Eastern Washington in FCS. In his time with the Eagles, Baldwin’s offense averaged 401 passing yards per game.

But Bowers will face a tough UNC secondary that is arguably the strength of the team in his first start.

The Golden Bears will likely come out and try to throw it on the Tar Heels despite the talent in the secondary. With Bowers leading the offense, the Bears have a good chance to keep UNC’s defense on their toes and move the ball down the field.

With an inexperienced offensive line, the Golden Bears might struggle to run the ball. If they can’t run it, their offense will become even more predictable giving the advantage to UNC.

One Golden Bear to look out for…

Wide receiver Demetris Robertson has the chance to be a big difference maker in this game for the Golden Bears.

He’s the primary target for Bowers and the sophomore might be the most explosive player in the PAC-12.

Robertson is coming off a 2016 season in which he recorded 50 receptions for 767 yards and 7 touchdowns. He’s likely going to go up against senior M.J. Stewart who returns as one of UNC’s best players.

If Robertson can win off the line of scrimmage, he could cause some problems in the UNC secondary. The Tar Heels can’t lose sight of him and needs to make clean tackles when he catches the ball.

A difference maker..

Usually we’d go with a player for this but since the Golden Bears are from California, we will go with the travel distance.

The Golden Bears are traveling across the country from the West Coast all the way to the East Coast for the game. It will be a three hour time change for the team to open the season.

With both teams facing question marks entering the season, the time change could actually play a big factor in the game.

Next: UNC early opponent preview: Cal

Wilcox has already made one adjustment as the team is traveling a day early to get used to the time change. In 2012 they opened with a 9 a.m. Pacific start time against Ohio State and lost 35-28. They also split with Maryland and Minnesota in 2008 as part of 9 a.m. starts.

Will Cal be able to adjust to the time change?