By 
If the firewood under Tosh Lupoi's seat hadn't caught a spark already, it's certainly begun to smoke.
As Cal football prepares to navigate the last three games of what's been a disappointing season (3-6, 2-4 ACC) – a stretch that could very well determine the direction of the program, as well as the first-year head coach's tenure in Berkeley – general manager Ron Rivera lit a matchstick on the KNBR airwaves, setting the stakes for the final month.
"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 on Thursday on the "Murph & Markus Show" amidst the Bears' bye week. "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."
"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. 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."
In just 60 seconds on the radio, Rivera laid out the terms of Cal's season in a nutshell. The Bears had hype that they didn't live up to. The Bears have taken their lumps through growing pains, but have little to show for it. And the Bears will have their opportunities to demonstrate they've become a stronger team, with a winnable 3-game slate against Virginia, Stanford and Pitt that can grant them bowl eligibility if they run the table.
But as Rivera intimated, a chunk of the fiasco Cal finds itself in – a loss away from no bowl game, with a flimsy case to present to star quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele as to why he should return next year – lands on how Lupoi has guided the Bears.
To recap: Cal ranks 132nd in the country in expected points added per play (-0.23), 132nd in offensive EPA/play (-0.13), and 93rd in defensive EPA/play according to Game on Paper, with only the latter being marginally better than the 2025 Bears. In its six losses, Cal has been outscored 239-102 and a combined 120-41 in the second halves of those games. The Bears rank second to last in penalties per game (9.1) and dead last in penalty yards per game (84.8).
It's not just that they're lacking in multiple categories – some of that happens naturally in the first year of a new era. It's how they've arrived at this low point.
From hiring Jordan Somerville as the offensive coordinator, despite his utter lack of playcalling experience, and rolling with him till midway through the Week 5 UNLV loss, to confounding a problematic offense by benching Sagapolutele for Jackson Brousseau against Wake Forest, Lupoi has made a number of questionable decisions.
Then there's Cal's transfer portal class, which has underwhelmed despite a haul that ranked 14th by 247Sports. Although the Bears' defensive transfers such as Kingston Lopa, AJ Tuitele, and Kamar Mothdi have modestly surpassed expectations, there have been few bright spots from the offensive additions. Wide receiver Ian Strong's underproduced. Running back Adam Mohammed has missed a chunk of time after a solid start. Tight end Dorian Thomas has two catches and has barely seen the field, a disaster given the sizable amount of NIL money they invested in him.
This all puts Lupoi and Cal in odd territory. Any idea of firing the first-year head coach is complicated by a termination clause in his $22.6 million contract that would net him a buyout of 80% of his four-year deal. In other words, if Cal were to give him the axe, it would blunt its chance of making another high-profile coaching hire in the immediate future. That, along with Rivera showing understanding to the growing pains of a rookie head coach, would appear to give Lupoi some leeway.
At the same time, Lupoi's answers to how Cal can things around have done little to inspire hope.
When asked about their inability to clean up the penalties, he has emphasized that they're working on, explaining how they're practicing with oven mitts and boxing gloves, only to show little to no improvement.
When describing the second-half nightmares, Lupoi has offered little explanation other than saying after the NC State loss that Cal doesn't make "a whole bunch of adjustments to fix a lot of dramatic errors" when they're winning or tied going into halftime.
Lupoi speaks in absolutes about how he and the program are going to "work their tails off" to dig themselves out of this hole. Absolutes that just haven't really materialized.
"I'm not going to give up, I can promise you that," Lupoi told reporters after falling to NC State. "Fighting my ass off .. to find any possible solution."
Rivera is not immune from scrutiny, either. Lupoi was Rivera's hire. Rivera had the power to overrule Lupoi's coordinator hires. And Rivera is the one responsible for the allocation of Cal's NIL resources, which hasn't brought much return on investment.
All of which sets the stage for this final month of the season.
"We've got to get this foundation put down; we've got to show that we have solid roots in the ground, we are ready to go forward," Rivera said on KNBR. "Then we can hit the recruiting trail being able to point to the direction, saying, ‘Look, we're heading north. We're doing the things that we need to do. We're putting the players in position, so let's roll.' And that's what we have to do."
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This article originally published at Tosh Lupoi's seat heating up as Cal prepares for crucial stretch of football.
https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/tosh-lupois-seat-heating-cal-214129980.html
