California Football: Is offense good enough for Golden Bears to contend?

Golden Bears hope to have another stout defense in 2021

Justin Wilcox is one of the best defensive minds in football and Cal is used to retooling the defense under him and I expect them to be one of the best in the PAC-12 yet again.

The defensive line is going to be missing their top playmaker in Brett Johnson, who was in a car accident and had to have surgery and will miss the 2021 season.

Johnson will be missed upfront and they will be relying on Ethan Saunders, Aaron Maldonado, and JH Tevis to carry the D-line upfront. These guys are lacking experience and this might be the biggest question mark on the defense.

Someone that is not a question mark is linebacker Cameron Goode and he is one of the best linebackers in the country. Goode has had 27.5 TFL in his career, as well as a couple of pick sixes and he will be the top player on this Cal defense.

Goode is not the only solid linebacker on this defense, as Kuony Deng is moving to the outside and he had 121 tackles in 2019. Mo Iosefa should be another starter, as well as Evan Tattersall. This is a very good group of linebackers that should help this defense be at the top of the conference.

The secondary is where Justin Wilcox makes his money and it is safe to assume that Cal is going to be solid on the back end of their defense, even if they did lose Camryn Bynum to the NFL. The secondary still has lots of experience and have a very good pair of safeties in Elijah Hicks and Daniel Scott and Chigozie Anusiem and Josh Drayden. This should be a solid secondary in 2021.