Ron Rivera puts Tosh Lupoi on the Cal hot seat

Rivera does a weekly KNBR hit. This was the week he stopped sounding like a guy who signs off on everything his head coach does.

The quotes are rough. Rivera said Lupoi "has bumped his head a lot," that the front office has "talked a lot, tried to give him a lot of advice, point him in the right direction," and that some of it landed better than the rest. Then he set the bar: "These last three games, hopefully four, the trajectory has to be going north." That "hopefully four" is a bowl game, and Cal doesn't get one without beating Virginia on Nov. 14, then Stanford, then Pitt. When the GM publicly says what he expects from the last 3 weeks, the head coach is the one getting graded.

The Bears are 3-6 overall and 2-4 in conference play, and the last 3 weeks have been ugly: lopsided losses to Wake Forest, SMU and NC State, including 59-20 to SMU and 31-10 to NC State. The offense ranks 121st nationally in yards per play, 110th in scoring and 137th in rushing. So when Rivera knocks the decision to hire "a couple of inexperienced coordinators," people heard it as a shot at offensive coordinator Jordan Somerville, a 30-year-old who was an assistant quarterbacks coach in Tampa Bay before Cal.

The Bay Area beat didn't take long to pick a side. Jon Wilner put Lupoi's odds of making it to December at a coin flip.

Wilner didn't let the GM off the hook either. Later that night he said Rivera "owns every inch and ounce of the Cal football mess," and that's really the fight here. Rivera built this setup, a former NFL head coach sitting over a first-time college head coach, and now he's on the radio talking about advice that didn't get taken. Thomas Dunn asked the obvious question from both sides: if Lupoi said yes to every suggestion, who's actually running the program, and if Rivera said yes to everything, who's checking him?

The next morning The Athletic ran the behind-the-scenes version, and it only made things worse for Lupoi.

Bruce Feldman

@BruceFeldmanCFB

Inside Cal’s messy first year under Tosh Lupoi: How a season that began with such hope spiraled into chaos. Reporting with @slmandel & @AntonioCMorales. Free story link: t.co/rsn94U861K

According to that story, the program has been "mired in chaos," there's a rift between Lupoi and Rivera, and Lupoi has been so hands-on that he's burned out his own staff. The one bit of good news is that everyone involved told the reporters Lupoi's job isn't in jeopardy at this point. Take that however you want after Thursday's radio hit.

Locally, it's turned into a full soap opera. By Friday night Dunn and Joaquin Ruiz had their own episode up on what they're calling the Cal football telenovela.

Here's what matters now: Virginia on Nov. 14. If Cal wins, Lupoi is still alive and gets Stanford with something on the line. If Cal loses, bowl eligibility is gone, Rivera's "trajectory" test is failed with 2 games still left, and the Wilner coin flip starts looking generous. The GM has said in public what he needs to see. Lupoi has 3 Saturdays to show it.