California GM Ron Rivera says coach Tosh Lupoi 'has bumped his head a lot' during dissapointing first season

California general manager Ron Rivera didn't mince words this week when detailing the program's negative trajectory during coach Tosh Lupoi's first season coming out of the Golden Bears' third straight loss last week.

Now 3-6 overall, Rivera assessed the state of the team and Lupoi during Cal's open date.

"Tosh came in as a first-time head coach. He did bring a couple of inexperienced coordinators with him," Rivera said Thursday in his weekly appearance on KNBR. "Things didn't work out the way we needed them to work out on offense. He has bumped his head a lot. We've talked a lot, tried to give him a lot of advice, point him in the right direction and, you know, some of it he's been very receptive and other portions of it he hasn't."

Perceived as a possible ACC contender this fall with Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele returning at quarterback following a head-turning freshman campaign, Cal was blown out in the season opener by UCLA 45-24 as Bruins first-year coach Bob Chesney's squad looked ahead of schedule.

UCLA's still unbeaten and is slotted No. 8 in this week's first College Football Playoff rankings. Rivera doesn't believe it's necessarily right to compare the two coaches this season.

"The biggest thing I can tell you guys is, again, I know the expectations were very, very high," Rivera said. "And I know there's that comparison to UCLA, but the thing everybody's got to 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 playoffs to begin with."

Before his introductory press conference at Cal last December, Lupoi flew to Hawaii to convince Sagapolutele to stay. He was believed to be the returning cornerstone for a team in transition, but not expecting any regression following last year's 7-5 finish under fired-coach Justin Wilcox.

After Lupoi pulled to 2-1 following wins over Syracuse and Wagner setting up a Friday night showdown against Clemson, that's when the season began to unravel. The Golden Bears never found a rhythm offensively during a 24-10 loss to the Tigers and Lupoi stripped offensive coordinator Jordan Somerville of play-calling duties and promoted passing game coordinator Pat McCann to the role at halftime of Cal's 39-31 loss to UNLV the following week. 

They rebounded with a different signal caller to beat Virginia Tech before Lupoi later benched Sagapolutele ahead of a 41-7 loss to Wake Forest. The Golden Bears have dropped five of their last six games, sparking the likelihood of missing the postseason entirely unless they win out against Virginia, Stanford and Pitt.

Last season, Sagapolutele completed 63.6% of his passes for 3,117 yards, 17 touchdowns and nine interceptions. He ranked third in the conference in passing yards, and he won ACC Rookie of the Week on four different occasions.

Sagapolutele has started the last two games after regaining his starting job, but hasn't had a multi-touchdown pass outing since Sept. 19 after managing the feat five times as a freshman. 

"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," Rivera said. "Those are all things that you have to have going forward."

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