Brennan Scarlett leaves Cal football, grad school transfer for final year of eligibility

What has been worried about since the end of the season has been confirmed. Ryan Gorcey has confirmed through head coach Sonny Dykes that starting Cal defensive end Brennan Scarlett is leaving the program. Scarlett will graduate and use his final year of eligibility at another program, a la Avery Sebastian with Notre Dame. It remains to be seen which school he ends up at.

Poor Brennan. Scarlett suffered a season-ending injury in 2011 that made him miss 75% of the season, lost his entire 2013 campaign because of a nagging injury, and then missed the final two-thirds of 2014. In Scarlett's one healthy year as a Bear, he racked up 40 tackles and 2.5 sacks in his sophomore campaign.

On the other hand, Brennan is going to earn his degree! He's graduating through Haas and should get into plenty of good grad school programs. Will be interesting to see where he ends up. Best of luck!

Cal will now need to rely on a rotation of DeVante Wilson, Russell Ude, Tony Mekari, Noah Westerfield, Jonathan Johnson, Todd Barr, and Puka Lopa to find their edge rushers, with not one of those names proven. Spring practice just got a lot more interesting on the defensive side of the ball--those two spots are wide open.