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A month ago, the California Golden Bears had two four-star safeties lined up to lay the groundwork for the defense for the 2016 recruiting class. Now they have none. First Shurod Thompson decommitted from Cal, and now Marquel Dismuke has reopened his recruitment.
Thank you to the Golden Bears family and Coaches on everything they done for me but at this point of time I want to reopen my recruitment.
— Quel (@MistaQuel) June 10, 2015
This is frankly bad. The Golden Bears have had one big glaring need for the past several years, and it is safety. (Reminder: Due to injuries to our two-deep, our backup quarterback has been playing safety in spring camp.) Cal has suffered from bad safety play the last two seasons, and it is in danger of being just as bad in future years if the recruitment doesn't pick up. And so far, Sonny Dykes's staff has done a poor job at finding potential replacements for the positions.
So Cal is back to the drawing board on this front. Despite landing a bevy of secondary commits in 2015, that depth still needs to be built up at safety. And Cal has dropped well behind the remaining Pac-12 contenders in terms of recruiting class rankings. There is work to be done.