Cal starting safeties Griffin Piatt, Stefan McClure still questionable for season opener

The California Golden Bears are going to have a wide open competition at safety this upcoming season.

Safety Griffin Piatt and wide receiver Trevor Davis represented the Bears at Bay Area Media Day. Davis confirmed that he will return to primary kick returning duties, where he starred last season. Davis is on the Paul Hornung Award watch list.

Griffin Piatt figures to defend his starting safety spot, but he needs to return to full health before he can actively compete for the spot. Piatt is aiming to be ready for the season opener against Grambling State, but Sonny Dykes appears to be taking a more cautious approach. From CalBears.com.

"The big thing is to get him back healthy," Dykes said. "We want him to play a full season for us and to stay healthy. We’re going to be real careful about how we bring him along. We want him to come back strong and be ready to go. We expect him to hopefully be a starter and improve on the season he was having at the start of last year. He was one of our better defensive players until he got hurt. We expect him to improve on that."

Piatt's season ended last year with an ACL injury he suffered against Washington, and he's been working on rehab since then to get back onto the field. It looks like he will not be ready for the start of the fall camp and will aim for a later moment in the month to return to active practice duty.

Stefan McClure is moving a bit faster in his rehab treatment and will start taking part in fall camp activities when it opens this week. Via Jeff Faraudo:

Dykes and the Cal medical staff originally did not expect McClure to be sufficiently healthy to include him among the 105 players teams are allowed to invite to fall training camp. But McClure will participate at some level when practice begins Friday.

"We were going to let him rehab and bring somebody else in," Dykes said. "We didn’t think he was going to be ready, and the good thing is he is. We’ll see what he can do."

You can see why the race for the Cal starting safeties is wide open. Neither McClure nor Piatt are 100% for fall camp. A lot of new faces have arrived, and they will jostle for those spots while the two work their way back to full health. There is opportunity available at the position in fall camp.

McClure has been recognized this preseason for his community service work.