Cal Football: Returning offensive production at WR

The 2020 California Golden Bears football season is still a ways away, but since it’s set to be the biggest return of sports in college, we’re already diving deep into it’s return.

With that in mind, we’re jumping into the returning production for the Golden Bears on the offensive side of the ball, and we’ll start right away with the returners on the receiving end of Chase Garbers’ arm.

Before we jump into it, though, I wanted to discuss what data is involved. Grabbing data from all sources possible (Cal’s Sports Information Department, PFF, SportsInfo SIS and more), we’re taking a look at every receiving category possible:

Targets
Receptions
Reception %
Yards
TDs
YAC
1st Downs
Drops

And so with that in mind, here’s what the Golden Bears return from the 2019 season.

Cal returns 85.2% of its targeted receivers. Meaning, 85.2% of all throws from the 2019 season were intended to a receiver who will be returning this fall.

Obviously, the only major contributor that is gone from the receiving corps is Jordan Duncan, but it’s still refreshing to see the amount of targets returning are familiar faces for Garbers and Co.

The Bears return 87.8% of their receptions, again only Duncan’s 25 catches are a big culprit towards the number here. Cal also returns 85.9% of its yards and 89.5% of its receiving touchdowns from the 2019 season.

All the data is as follows:

Targets:

Nikko Remigio makes up the majority of the returning data for receivers, seeing a whopping 61 total targets and 38 receptions with the next closest in each regard being Trevon Clark with 44 targets and 21 receptions.

This has to be a welcome sign for Garbers and head coach Justin Wilcox as they head into the 2020 season with one of the more experienced groups on offense perhaps not even just in the Pac-12 but in the entire country.