The college hiring season is in full swing, with Bill Musgrave now in officially in place at Cal.
Last month, Beau Baldwin left Cal after three seasons to take the head job at FCS Cal Poly. A month later, it’s been confirmed by the program that Bill Musgrave has been hired by Justin Wilcox as the new offensive coordinator at Cal.
Musgraves will also be responsible for the Golden Bears’ quarterbacks.
“Bill Musgrave has a brilliant offensive mind and is one of top teachers of offensive football and quarterbacks,” Wilcox said in a statement. “Bill has incredible football knowledge and has been extremely versatile in the offensive systems he has run throughout his career, which is important. He also has a strong desire to coach again at the collegiate level, where he can help develop young football players at a formative stage of their careers. His competitiveness and humility stood out during the hiring process. Everyone that I talked to about Bill that I know and trust had tremendous things to say. He will be a great fit at Cal.”
Musgrave, who played his college football at Oregon, has spent the vast majority of his 20-year-plus coaching career in the NFL. His last job at the collegiate level? as the coordinator/quarterbacks/tight ends coach at Virginia in 2001-02. In fact, that is Musgrave’s only coaching job in college football.
Musgrave has served as the coordinator at five different NFL stops -- Denver (2018), Oakland (2015-16), Minnesota (2011-13), Jacksonville (2003-04) and Carolina (2000).
This past season, Musgrave was on the sidelines at both levels of football.
“I am thrilled to join a Cal program that has exciting days ahead,” Musgrave said. “I want to continue building upon what has already been started, which on the offensive side of the ball is a young group that showed tremendous progress last season and was playing its best football at the end of the year. Coach Wilcox and his staff have done a tremendous job of creating an outstanding culture and environment that is focused on teaching football, and one of the most enjoyable and satisfying parts of this job is to be able to play a key role in the development of young players. There is a tremendous opportunity to do that right now at Cal, and I can’t wait to get started.”
Baldwin joined Wilcox in Berkeley in January of 2017 as the Golden Bears’ offensive coordinator and running backs coach, while also carrying the title of assistant head coach. In January of last year, he moved from running backs to quarterbacks as Wilcox looked to shake up the worst offense in the Pac-12.
The shuffling didn’t help much as the Bears were again dead-last in the conference in scoring at 21.2 points per game (they were at 21.5 ppg a year ago). Their yards per game dipped from 344 a year ago to 328.5 in 2019. They are last in the league in that category as well.