Senior defensive lineman Derek Wilkins said Tuesday that Cal’s response after its second straight loss has shown no shortage of effort, even if the results still aren’t where the Bears want them to be.
“We have guys that want to respond, want to go out there and do their best. I definitely think guys are responding,” he said. “Obviously, like I said, the results are necessarily what we want but it’s not because of lack of will.”
Wilkins, now in his sixth season with the program, has become a veteran voice for younger players, and his path at Cal has been anything but straight. He arrived from Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., after being heavily recruited and came in carrying big expectations.
His first season included action in the final four games and two tackles. A year later, injury kept him sidelined.
In 2023, his redshirt sophomore season, Wilkins appeared in eight games off the bench, picked up a spot on the Pac-12 Academic Honor Roll and finished with eight tackles, two TFLs and one sack. The next year, he played in all 13 games off the bench and set a career high with 12 tackles, while adding one TFL and one blocked field goal.
Then came his first redshirt senior season, when he started twice and appeared in all eleven games. He again posted 12 tackles, added a quarterback hurry and turned in eight pass breakups, the most by any Cal defensive lineman. This season, he already has 22 total tackles, one TFL and three hurries.
“It feels good to have all this hard work pay off and getting the opportunity to show why I wanted to come here in the first place, so it’s really been a good experience. I’ve been enjoying it a lot,” Wilkins told the media. “I’m just glad that through all these setbacks I’ve been able to keep my head down, keep working and see some of that work pay off.”
He also walked through what Cal has been trying to clean up after last weekend’s loss to SMU, when the defense allowed 42 points in the second half. Wilkins said the breakdowns piled up once the Bears started losing some of the small stuff.
“We might’ve missed some fits, missed some tackles, and it kind of started to snowball a little bit. Obviously that’s not what we want, I wouldn’t say it was necessarily fatigue,” he said.
Wilkins pushed back on the idea that the late surge came from tired legs. Instead, he said the Bears know they have to do a better job functioning as one unit.
“We weren’t playing team ball, offense, defense and special teams. When we’re not executing on all three of them, something like that can happen,” Wilkins told reporters. “We went back, watched it, tried to figure out where things went wrong, what we can do to correct it.”
Part of that reset, he said, comes on a drive-by-drive basis. Wilkins described a routine in which the linemen pause, sort through what happened, and move on with a clear head.
“We hit that same reset every time,” he said. “Three deep breaths, we talk about what we need to talk about and then, we get going, get up, cheer the offense on.”
He said staying “level-headed” matters because “that’s when you’re putting your best product out there.”
Wilkins finished by addressing the Bears’ renewed emphasis on discipline in practice. Cal is tied with Syracuse for the second most penalized team in the country this season, averaging 9.3 penalties per game. He said coaches have turned up the pressure on fundamentals, including drills where some DBs wear oven mitts and linemen run long sprints.
“If a guy jumps offsides of false starts, he gets pulled and has to touch the pole,” Wilkins said. “If a guy’s jumping offsides, false starting then he’s losing valuable reps. He’s getting tired, he has to come back after running 80 yards to go touch the pole.”
For Wilkins, the message is simple: get back to the details and keep pushing.
"We’re getting it figured out and it’s not going to happen again.”
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