Cal football: Bears go back to transfer portal to land quarterback

Cal once again dipped into the transfer portal to find its solution at the quarterback position.

The Bears will add quarterback Sam Jackson V at the start of the spring semester, with the third-year sophomore coming over from former Cal head coach Sonny Dykes’ new school, TCU.

“Sam is a young and talented athlete who is developing rapidly as a quarterback,” Cal head coach Justin Wilcox said in a statement. “We are excited to get him started in our program and continue to accelerate his development.”

Jackson was a little-used backup for the Horned Frogs in his two years on campus, tallying two touchdowns rushing and completing all six passes he threw in parts of seven games. Jackson was rated as a four-star coming out of Naperville Central High School in Illinois, where he was a wide receiver as a sophomore before moving to quarterback as a junior.

Jackson will help fill the void left by Jack Plummer, the former Purdue transfer who started all 12 games for Cal this past fall, throwing for 3,095 yards and 21 touchdowns while completing 62.5% of his passes. But Plummer elected to transfer again and landed at Louisville for what will be his sixth collegiate football season.

The Golden Bears have added 11 transfers to their football roster so far during this recruiting window, with all of them set to enroll and move to Berkeley for the start of the new semester.

While the Pac-12 schedule isn’t known yet, nor is it known if Jackson will get the starting job, his first game for Cal is set to come just down the road from his old school, as the Golden Bears open the 2023 season at North Texas in Denton on Sept. 2. Cal’s first home game in 2023 will be one week later against Auburn.