And then Eastern Washington! They're struggling right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if they turn up for conference play. Definitely a tough stretch here, but I'm excited to see how this team handles the pressure.

I believe that one of the articles right before the season started mentioned that Harrell was battling an injury and should be ready to go sometime midseason. Or am I think of a different player? I don't know.

Some guys on the PSU forum were saying that the coaches said Eason was struggling with dehydration against OSU and will 100% be ready to go versus us. For his low number of pass attempts he does seem to have a slight issue with interceptions, but he's also a freshman and played 2 FBS defenses. I fully expect PSU to be ready to go on Saturday, not to mention our record against them is less than stellar even in years where they have struggled.

Yeah we did start 0-4 in Gould's first season, but we ended up going 5-3 in conference which people were pretty excited about at the time. Hell, even if we do get blown up this season in conference we should still be a fun and fast paced team to watch which is significantly better than getting blown up while running a low risk, low excitement, ineffective offense.

Yep outside of the top couple spots (JMU and NDSU are clearly 1 and 2 right now), polls don't mean a whole lot just a couple weeks into the season. I think the discrepancy in votes has a lot to do with their initial placement from their results last season and reputation. EWU is getting by on reputation right now. They've played 2 good teams so far, but they haven't looked competitive at all compared to the last couple seasons where they would have. They could just be a middle of the pack team in the Big Sky this season. In fact, over on their fan forum there are some fans calling for Gubrud to be benched. In regards to San Diego, I think the voters are hesitant to drop any team a huge amount. USD needed a comeback win against a D2 school and did next to nothing against us. If they don't pick it up in their conference play they will find themselves out of the rankings pretty quickly.

I'm just happy that it looks like we're getting back on the right track, of course as others have mentioned, Gould looked decent in his first season too. I'm going to be looking for continued improvement as Hawkins and staff continue to recruit their guys and refine their gameplans. There are very few reasons as to why we couldn't be a powerhouse in the Big Sky.

I think we likely lose this game, but hopefully we can make it competitive.

Jake Maier one of the top 5 passing leaders of the week in FCS. 3 out of the 5 from the Big Sky Conference.

https://twitter.com/HEROSportsFCS/status/907273647143903234

Agreed on Montgomery, he looks like he could be a stud. Lucky we landed him after he committed to one of the Ivys then switched for us. Maier looks like he belongs in division 1 football. Through his first 2 games at this level, he's completing close to 70% of his passes, averaging over 300 yards per game, and outside of the first bit of the SDSU game has looked calm, cool, and collected.

Cough Plough has once again announced that we have another commitment, yet I'm not able to find this one either. That puts us up at 3 commitments though (Carson Baker and 2 unknowns). OL Nico Sarale and DB Delano Ware did retweet a post about the Aggies winning against USD so those are possibilities.

Dan Hawkins is a truly inspirational guy. I think he has the ability to make huge strides for this program with his personality alone. Can't wait to see what he has in store for the future.

Unfortunately the fact the Blue is so obviously a keeper has me worried that he will move up to the big times sooner rather than later. I would much prefer for him to stay here and make us the big time.

I think the offensive line was an issue against USD. Too many running plays blown up in the backfield before the back had a chance to do anything and thank god Maier is at least somewhat mobile or there would have been quite a few more sacks. We weren't getting the protection we needed last night and it needs to get cleaned up because the defensive lines we will be facing from here on out are only going to get stronger.

Pretty sure that's the football team chanting the fight song.

Thanks for the pictures. Can't wait to get back to Davis one of these days to catch a game. Might be a little bit of a trip from Virginia though!

Various recaps of the game:

http://www.ucdavisaggies.com/sports/m-footbl/recaps/090917aaa.html

http://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/hawkins-football-style-as-advertised-wide-wide-open/

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/sd-sp-usdfoot-0910-story.html

Anthony Lawrence is on the Walter Payton Watch List, but we didn't make him look like he is. He finished 15/25 for 150 yards and no TDs. He's definitely missing his favorite targets this season as Riley graduated and Dwelley went out with an injury after catching only 1 pass for 14 yards.

All of the scores for this week are in and there were some interesting results. EWU hardly looks like the same team of the last couple of seasons. They played NDSU, but were entirely noncompetitive. UND looked very strong against Missouri State. As mentioned previously, it looks like CP is starting to get their sea legs back after a couple of rough games. Southern Utah manhandled SFA. Sac beat up on Incarnate Word.

That would be awesome. I don't want to get too ahead of myself here in terms of how good we will be this particular season, but we're clearly already on a better track than we were with Coach Gould at the helm. Next week will be a huge test @ Portland State.

I'm sure there is some sort of algorithm that could determine that kind of thing, but I don't know of a specific one of the top of my head. My point was though that it's just really damn refreshing to have a coach that has a killer instinct. That call on the 29 yard line was gutsy. Not a call that even Biggs would have made imho, let alone Gould.

lol. But seriously, now with Hawk we're going for it on 4th and 1 from our own 29 and at that point I believe we were only up by a touchdown.

A minute left in the half and we have the ball on their 20? Nah, lets just take knees.