Following up on who the freshman defensive.linemen who are likely to play are.
There are two freshmen defensive linemen:
Rayne Mayo.Jr...Listed originally as 6'2" 285,.now on the roster 320lbs so likely is a nose tackle. We know Amone was playing.with his arms taped due to injury.. Toki also may have been injured. He went down after being run into by the running back. He played after that but I think his last play may have been the touchdown SUU scored to bring them within 4. Rayne's parents have Quam roots. We have a tradition here of big Pacific Islander Nose Tackles.
The other Freshman DL is Jake Williams 6'3" 295 lbs. Interesting that he's out of the high school Stacey Dobbins attended before transferring to Bosco, and redshift freshman offensive lineman Souriolle also went to that school, Chaparral in Temecula.

CJ wore 25, a retired number of Sam Paneno, a player who lost his leg due to a game injury.

Yeah, but the Cal game the score was what was expected even though the game was more competitive than expected. The next two games were closer than predicted, in the score and also comparative stats.

Oddly enough, Utah Tech has given up exactly 339 yards rushing to each of their two Big Sky opponents, Montana State and Northern Arizona.
Davis ranks 10th in the Big Sky in rushing attempts and yards, and 11th in average per rush. If Davis can’t run effectively against Utah Tech that will be a serious red flag.

There are clips of Plough’s press conference posted today, but the whole press conference isn’t posted anywhere.
The SUU coach had some strong praise of Davis, on a radio show..
Team executes all the time.
Well coached
NFL running back and defensive end,
They play together as a team, stick together.
Good weight program because all their players are really stout.

The good thing about Idaho being ranked so high is that a respectable loss to them would likely leave Davis still ranked. I was afraid Idaho was going to lose games with their QB out, so that even a win by Davis wouldn’t get much credit. Now a win by Davis would vault them in the polls.
I’m surprised Davis is currently ranked as high as they are given they really haven’t had impressive game scores.

Given Davis’ schedule is so loaded with tough late season games, beating the teams they are expected to beat early in the season is a must,
SUU was a tough opponent. In Sagarin’s end of season rankings last year they had a better rating than Davis, so not surprising the game was close.
i don’t think Texas A&M Commerce is going to have a record that contributes much to the Davis reputation. Losing to Grambling is embarrassing.
In both games the Davis defense gave up too many yards while holding a lead in the second half, so how they end games is something they need to improve.

Someone from Davis should sign off on the stats before they become official.
Apparently the NCAA owns the stats database. That was the reason given to me by the Director of Communications Football as the reason they still had Eli Simonson listed as playing in no games in 2023, even though he started every game. David Collins , the person I exchanged emails with this Spring and Summer thought that the NCAA would fix that issue before the season, but it is unchanged,

SUU is playing Idaho State Bengals.

Massey ratings are based on results, and scores.of games. Reputation and the committee's perspective isn't a factor. Davis' victory over commerce is diminished by Commerce's loss to a weak team this week.. And Davis probably did not.meet the predicted margin against SUU..

They really have a problem with the duplicate numbers. Offense and defense are tough concepts for the stat keepers.. This is a multiyear issue.
The wrong info is now in the official NCAA stats as shown in the “final book” for the game so we can expect that Tompkins will never be credited with that catch in the team, conference or national stats. A link to the book: https://ucdavisaggies.com/documents/2024/9/14/37743.PDF

I don’t think we abandoned the jet sweep entirely. I think Dobbins ran once and got grabbed by the foot.
Number 18 on offense is Trent Tompkins, not CJ Millican
At least we’re playing a lot of guys on defense, different philosophy on that side.

How do we define “the community”? Davis and environs?
To fill a large stadium the community has to be bigger than that. The media coverage in Bay area and Sacramento media didn’t take a jump when Davis went from Division 2 to FCS. Those are just two names for what used to be the College Division, which got a few paragraphs back in the Far Western Conference days, and got about the same coverage after the transition Only since streaming games became available in recent years has Davis been exposed to a larger audience. Overall what is Davis’ record in the FCS years? People get excited about winning, not finishing top five in a conference.

Grambling beats Texas A&M Commerce in overtime.

Athletes have to meet the fairly easy requirement of taking 15 courses and having a B average in those courses, or be admitted by exception, which likely isn’t too hard to get if they came reasonably close or had a story. A B average is well below the median in California. I don’t think they are turning away many players who wouldn’t fail if admitted, The legend that UC has hard admissions requirements is a legacy of the past when UC only took the top 1/8 of high school students.
Several posters seem to think that getting students to attend games would be a revenue source. Students get into games free, they support athletics financially through their fees.

Seems to me that the big NCAA conferences are colluding to put the small ones out of business. The top conferences raid the profitable teams, and they raise costs by increasing the number of scholarships required and create obstacles for new replacement schools to elevate with the ten fold increase in fees. Net effect is to consolidate their market domination.

Not only were we missing Rex but from the middle of the third quarter we were playing inside linebackers who had likely never played a down before, Aaron Shebloski, and Nick Afato, playing in place of Porter. Porter like Rex really has a nose for the football.

I’m surprised we didn’t see Blake Antzoulatos, the transfer from Cal. He was relatively high on the depth chart at Cal, he started two games last year. The other reserve inside linebackers who played against TAMUC didn’t register any stats. Not saying they were noticably picked on..
Getting burned by big chunk plays while having a lead is one of the constants of UC Davis foootball.

i think we expected a more diverse offense instead of what looks like the offense of five years ago minus the fly and wildcat plays.

Plough said in the press conference above that the two teams gave them looks that Davis didn’t anticipate that were based on Davis’ known tendencies.
First two games, new offensive coordinator and head coach, yet tendencies are known clear enough to stymie the red zone offense, indicates the offense is predictable in the red zone
That and penalties like illegal procedure negating a touchdown. In commerce game thar was the wide receiver not knowing following a shift by other players whether he should be on the line or a step back. In summary, their red zone troubles are coaching related so fixable. Not due to lack of talented personnel.
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