I’m looking forward to hearing who rises to the top among the guys you mention and others. Gould’s last class was heavy in front seven guys, some of those guys are just sophomores. We brought in some last year and a couple of good ones this year. As others have stated just improving to middle ranking on defense would improve our record. Some have stressed turnovers but any way we can get the ball back including on downs so that we aren’t blown out before our offense breaks a sweat would be great. Looks like we might have depth If a couple of guys step up. Strength in numbers, no name defense kind of D. Lots of room to improve but the cupboard isn’t bare.

If last years teams played, we'd be projected to lose to Stanford by about 5 touchdowns, San Diego would be even, and we'd beat San Jose by a touchdown.
Doesn't answer the question for next years teams, but no better answer exists. San Jose might be better next year, who knows? But it looks to be our most likely early win.

I don’t think San Jose would be in anyone’s poll.
San Diego gets no respect,
Stanford isn’t as up and down as they used to be unfortunately.

Nowhere to go but up!
While retuning a lot of starters from a ineffective unit is a mixed blessing; at most positions our worst case scenario is as good as last year but more experienced . Also, the coaches now have more experience with the conference and team. Plus we have a lot of players we haven’t seen coming off redshirt freshmen years and new recruits. We lost some good football players on D but their replacements are likely to be more athletic, for example at inside linebacker. Basically counting on the coaches to get more out of our D, which I think is a realistic expectation. I could be crazy.

Defense is returning 80% of players on the two deep, plus a ton of redshirts plus a few promising freshmen. We will see if the coaches can put something together, they have pieces to work with.

We don’t have many question marks on offense. 22nd and third in our conference is not too high.
I think we are nearly back to being as good as we were in 2005, although the defense needs to show improvement to say that. I expect we will see a better defense.

Not much information came out of spring camp.
The defensive coordinator said that players were moved to new positions and that they simplified coverages for the new guys so they could play fast, so there are new guys coming off their redshirt year who will be factors, but no names mentioned.
We return 80+% of the guys on the defense depth chart.
Here are the guys returning, not counting redshirts. I'm just listing it to show we have an unusually large returning group; not counting redshirts, who are numerous.
The list is from our defense depth chart for the last game, so this is their class status as of this 2017-18:
DE 96 Hunter O’BRION 6-5 280 Jr.
DT 91 Nick FEHRENBACH 6-0 235
71 De’Andre MORGAN 6-3 260 Fr.
99 Bryce RODGERS 6-3 285 So.
NT 57 Terrell CLOUD 6-0 290 Jr.
94 Jordan FRANKLIN 6-1 285 So.
97 Andrew WILSON 6-2 300 RFr. .
RE 6 Anthony BAUMGART 6-1 240 Jr.
48 Brandon JAMISON 6-3 235 So.
SLB 36 Connor AIREY 6-0 215 RFr.
34 Mason MOE 6-0 210 Jr. Human Dev.
MLB 33 Quincy BENNETT 6-4 240 So.
42 Christian LEOTA 6-2 250 So.
WLB 11 Nas ANESI 6-2 225 So.
45 Eric FLOWERS 6-1 228 So.
CB 31 Desmond LEWIS 6-0 175 Sr.
5 Isiah OLAVE 5-10 190 Jr. Int.
16 Erron DUNCAN 5-9 190 RFr.
S 39 Tiger GARCIA 6-3 181 So.
26 Josh JANUSKA 5-9 179 So.
28 Ryan PARENTEAU 6-2 200 Jr.
CB 1 Isaiah THOMAS 5-9 170 RFr.
23 Jaylin WHITE 5-10 158 Fr.
20 Vincent WHITE 6-0 187 Jr.

I hope Moore’s not transferring to UCLA.
Just kidding.

Article on official site about the game. Plough comments on players who made strides. Tucker mentions no one. Plough mentioned Tehran so even though he wasn’t mentioned elsewhere is still around. Harrell stood out, which is promising.
I don’t see Aaron Moore on roster. He did a good job last fall.

If you watched later Stanford games in 2005 they had a 260lb fullback named Nick Frank who was unstoppable, Larry Csonka like. I watched the Stanford UCLA game that year that Stanford lost in overtime, and tackling him was like tackling a whale.
In our game he had 3 carries!! for 17yards. And this in a game where they lose their starting QB early. Is that bad coaching or what?

I think Hunter Rodrigues is the only local QB, not counting walkons. He’s a American River College transfer just a sophomore next season
Movie, time will tell whether D is improved; but I think we will be. I like that the players were quoted that they are trying to be disruptive vs being a containment type defense. I think the underclassmen, redshirts and perhaps a freshman or two will end up being better than the guys we lost to graduation; and the returning starters will be more seasoned. There are many guys who were recruited in the last three years on D that are going to get their chance; I hope we are a lot better,
If you look at our game notes depth chart from end of season we’re not losing anyone who is going to be hard to replace with guys already here. We’ll have some newcomers who will win some spots.

Judging by the Spring scrimage Brock Johnson is our number 2 QB, with Hunter Rodrigues as another contender for that I in the summer; I’m assuming he’s not here already.
On defense freshmen won’t play unless they’re good. We’re not short of defensive players. It was good to hear regarding the scrimage that the corners looked good and the defense was tough to run against. That’s much better than hearing the offense dominated because we know our offense is going to be pretty good. While it would be great to see a new player earn playing time we’re returning a lot of guys off our 2 deep and have a lot of redshirts.

I'm not adverse to gimmicks. Historically Davis has had trouble getting running the ball in short field situations, 1st and goal from the five doesn’t leave much room for passing. I’d like us to be able to call three running plays and score. There are other ways to get this accomplished but having a runner at QB is advantageous because the defense has another guy to pay attention to and the offense has another blocker or runner. You have to have that formation developed enough so that it’s not just a couple of plays and you have to still have some residual threat of throwing the ball, so maybe it’s not worth the effort to keep it for just occasional use. I’d like them to keep it but understand if they don’t.

what’s your opinion on the wildcat that we sometimes used last year with CJ? Keep it or forget about it.

I must have misremembered. I remember the grass being brown on my TV, so that must have fooled me into thinking it was back east,

I remember watching that game in D2 playoffs a long time ago. We lost. That was one of those rare games on TV. On the road.

His accuracy was better when he wasn’t the wildcat QB. Seems like when he was in an offense that was primarily run plays with him as carrier he lost the ability to hit the change of pace pass. Generalizing from small samples here.
He’s not going to be our second string QB but could be very effective in short yardage or short field or running out the clock situations

Did they run fly motion plays? I thought fly sweeps or plays featuring that motion might have featured CJ last year, but it was mostly Montgomery as I recall.
CJ would be more of a running back which I think would be appropriate especially if the play isn’t going to the sideline as it always seemed to be.

I think we have to find ways to get the best athletes involved. Seems pretty basic but not always done I think they had a good idea using CJ as mostly a runner out of the QB position, but he misfired when passing last year so the wildcat stuff was too one dimensional. It doesn’t have to be. It’s a good wrinkle to make other teams prepare for.

Carson Crawford sure got a lot of press in high school. Small, but played QB his senior year and passed for 3000 yards, after staring as a receiver earlier. Point guard with pretty decent track speed and a shifty runner as a QB. Interesting. Yet another receiver to keep an eye on. We seem to have a lot of them.