Not as fast as Chukwudobe or Colton Silveria ran in high school.
Slightly faster then Cole Wright the Boise transfer.
I’m sure we’ve had many others faster than him in the 100. I think he is elusively quick.

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Don’t want to count chickens before they hatch, but It comes down to ranking and record. If Davis and Sac are both ranked similarly, the loser won’t drop much in the polls. But to be a sure thing to get in, even at 8-4 I think they need a signature win. That is almost a sure thing, but not a certainty, depending on the seasons some of their victims have. For example Its possible to be 8-1 and then lose the last three games, and then you have to hope your team has a win over a ranked team earlier in season.

Larison should have got it for his 2 tackles.

Eck had no sacks, no fumble recovery for a touchdown and one more tackle, so of course he deserved it.(sarcasm).

In contrast, Cal had a big play with Ott, by just having him help out to block and then releasing into the flat. Cal was watching Larison wherever he went, Davis wasn’t watching Ott on that play.

The guy kicking off, Rory Bell, previously kicked for Temple and Cincinnati. 14 touchbacks at Cincinnati, has kicked a 55 yard field goal at Temple,

It is just math that if Davis loses 3 of the 5 games you mention Idaho, EW, MtSt, MT, Sac, and win every other game they’ll be 8 and 4 and likely make the playoffs but not with a high seeding. If thats the way it turns out then better hope at least one of the teams Davis beats along the way is ranked to give Davis a quality win. If they get upset along the way then they will need to win 3 of those 5 to be 8-4. Need to be 8-4 with a quality win, however that works out.

In some of the camp releases Simpson was.discussed as still recovering from last season's injury.

More good: wide receivers
Each of the three starters had good games, although Gbatu took a little while before having success. Chaz Davis has had good games each of the recent Cal and Oregon State games, CJ was outstanding, and Dobbins was a major contributor who was playing his first game as a true freshman. He is going to play a bigger role in future

Another true freshman, Mayo, a nose tackle, played.

Add to that ugly low punts that only netted a decent average due to some rolling.

Passes to tight ends, 8 completions,12 attempts, 25 yards total.
Only one pass completed to Larison in six tries, for 11 yards.
Weren’t able to get a passing game going beyond the wide receivers.

My hope for this game was simply that it looked like a football game, and mostly it did.

Davis’ offense seemed less varied than in years past. They don’t have the blocking to run in running situations against Cal and they don’t feature fly sweeps anymore, so most runs are between the tackles, which they couldn’t block. Missing also were the screens they used to run.

Kickers had a bad day, after bringing in kickers to make the position competitive, the worst kicking i can recall.

If the players listed first on the Davis depth chart do indeed start, the three interior offensive line players will all be new.
Left guard will be the Stony Brook transfer Jace Rodriguez who played tackle at Stony Brook.
Center will be Zaire Collier who saw no action last year as a freshman. He may have walked on as he was set to play at a JC, but joined Davis in May of last year. 247 had him rated as a 3 star though.
Right Guard is the transfer from San Diego State. It will be interesting to see how that works out against a tough opponent.

The depth chart released in the Game Notes , listed behind Porter Connors is a name only appearing once before in these discussions.
That was when I posted a year ago:

The roster has a freshman, class of 2023, linebacker, Aaron Shebloski, a walk on, committed in May.
He has a link to a video on his twitter page of him doing 3000 pushups in a day when he was 16. Has a lot of personality.

Pretty impressive for a redshirt freshman walk-on to be high in the depth chart.

Davis gave up an easy Sac score near the end if the game to make their game seem closer than it was, so they didn’t help themselves when they knew they were in competition with Sac for that playoff spot.. Three out of four passes complete for 55 yards total and a TD in a situation where the drive started with 3:23 left.

I give some credence to the theory that Miles had something wrong with his arm, early last year.
They brought in a QB coach from North Texas who had worked under the current Cal offensive line/offensive coordinator, in a different offense, so who knows what they were telling Miles to do.

Whether Miles suffered from the situation or just is too limited will soon be known, not by the outcome of this first game but before conference play. Plough appears to have put all his eggs in Miles basket. Let’s hope he was wise to do so.

Write for California lengthy preview of UC Davis offense.

https://writeforcalifornia.com/p/uc-davis-football-offense-2024

Good read.

The 105 Scholarship limit isn’t until next year.
My opinion is that is a deplorable idea, it will result in another 20 scholarship players on rosters that don’t play, and increase the discrepancy between teams.

Two players in our depth chart, Gbatu and Dobbins share a position on and played high school football in Temecula although at different schools. Dobbins transferred to Bosco to finish. I suspect they knew each other from high school.

Not surprised but those are official stats kept by the NCAA or so I was told by David Collins when I exchanged emails with him 3 months ago about other incorrect participation stats.