There are a other tall receivers. Chad Davis, who caught five passes against Cal is 6’3.
I’m a fan of Babbs. He was so dangerous after the catch before he missed a year.
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I think part of the short average gain per completion is we threw many passes for one or two yard gains, checking down as a safety valve or running screens that gain little. Its not all due to not catching balls downfield.

“ The guys that return have mostly short averages per catch. Need a better average than what the returning wideouts got last year.”
Part of that is on our QB. With Jake and Miles, they are super accurate on the short and medium range tosses but we’ve been missing the deep ball for several seasons. I’ll have to go back and look at Miles completions, but my basic impression is we just don’t throw deep very often.

That affected Granfors and Poerio less for some reason. Kraft who does return has a pretty decent average per catch as well.
I’ll just add that I’m not disputing that we don't throw many deep balls. But the players that somehow got more yards per catch are mostly gone. And I’m not trying to define the problem being the QB, the receivers or the plays. However, I do recall seeing a bunch of catches for negligible gain.

In terms of kickoffs, I'm pretty much always against attempting strategic short kicking. Boot it out the back of the endzone every time.

According to Bob Dunning, the Aggies are 43-1 over the last 4 seasons.

We could be playing Georgia and still get an Ags by 1 prediction :lol:

Sagarin has his starting ratings out for the year. These are supposedly based on recent history of the team over time, but how much time they don’t say. Davis is third in the Big Sky following Montana State and Sac State. Davis, Idaho, Montana and Weber all within a point of each other., so essentially tied.

They estimate a line of 19.07 for the game against Commerce.

It's going to be tough with the high heat and humidity. When was the last time the Ags played an Aug/Sept game in the south?

Tulsa 9//2/2021. i think that qualifies, although opinions may vary. It is 200 miles from Commerce by air. Kickoff was 6:30, temperature 93 degrees, wind 12mph.
Tulsa was worn down at the end of the game,

I'm sure that the offense will look different with a new guy at the helm, but I don't think it can be understated how critical Armstrong (the receiver that went to Arkansas) was to what offense they had last season. The team as a whole had 20 passing TDs on the season with 13 of those going to Armstrong. I'm sure some of their other guys will step up in his absence, but you don't easily just replace that kind of production.

The ten day forecast for Commerce Texas calls it to be 101 between 8 and 9PM. Thats the high for the day.

Ooof...a temperature of 101 will feel even hotter when you add in the high humidity that is typical of Texas. Conditioning and team depth will play a big role in that kind of sweltering weather.

New 10 day forecast, only a high of 90.. Hope this one is correct.

You must have been looking at Thursday of this week

No, they changed the forecast. It was on my phone and you can drill down to see a graph. It was a different graph than this Thursday, with the peak temperature after game time. Friday Sept 1st looks like that now.

92 at kickoff and 97 high for next Thursday in Commerce - source Weather Underground. Dewpoint is going to be much higher than Davis though.

We're 1 week away! GO AGS!

Gonna be hot as Hades next week. It has sure been hot around here the last couple of days. Hope the bodies and minds are ready for that kind of climate.

Now Weatherunderground says 89 degrees at 7PM and 76 at 10PM. Apple shows a couple of degrees warmer.

The one thing I remember from Atmospheric Sciences 10 (Severe & Unusual Weather) is that no forecast is accurate beyond 3-4 days.

correct. Initial conditions always changing in the forecast models.

I did look at sac’s football website and they do look pretty formidable. They are using the
Portal very effectively. But don’t all football websites look formidable. TAMC’s is actually quite scary so we will see ery soon.

In what way is TAMC scary? Last season they were a mediocre team in a mediocre conference

But ozone holes are gonna kill us... I mean Global Warming ...

At least in my opinion (which isn't worth much to be perfectly honest) the only thing that I find worrisome about this game against Commerce is the "unknown factor" with having a new coach/system. Commerce relied a lot on their defense last season to keep them in games, but they've lost their top 2 tacklers, leader in sacks, and leader in interceptions from last season. On offense they may be without their dual threat QB from last season and lost their go to receiver. But I guess my point is that who knows if any of that really matters when you're going to have new schemes, new playbook, etc. Cal Poly, Sac State, and Weber all kind of fall in the same category for me in that they could fall anywhere on the spectrum between significantly worse to significantly better... there's just no way to know.

That being said, I believe that the Aggies are going to leave Texas with a W.

I think wholesale changes when a team is bad like Cal Poly is more likely to lead to improvement, while wholesale changes when a team is good like Sac or Weber is likely to lead to regression. Texas A&M was a transition team that suffered from QB injuries, so they were neither good nor awful. They have a tradition of winning at a lower level, like Davis did in 2005.
The challenge of this game is that their offense will be un-scouted, its conceivable they will get some points off of the unexpected, their defense is thought to be good. It might be a low scoring game and they have a good field goal kicker and we have a new one. Add in some risk of bad weather, and that Davis has a new offensive coordinator, QB coach, and also have to replace some key personnel so there are things one can worry about. If we have a good game plan and our offense scores its usual amount of points we should win.

I attended the Team Aggie football preview last night. Super fun evening with several players (and of course coaches) mingling around visiting with attendees. I was really impressed with the players and coaches. I had been worried about the youth of our defensive coordinator Matt Coombs and our new offensive coordinator Mike Cody. All i can say is we are in good hands. Both are very impressive. And all the players were excellent ambassadors for UC Davis. BTW, when asked about the weather factor next week, It didn’t seem to be overly concerning. One player commented that both teams are on the same field.
Go Ags

We were hoping to attend but couldn't make it. Was there a good turnout?
I've always been impressed with how bright and articulate the Aggie athletes are whenever you hear them speak so I'm not surprised that the coaches are impressive as well. Being an Aggie means being a scholar-baller...the way it should be in college athletics!

I met Daniel Swain during a Picnic Day once and recall when he was the meteorologist for the Aggie. He later went to Stanford for grad and UCLA for PHD. Were you in school around that time?