The defense is doing what they can against a very good offense. At the end of the day you cannot win a game scoring a singular offensive touchdown. That is where I'm placing most of the blame in this one.

and you can't win against a team with better talents by turning over the ball. Even one is too costly in a game like this.

If Thorpe is our best WR (Marsh, DK), why is he used so sparsely?

We lost several big plays.

Fake punt.
Missed interception.
Blown call?
No ground game - can't sustain drives; and no short-game, West Coast ball control offense.

I still think, that going forward, HR with timely use of TT give the Ags the best chance of winning. This is based on mobility and the threat of a QB run. If the O line were giving 4-5 seconds of protection and/or the interior running game were better, I may not have the same opinion.

Thorpe is used a lot for blocking. I would not say he is the best of the receivers - although good. .Castles was almost a non-factor tonight.

The total inability to run the ball is the problem. Teams need a basic set of plays that work and then they add deception on top of that. We’re a team without the meat and potatoes.

Your grammar leaves something to be desired (look at your prepositional phrase).

Go back to Sac.

Solid logic. Why didn't our S&C add a little meat to HR the past 2 years. 170 is light for a running QB.

Harrell hot on the sidelines.

As good as Barriere is, a lot of credit goes to the Eagles offensive line. They opened some huge holes and haven't allowed a sack.

Fifty years ago, I was at the Miracle Game and left early. Ever since, I've sworn to never quit on the Aggies, but it's one thing to score 16 points in 20 seconds (a bit misleading, that time) against a Cal State Hayward, but three scores in 3 minutes against these guys is beyond the pale. I'm done.

If you're at the game, be very careful driving home through this fog. I'm originally from Natomas so I know how bad it can be for drivers.

Will the defensive coordinator resign prior to Causeway Classic game next week? 600+ total yards by EWU?

My counselor when I was in HS said she went to Cal-Stanford in 1982 but I think she left early.

Is EWU defense stout, or our execution / game plan that poor?

Ageed. He had a lot of protection.

Frankly, this is exactly what I was worried about coming into this game. Defense hasn't been tested all season and didn't look great against a prolific offense. Offense is not good, plain and simple. 1 offensive touchdown will rarely if ever win you a game. The Hastings INT felt like a huge momentum shift. Kudos to Larison though. Single handedly gave us a little bit of life.

How do you all feel about Sac? I think they are worse than EWU but will be the second toughest team we will have faced. If they play this way next week they will lose.

If offense can't figure it out that is a loss as well.

Different statistics take tonight.

EWU had 4 effective runners (4 yds per carry, or more), and 5 effective receivers (4 catches or more).

We had 2 runners (one a QB), and 1 WR get over 4 catches (Harrell). And his YAC were highly limited. 25 yards total?

I guess we competed for one quarter, and then were dominated. We had a chance early. Then Barriere, a gifted and intelligent player with a solid line, ate us up.

Will EWU be human next year?

Sac has a new runner “Sattabo” (spelling) who has come out of nowhere. I do not have a good feeling about next week. The Aggies need to play inspired and do some offensive adjustments to win. Sac looked very ordinary against Dixie State, but have improved over the course of the season.

In the spring and even in the Tulsa game we consistently tried to run the ball. In the Tulsa game Gilliam and Larison combined for 34 carries. In this game, Gilliam and Larison carried the ball 9 times. Why the change?
One contributing factor to us winning the fourth quarter in other games this season is that we wore the defense down. Teams do that mostly with running plays because they give the offensive line opportunities to knock people around. Not much of that tonight.
How much of this is due to not having Ford and Lamson is a question.
We were very reminiscent of many Davis teams over the years that have a lot of finesse plays and good skill players but get dominated in the trenches. There is no quick fix for that.

Sac is demolishing Portland State 42-14 with 13 minutes to go. We will lose by double digits if we play like this again next week.

What happened to our O Line depth?

Thinking out loud We're not running effectively up the middle, and it looks like we don't have the speed to get outside consistently. So it's misdirection, and TT?

A puzzle. Go back to 3 QBs and ride the hot hand?

I think the most recent teams we’ve played have focused on Gilliam and shutting down our run game. With a QB that is not a run threat, we are forced to pass. I noticed that EW had their defensive backs up close most of the game with just one deep guy. I was optimistic after the first half. Next week might be a nightmare.

I believe recently when we had success, we used the short and intermediate passing game to open up the run game late in the second half.

OL has to help the QB out, but I think it's also important to note that (at least in my opinion) we don't have THE guy at QB on the roster. Jake Maier was THE guy. Eric Barriere is THE guy. I think the ship has sailed with Rodrigues. You don't typically get replaced mid season if there are zero questions about your ability to handle the position. Hastings lacks the mobility most modern QBs are expected to have. Jake also lacked mobility but was a prolific passer which Hastings hasn't shown yet. He's a freshman so there is time to grow, but right now I'm not totally sold. Tompkins has insane mobility, but it raw as a passer despite putting up insane passer numbers in high school. He seems jumpy in the backfield even when given passing attempts.

I don't know what the answer is for this problem. Does Dan hit the junior college ranks to find an ace? Do we just give Hastings as many reps as possible and hope he improves? Do we continue to rotate quarterbacks? Maybe I'm just a downer after the loss, but it really seems like we don't have an identity on offense.

I think you make some good points. We have never established who exactly our QB is this year. Our OL has had trouble protecting them also. Look at EB3 tonight. He really didn't need to scramble because his OL allowed him to simply sit in the pocket until somebody got open. I don't think I've ever seen a QB stand still in the pocket for so log just scanning the field. Any decent QB, let alone a great QB, will find an open receiver if he can stand in the pocket for 8 seconds waiting until someone gets open. Our QB's have not had that kind of protection.

According to the box score, Lamson played. So we were just down one offensive lineman.
So perhaps that’s not the issue. Maybe we didn’t run more because of the way EW lined up. Maybe it’s just the pressure of expecting to have to score a lot that led to us abandoning the run. Basically our running game had no early success and was virtually abandoned, making us one dimensional. We can’t win like that.

Tough loss tonight, but it was nice to spend the afternoon riding bikes around Davis.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that we fans do not consider the idea of game planning to be as much of a factor as it is. In college team sports, coaching staffs have to recruit, teach, determine personnel assignments, develop tactics and strategize for specific opponents. The best ones do all of those things exceptionally well, but I got a feeling from today that the UCD coaching staff did not come in with a solid game plan. If not for special team plays for UCD and misplays by EWU, the score could have been 48-13, which better reflects the disparity in yards gained. Most of us noted the lack of establishing the running game on offense and I suspect that the offensive coaches thought that the passing game would work better than it did. On the defense, the coaches blitzed very little and that's a tough thing to second guess afterwards, but I wonder if they should have blitzed more? Of course, the players have to execute, but I don't think that the Aggies play fell to the level of the winless Tampa Bay Bucks when then coach John McKay was asked about his players' execution and he said "I'm in favor of it."

I thought the defense was decent until they got worn down in the second half. We just couldn’t get a drive going and get them off the field.

It’s funny how a few plays can have a big impact. Stop them 3 and out, score a touchdown, and stop them again. Momentum and confidence. Fake punt that barely makes it, followed by a TD.

Almost INT, weird replay, followed by a TD.

If those turn our way, does it matter?