This analyst says he looks mostly at upperclassmen. He devalues them if they haven’t put up statistics.
Since Davis lists players who were recruited here out of high school by academic year, red shirt sophomores are listed as juniors. (Oddly, Caden Pinnick is listed as a redshirt freshmen, while all his classmates are sophomores)
Jordan Fisher, Sam Goligoski, Trent Carrade, Izaiah Souriolle are examples are guys that got a chance to tiptoe into playing last year as redshirt freshmen. They didn’t generate stats because they didn’t get much of a chance as Davis had a veteran team, yet they are listed as juniors, whereas on most rosters they would be listed as red shirt sophomores.

Curious if we get some project/stadium news before the unofficial "athletic fiscal year" end on July 1st.

For this guy- when was the last time we did not have a very good qb? I am thinking John Lucido but he,was average. Most our qb's went on to play pro football in Canada

Johnny Lu only filled in for a few games when Moraski was hurt. Matt Weinrich was between Mo and Kenny O and he was less than average.

I’d say Randy Wright was not a very good QB despite his record vs Sac

We had a bit of a dry spell as far as "NFL/CFL caliber" QBs from 2002-2016: Flanigan, Grant (a fave. of mine), Plough/Engle/Denham (what might have been), Wright and Ben Scott.

All these guys had fine careers though! Jon Grant played professionally in Germany.

When Moroski was QB for I think 2 years as I think he replaced Speck
And at most i think Moroski lead the team to the playoffs against Bethune-Cookeman and Puget Sound. I do not remember Moroski missed many games at all. He probably played in 1979 when Obrien got hurt. But, i graduated in 78 He used to come over to our place as his good friend who lived with us in 1978. In 1978 playoffs Moroski threw the 99 yard TD pass to Calvin Ellison. About a 4 yard forward pass and Ellison did the rest. Lucido played i think 3 1/2 games in 1979. Back them we on!y played 10 games. So it was almost a half season. And Randy had a 126.30 career rating which is average for the time. Thst includes his terrible game against Cal.

John Grant did sign with a CFL team, but i do not know if or how long he played. But he had his shot. Cenham had a good chance, but he up and left us withput a QB. The Plough,Denham, Engle group never played enough to get noticed. Engle probably played the most, but he was more of a 2nd stringer not a starter. So, yeah we were short a QB, like Lucido. But, none of them wete teally be low average. We had gotten spoiled with Scott Barry, Mike Moroski, O' brien, khari Jones, Kevin Daft, etc.

Moroski was injured before the Poly gsme in 78. It was regionally televised on ABC. Someone started in his place but was ineffective and they brought Johnny Lu in. He led a comeback win. I believe that was his only action that year. In 79, Matt Weinrich started with John as a backup (my frosh season). I’m pretty sure Lucido never started that season but I could be wrong - I only suited up for 4 varsity games (after playing a Friday night Frosh game ).

OB redshirted that year, and took over in 80.

This conversation going over QBs of the last 50 years, and just scratching the surface, would be impossible at most schools. My time at Davis the QBs were Biggs and Speck. I wish i could see a program from that era. If I recall correctly, on Biggs’ Boardwalk Bowl team, one offensive lineman weighed about 210 or 215 lbs and trained by swimming, rather than weights. When playing teams like Massachusetts and Boise that lack if size largely precluded running the ball but the QB put up big numbers.Speck threw for over 400 yards against Boise, and Davis lost a close one simply because they couldn’t get a pass rush against a line that was near 300lbs. I think the Boise QB went on to play in Canada. Davis vs Goliath games.

True about the dry spell. But this was more due to.moving from D2 to FCS D1AA. We were on probabtion for 4 years so we could not be in the playoffs. This made it very difficult to recruit top QBs and players because of this. So, about 6 years we had recruiting problems due to probation. Then we had to re-establish our past history with QBs to get solid QBs. So, i think this was expected.

A little unfortunate we couldn't build on JT's success...but totally expected drop-off when the D1 move started.

A big part of the decline in pro QBs coming from Davis is that in the 70s through first half of the 80s, a lot of college teams were run oriented, running the wishbone, veer and power I offenses, so few teams were developing Pro style QBs. Davis in that period was running elements of the Dallas Cowboys offense. That is the period when Davis had NFL drafted QBs.
Now everyone throws the ball a lot, the pro offenses have changed to be more like the college, and therefor the majority of collleges are developing pro QB skills. Add to that the better scouting of HS players by the major colleges, which don’t just scoop up the NFL prospects at QB, but at all positions, as shown by how few FCS or D2 players get drafted at any position.

Riveraggie that is true too. But after moving up Davis was still able to get a fair share of quality QB's to sign. They just were not the 6' 4" mobile big arm types. We were recruiting the shorter overlooked guys

Wright got shoved into the Cal game when Denham left for his calling. That was an ugly game for us. Is he still a preacher?

Gould had Wright (?), then Laughrea, before Ben Scott.

Wright was not the true freshman Scott Marsh says he was, he red shirted the prior year.
You can’t judge players by that type of mismatch. It will likely look similar when they play Washington,
Gould had all of those QBs his first year, he inherited Wright and Scott from Biggs. Scott was from Fairfield, not much recruiting interest, but Biggs liked him.

Wasn't Laughrea a transfer from another school. Was suppose to be a star i believe? But, i do not remembering him starting or finishing the year

He transferred from Boise, was nearly a 4 star recruit for Boise (89 rating). He was from Rocklin.
Transferred at start of Gould era. Played in August and September 2013 making some starts, lost job again to Wright.

I remember Laughrea being touted as having a ton of physical talent, but didn't play a lot. He ended up playing some in the AAL, Switzerland and Japan which is pretty cool
https://www.davisenterprise.com/sports/sports-former-aggie-qb-laughrea-at-home-in-japan/article_2099473e-d6d0-5dd0-9a9d-f6c6bb3402bc.html

from an Enterprise article that talks about his experience playing in Japan:

'Replacing Randy Wright after UCD opened 0-2, Laughrea was managing a 10-7 lead against visiting Northern Arizona before the Lumberjacks picked off two of his passes — returning each for long, fourth-quarter touchdowns and a 21-10 victory.

Laughrea started one more game for the Aggies (a 41-10 loss to Portland State) before Gould handed the reins back to Wright.'

I remember we were SO desperate for success back then that Scott Marsh was gushing at halftime of the NAU game. He was interviewing Sochor and tried to get his input on our new QB, and added some mention of Ken O'Brien. I think Sochor nicely said something like 'let's pump the brakes a bit.' Boy, that was a dark era for Aggie fans.

I recall on the pregame show of that game Gould saying something along the lines of “i don’t know how things were done here before, but now we are going to pay attention to detail”. I took it as disrespectful of Biggs and his coaches. I wonder what players and coaches who worked under both thought of the two.

JL came unglued on the sidelines, not good. I saw his social media posts flaunting his drinking downtown. Players said he had a gun for an arm.

Scott Marsh asked Coach Sochor after one decent game to.compare JL to Ken O'Brien. Sochor was almost tongue tied.

That's pretty funny.....he went on to a 12-33 record. Some of the most disorganized in-game decision making I've ever watched as a football fan.

One opposing coach, struggling to find something positive to say about Davis, settled on they “always line up correctly”.

On the subject of coaches familiar with both Biggs, Plough and Gould, Kevin Daft is now the tight end coach at Dartmouth, no longer the offensive coordinator.
Here is how Dartmouth summarizes the Daft/Gould offense in the final year ( 3-8 record)
In his final season, the Aggies averaged over 28 points and nearly 400 total yards — of which 238 came through the air. UC Davis also ranked 14th among FCS schools in fewest interceptions thrown (7) and 10th in fewest turnovers lost (13) under his guidance in 2016.

The gould's are failure-uppers and I'll die on that hill

Gould era was painful - though it did have its moments. Never saw the run game more punishing than under Gould...just seemed to lack a complete, cohesive game plan week-to-week. If we didn't run for 250, we'd lose - that's how I saw the Gould era.

Predictable. High school coaches in the stands were calling out the plays in advance. Thank you, Terry Tumey.

Gould’s tenure coincided with the beginning of an impressive string of running backs. If this years running backs live up to the average of the last ten years they’ll be fine,
I noticed Larison saying in one of his interviews that our run game was not as dominant last year as the year before. That might be play calling as much as personnel, teams are better at what they believe in and commit to.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.si.com/college/fcs/big-sky/2025-uc-davis-aggies-football-preview-fcs&ved=2ahUKEwjb6LPHvKKOAxVpD0QIHfGSEDMQvOMEKAB6BAgUEAE&usg=AOvVaw3mBtl8LS6MnWMyUgs_SLJE

Plough was given a stacked roster last year, he has to develop his young guns and WRs. I'm hopeful.