Sac up on INI 21-7. 10:00 second quarter. Sac looking pretty unstoppable.

Sac draws first blood in the UNI dome. Scataboo is a load.

Cal Poly QB Jones injured early in game. Looks like a fairly series lower leg injury. No weight on foot as helped off field. 14-7 South Dakota midway 1st quarter. Brasch in as QB for Poly. USD moving. Poly giving up too many big plays.

Ags beat them 53-7 last year and USD ended up with a tie for best league record. Not saying this result will be matched, but anything less than a convincing win will be concerning in my opinion. Ags at the least absolutely need to get a number other than a placeholder (my pet peeve about the newly allowed Jersey “number” of 0) in the win column.

Watched the NAU Sam Houston game. Sam Houston is not the sam team without Eric Schmid at QB. NAU defensive front did well. RN Martinez looked good. Very nice long ball.

A couple thoughts:
Don’t take anything for granted in college football. The Aggies can’t mail this one on. I watched the Illinois State (MVFC) vs. Valparaiso (bottom tier Pioneer league) game and Valpo almost won. iSU won 28-21.


Cal Poly passed for 385 yards on the Torreros. It is very strange to think Poly may have a better passing game than Davis. The Ags would normally shred something like this. If the passing game doesn’t pick up this game, it does not bode well. Optimally, there would be enough of a lead that would allow some snaps for another quarterback later in the game.

I am beginning to think that the limited playing time of Babb has more to do with not being in good favor with coaches than anything else. He is a real play maker and has good speed. Sitting out last year might have hurt him not so much with lost experience but with coaches maybe thinking he wasn’t committed to the team. I have no evidence of this, just a thought. Anyway, in my opinion he should have more playing time. I think he could do what CJ Hutton does and could be more of a deep threat in addition.

After watching the game on Tuesday, I have the folllowimgs thoughts/observations:
The O-line did a very good job of protecting Hastings. Run blocking was not so great - but this was a very stingy run defense the Ags were going against.

Gilliam continues to be the best overall and most consistent weapon the Aggies have. His pass catching and runs after catch were quite impressive. Even when there was no where to go on rushes, he consistently made defenders miss. There were several jock straps left on the field from his spin moves.

Kicking game still needs to step up. Not sure if blocked extra point was kicked too low or if defender punched through. The missed field goal wasn’t egregious IMO as it was 43 yards and it hit the upright (with plenty of distance to spare). I did notice that there were a couple of snaps/holds that weren’t very clean. Lola like they have switched to Reich for punting. Punting was ok - really miss those sky scrapers of Whelan.

Rex Conners is a player. Super good at ball hawking and quick/powerful downhill tackling. Looks like he is playing some sort of river position which seems perfect for his skills.

Hastings was ok. He seems to be playing just good enough to keep others on the bench. I noted about 11-12 inaccurate throws, 3 dropped passes, and 2 opportunities for a passing TD that were off target. Larison was open for a TD and he threw behind him instead of throwing him more open. There was another TD opportunity with Davis. Other than the 68 yard TD to Larison (more than half of that a run) the longest reception was 25 to Castles (Gilliam a 25 reception but mostly run). Still not stretching the field and very inconsistent long ball accuracy. This facet needs to get better. There was also a pick on a penalty that negates it. Still need development in vision and looking off defenders.

Overall a good team effort and good defense. But if you don’t get the win it still goes on the L column. Getting “over the hump” still somewhat of a plague.

Wide open castles for big gain and pass behind him. Radio silence for wedding.

Conners looked very good. Don’t know that you change anything up with him.

If the Aggies are to have a reasonable chance of winning, I think there are some keys:

- got to improve on yards per passes. This has been meager since midway of last year.
-I think Gilliam is going to carry the team on his back. He seems to be the one offensive weapon that is consistent.
-Get pressure on QB. This will take pressure off of DBs
- take care of the ball. No more than 1 turnover.
- special teams - improve on both punt distance, and maybe more importantly on height - and don’t miss extra points! And kick the ball into end zone. We know now how much of a weapon Whelan was. We lost the field position battle at Cal.

I think SDSU offense was limited last Saturday by a few factors; loss of Pierre Strong (that guy was something), new offensive coordinator, and Gronowski not having live game experience for quite some time. Of course iowas defense looks to be very good and their punter is something else.

But heck - what do I know. The only think I feel relatively confident of is that it won’t be as bad as last time, and I think run defense will be better (couldn’t be much worse than last time in Brookings).

McCaffrey was pulled in third quarter (maybe injured - but not apparent when he came of the field his last series) and Jacob Sirmon (ex UW and Central Michigan) replaced him. Sirmon injected some life into the Bears. He has a bigger arm and more of a playmaker than McCaffrey. Will be interesting to see if Ed keeps his son on the bench.

Just conjecture, but I suspect he wasn’t given a clear nod to start, and with only 2 years of eligibility left (I believe) he figured he would be a bench warmer for duration of career. It’s not like he was recruited and was in the Davis system, and could work his way in maybe at least by junior year. From his production at city college (and therefore game experience albeit at JC level) I thought he would be a qb who could step in and be productive. From the jC games I saw via web archive he looked pretty mobile, and could extend plays and improvise a bit - something we don’t have with currently used qb.

it will be on ESPN+. The gojacks link would be the same feed I am sure. It doesn’t launch to ESPN +, but if it is their own PPV you’d be better off signing up for a month of ESPN+. It has gone up to $10 or so a month but we’ll worth it if you are a college football junkie like me, especially if you want to check out other big sky and FBS teams.

Both Sac State and EWU gave up a bunch of yards on defense. EWU gave up 290 yards rushing. But they both got W’s

Portland looked good and Idaho is going to be a much tougher out this year I think. Eck has them fired up. Wazzu did look out of sorts i attribute to first game with new qb and other transfer moving pieces.

NAU was completely shut down. Martinez did not look good but probably against the toughest competition of any big Sky team week 0/1

I would rank out qb situation about at the middle of big sky. I think PSU, EWU, Sac State, Idaho, and Montana State are in better situations with their qb from my past assessment and viewing the big sky games this week. I don’t think Bronson of Weber is very good and I have never thought much about McCaffrey. Don’t know if Martinez will improve this year - hard to asses the ASU game where he looked loss. Montana is Montana and I watched very little of that game. They have a transfer qb from San Diego State. He had pretty good stats in game 1 and is supposedly a dual threat. So Kris Brown who was to take over is on the bench.

So I’m my opinion our qb situation at present is better than Weber, Idaho State, Cal Poly, Northern Colorado, and maybe NAU. All others I think are in better shape. This sort of pains me after following the Ags as far back as Jim Speck (his last year) then Moroski et al. When we seemed to always have the better quarterbacked team. I sure hope something solidifies in that position or else I don’t think we’ll have more than 6 wins which won’t get us in the playoffs.

DBs are a concern and the kick game is a concern

Agree. Sure missed whelan in both punting and kickoffs. Punting was just “ok” at best and a missed extra point is not good. Field goal attempt was long but of artificial turf and it was quite a bit off. Kickoffs were short. CertInly there is somebody on the team that can kick it into the end zone consistently. Will need every point here on out.

Once Plummer got rolling he found some very wide open receivers. First TD guy had 5 yards on the DB. I do like that Devon King is back and healthy.

Aggie band-uh spirit crushed by administrators. It’s not the Aggie band-uh anymore it’s the UC Davis band with a change in uniforms as well as names. Stupid. Baby out with bath water.

I did not see Chubba in the game. Or Suanni. Seems like they went more with a 3-4 with more rangy speed guys on the line. Was I missing something?

good point. I think Maier was able to run it because he had real command of the offense. I dont think we have a qb to do it effectively - too much staring down and pre- programmed short throws. Sometimes I think the goal is completion percentage.

we’ll, needless to say, the Ags will have to score more than iowa did. I just don’t think there is a realistic chance. I hope I am wrong. I think a realistic expectation of this team is to slide into the playoffs by hook or crook.