2022 video, Plough talks about Cole Wright getting playing time at Boise. Wright is now on the Davis roster.

Ask Plough :
Was he surprised that a few of the offensive assistants he worked with in his prior time here were still around? Most of the assistants are new to him, but he retained a number of them. What are his impressions of the staff?
Is he going to be able to spend some time coaching the QBs? Lots of young QBs being added this year and next.

I think so too. But he has competition, from an Ivy player who had 173 tackles in last two years, not to mention whatever Cal had. Teddye has outstanding athleticism based on his combine tests at Davis, doubt the Princeton guy has that athleticism. Maybe they’ll both play.

i can’t believe they have a stat on how many times a player hit 15 mph.
I think Cal has the perfect template on how to win this game, do what they did last time. Ott had 17 carries for 104 yards more than 2/3 of Cals rushing yards.. (Davis actually had better rushing stats than Cal in that game though). Davis’s defense lost a lot of size with transfers and graduation.
It will be interesting who plays linebacker and how they do. It will be interesting to see if Teddye Buchanan starts or at least plays a lot for Cal. He is not the only all star FCS inside linebacker grad transfer Cal has.

The depth chart is rarely updated during the season, but it is published each week in the game notes., They should put the link to the game notes back into the schedule, as they did prior to last year, instead of hiding it each week in the media center. The audience for the game notes is not just media, and i bet most fans don’t even know the “media center” url exists. Last year one navigated to it via sport, football, team info, more, UC Davis Media Center.

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It was reported by attendees at the spring scrimmage that the second qb after Hastings who played wore #2, which is David Rasor’s number.
Maybe Plough will ditch the quirky tradition Hawkins has of having a depth chart in alphabetical order

Every team has to.deal with transfers but so far Davis has not had highly regarded underclassmen transferring out..Davis' losses.this far have all been graduates..That string will inevitably end but Davis is still likely to be less impacted by transfer losses. Davis guys transferring out have the Covid bonus eligibility they want to use for.a new.experience . That opportunity to graduate and play elsewhere is soon to end.

Idaho has lost a lot of their top players to the portal and graduation, so they’ll likely not be as good.
The best argument to pick them 3rd is that they don’t play Montana and Sac State, two of the top 5 teams. Davis doesn’t play Weber and Northern Arizona,

As far as players on the roster, DrMike reported he heard on a player alumni zoom call that grad student transfer were expected, i assume for this season. But aside from that, I think it is likely that there will be some new names on the team, not announced elsewhere, as there were last season. Davis had two starters last year that were never announced, and who first showed up on the roster when the roster was updated in the summer.

Aside from names, other information in the roster pages is incomplete or wrong. For example:
Simonson and Amone are both listed as not seeing action, both played in multiple games.
Player eligibility year is not listed, all the true freshmen from last year are this year listed as sophomores, no red shirt freshmen.
2024 recruit bios don’t have any info from their previous school, where they historically have listed noteworthy recognition or stats. No one wrote those resume entries this year. Now signing day central just links back to the roster.

Maybe they’ll have an updated roster by then. (hope springs eternal). If they do have new grad students or transfers you would thing they would need to attend camp.
The roster needs a lot of work. Looks like they don’t track players eligibility, red shirt years are not considered. The stats which are official from the NCAA list two of our top Freshmen last year, Jordan Fisher and Izaiah Souriolle as having played five games, i think thats wrong but if these are authoritative stats they should fix them.

Plough, what is he like? You both overlapped with Plough when he was a player and/or assistant coach. Why is he the golden boy, adopted by Sochor, Moroski, Biggs?
And I’ll repeat the idea I put in the other thread about interviewing players who contribute in significant ways but don’t get recognition. Transfers that contribute, Guys who used to win the end of season team awards that they didn’t award last December.

If you get the access to do interviews, talk to the new guys who are getting playing time that we hear little about. Guys who contribute but are a surprise or not given recognition.
We had an sophomore offensive lineman who started every game for Davis after transferring from Nebraska where he never played. It was never announced that he was signed, probably because he walked on here. He had walked on at Nebraska. He has received not a word of publicity here, not even listed in the box scores due to the stats not using correct jersey numbers. There was a DB transfer from a D3 school who also walked on, no announcement that started his first game after being here just for the summer, But at least he got his name in the box scores, and earned a scholarship in the Spring.

Cody Hawkins didn’t quickly become OC here. He became a receiver coach after Tolver the receiver coach went to Cal. Cody coached wide receivers two seasons before becoming QB coach and OC, when Plough vacated the position. Cody had been a FBS QB and an OC at a community college with an 11-0 record.
Compare Cody Hawkin’s credentials when he became OC here with either Mike Cody’s credentials last year, or our current OCs credentials and Cody Hawkins’ are the best.

Cody was well qualified for both those roles. He was a highly regarded high school recruit at Colorado. He was clearly overqualified for his first job under Hawkins here, which was offensive quality control.

Tompkins has good hands, he is elusive, hard to tackle and he is good at knowing where to run as a ball carrier..
Too many very short passes were completed to Trent for little or no gain. Plays which only had a chance if Trent worked his magic, but he wasn’t getting the ball in enough space to do something with it.

Hasting’s year in 2022 was better than Maier’s last year, 2019.
Comparable yards per game, better rating, fewer interceptions and better yards per attempt.
I hope the coaches can correct whatever caused the drop off in 2023.

I think we have a good group of receivers, particularly if you include the tight end and running backs. But the new wide receiver coach may very well change the depth chart position of some of the wideouts.

When Plough was Offensive Coordinator at NAU and his most recent stint at Davis he had QBs that when on to be play professionally. What will he do if he doesn’t have that level of QB? If he does and it is someone who hasn’t played will he play a true or redshirt freshmen?
In 2022 Davis had scored 43+ points six times , and three games of 56 or more with Hastings at QB. Why the drop off in 2023? Perhaps losing Cody Hawkins as QB coach and offensive coordinator contributed. Can Plough restore that scoring?

There is competition for those guys too. Good incoming class also, including a transfer FCS starter and a freshman who had four FBS offers.

With the exception of one guy who weight 330+ Sac’s O-line is comparable in size to Davis’, a few pounds either way.
Here are some Davis returning offensive linemen with the height and.weight, just guys that started at least a game for us. Our offense had some good stats last year, for sacs allowed, and yards per carry..
LT Simonson 6’6” 295
LG Souriolle 6’3” 295
C Povey 6’3” 284
RG Main 6’4” 270
RT. Nava, 6’4” 295,