The live stats are fully populated for Weber but empty for UCD. This is on our gameday page

Sac lucked out. Idaho State kept Sacs first TD drive alive by lining up over the long snapper. Then lost their starting QB in second quarter. Idaho State left guys wide open for huge gains with no defender several times.
with all that it was a close game. I only watched first three quarters.

Sax 23 Idaho State 21 start of 4th

That was a quote from Dr Mike, and he speculates in the next sentence because no need to given the lead. Bend but don’t break.

They burned us, we got five interceptions, who won?

Look, we’re far from perfect on D.
I have for decades hated that we almost never stop anybody from getting first downs when they’re pinned deep in their own territory, college teams tend to play loose when they have a lot of field behind them or a big lead. That’s irritating but maybe the smart move.

Good choice, Hope you root for UCLA

That was disturbing. But I think you might have pointed out the explanation:
I think we prepped for the other QB, so were zone dominant with a REALLY deep safety (25 yards). The new QB didn’t run much, didn’t go down field BUT was accurate 10-15 yards (especially, it seemed like on 3rd and long!). We didn’t seem to adapt much from that especially with the big lead. Bend and let them break? Just concerned at the last of pressure without a blitz and the openness of their WRs (who were talented).
That ties in with the idea that Dixie in prior games couldn’t score, so make the emphasis not giving up the quick score. Make them sustain drives.

As for the evidence that we improved, this is from the Weber game notes:
The Aggies are also third in the Big Sky in scoring defense, rushing defense and third down conversions.
Nationally, the Aggies lead the nation in interceptions with eight this season. UC Davis is also fourth in the country in turnover margin and rank fourth in the nation in red zone defense,
Its noteworthy that Tulsa couldn’t move the ball through the air against us without interceptions and forced fumbles, but they threw for over 400 yards against Ohio State.

I think the biggest reason we’re improved over 2019 is we got an infusion of size on the defensive line, with three 300+ lb linemen new to the team this spring, all of whom play to some degree. Luka Nixon also emerged as a force, and he’s a lot bigger than he was a couple of years ago, as is Bryce Rogers. As mentioned previously NG Suani, who started games for us in 2019 is quicker now, and he has more effect on collapsing the pocket now. He wasn’t on Spring team.
We have playmakers in the secondary, veteran guys that have had all league recognition or mention being pushed by some underclassmen. We play a lot of nickel and we have quality DBs.
The team as a whole seems very fit.
The coaches seem to make good decisions on blitzing vs coverage and mix things up well. I think it’s only natural that the defensive team would get better after a few games under a new coordinator, as he learns who can do what, and as they learn what he wants.

Our defense has been “stout” the sense of getting turnovers. They were stout in the March game in the sense of not giving up a lot of points and holding Weber to 3.3 yards per rush,
.
The defense has added Duncan and Suani who took spring off. Suani seems more disruptive at his lower weight, and it’s good to have depth against their big line. The earlier game was the second under a new coordinator, and I think we’ve improved. Lots of reasons to be optimistic if we look past the series history.

No, what was the fall 2020 schedule that got canceled?Season ticket holders might know.
But that’s interesting too, since it showed they were supposed to come here in the spring initially. Then other teams dropped out

I wish I had a copy of the canceled schedule to be sure,
It makes sense that they couldn’t use home and away history for the spring schedule because they only had a subset of teams. That could lead to a team having an unbalanced schedule as far as home games were concerned.
By the way their coach would like Davis to be one of his guaranteed games. It’s easy travel due to proximity to the airport. He didn’t add that they usually win, but that might have been an unstated factor.

Everyone took down the 2020 schedule but I think they were supposed to come here. The Spring season was a one off that didn’t reflect prior home or away, and they picked up 2021 as it was already scheduled.

Take this with a grain of salt, I’m not a football expert, but I’ve watched a game at the Holiday Inn.
Fly sweeps have become commonplace, what’s rarer is for teams to commit to it, so that motion is part of virtually every play. Then the motion of the fly guy is the threat is always there, and other plays success is partially attributable to the defense having to defend against the threat of the fly guy getting the ball.
An analogy is in the wishbone offense the base play is the dive of the fullback, which either occurs or is faked virtually every play.
Our team is a multiple offense team, among other things we run fly offense plays.
Wildcat means various things. Initially it was run with an unbalanced line, with a running back behind center, and the running back took the snap. There was often fly motion involved in the play. In that case it’s easy to identify by formation.
Now you often see it run from a balanced line, and formation wise it’s not that distinctive. We used to substitute the quarterback, and now sometimes we do sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we have the QB just move from behind center prior to the snap, and use the same personnel, usually with two tight ends which we can run other plays with.
With TT, it gets more confusing. He may run out of any of our formations, planned or unplanned. If it’s a planned run with run blocking of the line and no pass deception, it’s fair to call it a wildcat play.if anyone has noticed something in our wildcat formation that defines it as wildcat, please chime in.

A small complaint
I wish Scott Marsh would stop calling fly sweep or jet sweep “end around” I know he has to call the play live and doesn’t have time to think about it, but the difference is on the fly sweep the hand off is to a guy in motion before the snap, and the snap takes place when the wide receiver or slot back gets in the vicinity of the QB. With our offense it’s just a basic play. An end around would be a rarer play.
If I had been listening to radio I would have been thinking what’s with all these end arounds?
Also he’s got this idea of the direct snap to a runner as being a “package” even when it’s run with regular personnel like on the first drive where Larison took a direct snap after Rodrigues moved out to a flanker position. There was no special “package” that was the beauty of it.

But will they still respect them Sunday morning?
Johnson is the guy who threw the successful Hail Mary against NAU this spring. So he has an arm, height, seems mobile but makes poor decisions at least in the JMU game.
Weisser seems cool. I think we will see more of him unless they start Johnson and stick with him because he’s hot.

Also it’s my possibly incorrect observation that we’re doing more two tight end. I know we’re doing a lot of it just not sure if it’s more than under the prior OC.

Game notes are up. https://ucdavisaggies.com/documents/2021/9/20/FB_Notes_4_Weber_State.pdf
Devon King still listed on depth chart, but not on the travel roster so he is likely out. Toki is on the travel squad. He didn’t go to Tulsa or San Diego. Both true freshmen Connors brothers on travel squad

Past time.
Remember the 2017 game where on our opening possession we had a 60 yard pass to Khris Vaughn which gave us first and goal at the 3, followed by a sack and a field goal, that was our only score of the game?
Since the start of the Rodrigues era, which corresponds with the elevation of Cody Hawkins to OC, we don’t seem to be throwing to Khris Vaughn as much.

yeah but he was benched this spring, and all this year

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately they project all their offensive linemen to play against us. James Madison got lucky and caught them with a banged up offensive line.

James Madison moved the ball well against Weber.
The third string Weber QB made some big plays at the end. I bet we see him if Barron is still out.