https://questionnaires.armssoftware.com/4d4374292a6a

Recruiting questionnaire maybe? Not sure what's on there because I'm not going to create a profile. Have we announced a new coaching staff yet? On the women's soccer page, it still lists the former coach.

I'm assuming the thought process is to have it on it's own day, though even that they screwed up a bit. Last year it was on the final Sunday of the NFL season which was incredibly dumb. They probably should just do it on Saturday morning. There will be NFL games but not until 1:30 Pacific Time. Why not play it at 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. PT? There's a bowl game that morning at 8 a.m. but I doubt many people would say "you know what, I really want to watch NDST vs MSU but Buffalo-Liberty in the Bahamas Bowl is on so I'm going to stick with that". There won't be any NFL games or Bowl games on Mon, Jan 6 so I assume that's why they picked it. But Saturday morning seems like a much better idea.

I'm really looking forward to the final. Hopefully it's a good one.

Kind of hoping MSU rolls here, though I'd prefer a close game for entertainment purposes. Would make me feel a bit better about last week in that we didn't miss a good shot at making the title game (like when we lost the EWU game in 2018 and missed out on a home game in the semis).

Probably not very attractive. I mean, Troy Taylor showed it was possible to have success there but they've been in the FCS since 1993 and 2019 was their first playoff appearance at that level. They also only made 1 appearance in the DII playoffs. Their media guide tells me only 2 of their head coaches have ever had a winning record. Prior to Taylor, the last time they won 8 games in a season was 1991. So 2019 was the first season in FCS that they won 8+ games.

So while Taylor showed you can win at Sac State, 6 other coaches have shown it's not an easy task at the FCS level.

https://www.fanatics.com/?query=uc%20davis&_ref=p-HP:m-SEARCH

Fanatics has some stuff too. And yeah, you're right that the online stuff on the UC Davis athletics store is lacking. I wanted to get a UCD polo shirt. On our online store, the only logo options were sport specific (i.e. UC Davis Football) or one with a script Davis.

But Fanatics had this one which was more what I was looking for: https://www.fanatics.com/college/uc-davis-aggies/uc-davis-aggies-champion-textured-solid-polo-navy/o-38+t-24585769+p-489820938398+z-9-1165597446?_ref=p-SRP:m-GRID:i-r5c1:po-16

You're the one who mentioned "let the subs close out the second quarter" in blowouts. Let's explore that. We had 2 games that were blowouts, like you said. The Illinois St game was a playoff game and also, only 28-10 after 3 quarters. Montana St was up 30-8 on us, we had the ball on our own 19 with 10:42 left and Montana St still had to stop a 2 point conversion to prevent that game from going into OT. So the other two games, you want the reserves to come in and play, what, one or two series in the second quarter? Throw 15-20 passes total between the two games? And you think that will help develop them for next year because they're playing against the starters for two teams who were a combined 4-19? That's not going to do much of anything, especially if you're splitting those throws up among two QBs. And playing them at the end of the game, almost no coach is going to say "hey I know we're up 49-10 or 52-0 entering the fourth quarter, but we're going to continue to run our hurry up offense and throw the ball just so we can get the reserves some experience". I understand the thinking, but it's not going to happen, even with the backups.

As for the two blowouts, the box score tells me Harper was the QB for our only two 4th quarter drives against Cal Poly. And against NCU, Harper came in for the drive that started with 3:58 left in the 3rd quarter. So the backups played nearly a quarter and a half. We actually played 3 backup QBs that day. Only 2 threw passes but I was at that game and remember a fourth QB coming in. So we did insert the reserves in the third quarter, exactly like you wanted.

The only way you're going to develop a QB is by letting them play consistently. Not by playing like 4 drives over the course of a season. And unfortunately, you can really only have 1 QB on the field at a time. This isn't RB where you can split carries or WR where you can spread the ball around. And really, they're probably going to develop better going against our defense in practice than they would going against an awful Poly or Northern Colorado team.

O'Hara had almost twice as many rushing attempts as he did passing attempts and rushed for more yards than he threw for in 2022. He might not have been a true wildcat QB (I'll take your word on this as I didn't watch any Sac games that year so I can't speak on how they ran their offense) but he certainly wasn't a passing QB. So they used Dunniway when they wanted to throw and O'Hara when they wanted to run what I assume was the read option or some variant and have the QB either run the ball or hand it to Skattebo. That's what I meant by specialized packages. Those two QB's had vastly different skill sets.

But it would have been crazy this year to take Hastings out for a couple series in the second quarter of a bunch of games to develop your next QB, which you would have to do if you actually wanted that QB to develop. Because throwing the backup out there once to throw 12 passes won't do anything.

I went with South Dakota St. Really just want three good games though.

Ok? I thought we were talking about QB's.

Lot's of teams give more carries/targets to star players and if they get hurt, well, that sucks. Not much you can do about it. Taking 5 carries and 3 targets per game away from Lan and giving them to someone else isn't all of a sudden going to make our offense look no different if Lan gets hurt.

It's also much easier to give multiple running backs carries than to give multiple QBs reps. For one, the RB's get tired and need a break.

If you use 2 QBs with any consistency, you either don't have a #1 QB or it's a situation where the second guy is coming in to run specialized packages like the Wildcat.

Montana St's QB threw 259 of 289 passes. The main backup had 1 game where he threw more than 4 passes and he threw 8.
South Dakota's QB threw 283 of 295 passes.
South Dakota St's QB threw 312 of 356 passes. One backup threw 25 (one game with 16, then never more than 4 in a game) and another 14 (never more than 4 in a game).
North Dakota St's QB threw 310 of 348. One backup threw 19 (one game with 15) and the other 16 (never more than 5 in a game).

How about the more prolific passing teams? Surely they'd want to develop a backup.

SE Missouri St's QB had the second most passing yards in FCS. He threw 618 of the 635 passes.
Monmouth's QB was third. He threw 435 of their 440 passes.
Abilene Christian's QB was fourth. His backup only played when he got hurt and threw 1 pass outside of those two games.
Incarnate Word's QB was fifth. He threw 528 of the 540 passes.

Any team with a good QB is going to have those kind of numbers. Even in blowouts, most coaches are just going to run the ball to keep the clock moving and won't be having their backup QB's throw the ball all over the place. We can debate whether that's right or wrong, but throwing the ball all over the place, even with the backup, will be seen as running up the score.

And even if we did have the backups throw the ball a bunch in blowouts, while it gives them reps, in no way will it help them learn to overcome adversity because the stakes are low.

Would 100% be a Deion-type hire. Deion had no college coaching experience in any role when he got hired.

Well this is interesting.

Montana St -7.5
South Dakota St -2.5

I remembered somebody posted this game on AGS a couple weeks ago so just remember, it could have been worse. Sometimes weird things happen in the playoffs. South Dakota St was the #5 team that year but had a 10 turnover game in the national semifinals.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/boxscore/_/gameId/401003826

Totally fair. IIRC, the only other game he had more than 1 pick was the Cal game. But that also speaks to how good he was all year long to even help us get to this point.

Don't hate just because I'm trying to educate you. I'm not the one who thinks Hastings had a turnover problem this year (and I mean the whole season, not today) when he threw 5 picks in 12 games against FCS teams before today. I'm not the one wondering if they should bench the QB who led the nation in passing yards and passing TDs.

Like yeah, he didn't have a good game today. But again, how many of those picks were for sure on him? The last one absolutely. No one could possibly argue otherwise. Two were tipped. And only Hastings/Plough/the intended target know who was at fault for the other two. It's really easy to just blame the QB each time they throw a pick because hey, they threw the ball. Maybe the other two picks that weren't tipped were Hastings's fault. But unless Hastings or Plough comes out and says "hey, those two were on the QB, he made a bad throw/decision", we're never going to know either way. And how much was on the OLine and/or their DLine? We barely got any pressure on the QB. How many picks would Hastings have thrown had he gotten the protection their QB did.

So sure, if you want to just say "Hastings threw 5 picks, he was awful today and this loss was almost all on him because of those picks", well that's on you. I prefer a more nuanced outlook on things.

Likely wasn't their best game. They did throw a pick in the end zone on a ball that could have been caught and fumbled on a toss play at the 5. So they gave away 14 points too.

This should have been on linear tv. — SoCalAggie

Agreed. It was clearly likely to be the closest of the 4 games and yet it's only on streaming. Maybe they knew they'd get better ratings with the Dakotas or MSU (which could definitely be true for all I know).