Montana
UNI
Utah State
Cal Poly
BYU
Southern Utah
South Dakota
Montana State
San Diego State
UC Davis

I'm not rooting for the demise of Sac State, but I think they are way over their skis on this. The amount of "fake it til you make it" they are doing only works if you do finally get some success. They may not get 4-5 years to "figure it out". If wins and return on investment aren't there and the casinos pull their money they are super screwed.

at least per Wikipedia, yes Torero Stadium has natural grass.

It's a great comparison, both programs said they were FBS ready. If you need to build for half a decade after making the transition, maybe you weren't ready to transition. You can defend Sac State if you want to, but if they have a horrendous season it's entirely on them. Excuses are just that... excuses. I think Sac State football is more likely to implode as a program than succeed in FBS over the course of the next 4 years.

The way I see it is you are either FBS and have to accept everything that comes with that or you are not. Sac State is FBS and they did not play well against a conference opponent and that's really it.

Massey ratings have Sac as the 3rd worst team in FBS and Eastern Michigan ranked at 106 after the win against the Hornets. Not a power team by any means.

For what it's worth a team that did look FBS ready in NDSU whooped on Jacksonville State in their FBS debut.

Lol I will not give Sac State grace. Not after all their jawing of how they were FBS ready and going to run the MAC. They had a defensive TD (can't count on those every game) and a garbage time TD. It wasn't good and they opened themselves to that criticism after how they acted over the last year.

I watched most of the Sac - Eastern Michigan game. Sac's offense largely looked pretty dang bad outside of a couple nice runs by a freshman RB. There was just no identity at all on that side of the ball. They scored their only offensive TD with about 8 minutes to go in the 4th quarter. They got 7 points off of a strip sack return for a touchdown. Eastern Michigan was projected to be pretty middle of the pack of the MAC and they handled Sac without too much trepidation or difficulty. I don't think the Hornets looked particularly FBS in quality.

Unless they figure out what they want to do on offense, they could be looking at a 1-2 win season.

Alright, here's the rundown on the USD...

The Toreros open their season against the Aggies after a 2025 campaign that had them finish 8-4 and 3rd overall in the Pioneer League. Last season they scored 28.4 points per game and averaged 360.7 yards of offense per game while allowing 24.3 points per game and 348.9 yards per game respectively. The Toreros were very narrowly selected to finish 1st overall in the Pioneer League coaches poll going into the 2026 season. The Aggies hold a strong grasp on the series with Toreros with a 9-1 record.

San Diego returns significant chunks of their offensive production from last season. Starting off with the QB position, the Toreros return starting QB Dom Nankil who completed 157/246 passing attempts (63.8%) for 1945 yards with 13 TDs to 3 interceptions. He's a mobile QB as well. He gained 231 rushing yards last season (net 113 after taking away sack yardage) and had 2 rushing TDs. He's not the biggest guy to ever play the position, standing at 6'0, but only 175 pounds. The defense should try to bully him into making mistakes.

Keeping the ball on the ground, the Toreros did lose their 2nd leading rusher in RB Matt Colombo who ran for over 700 yards and 10 TDs last season, however, they do return their most productive RB in Adam Criter who gained 955 yards on 180 attempts (5.1 yards per rush) with 12 TDs. What may impact some of the success of their run (and pass) game is that at least based on their game notes from their last game of the season in 2025, they are going to have 3 new starters on the offensive line.

In terms of their receiving game, the Toreros had 2 productive receivers last season and return 1 of them. They no longer have WR Josh Heverly who had 614 receiving yards on 47 receptions (13.06 yards per reception) with 6 TDs, however, do return WR Cole Monach who had 822 yards on 55 reception (14.95 yards per reception) with 6 TDs.

The key for the Aggie defense is disruption at the line of scrimmage. We need to take advantage of the fact that they are going to have several new guys on the line. Do that and their offense stalls.

Defense is going to be a larger question mark for the Toreros. They lost significant portions of their defensive production from last season as they only return like 4 or 5 guys from their starting defense per their last game of the season game notes in 2025.

The Toreros only return 3 of their top 10 players in terms of tackle production from last season including their top 4 tacklers. Probably their most notable loss from last season was young gun LB Nate Fischer who racked up 97 tackles, 3.5 sacks, 1 interception, and 1 forced fumble. He transferred to Florida Atlantic, not a powerhouse FBS school by any means but a big jump up from the Pioneer League. They lost 2 out 3 of their top players in terms of sack production, but do return DL Sean Scheck who had 5 sacks on the season. The Toreros most dangerous returning defensive player is DB Ruben Lopez who had 53 tackles on the season last year, but led the team by a healthy margin in interceptions with 5 (next closest players had 1).

As a whole the defense just has a lot of question marks. It's going to be a majority of new starter so tough to say how things will gel. The key for the Aggie offense will simply be getting things humming early. Take advantage of their inexperience in terms of starting reps. Don't test Lopez too aggressively in the pass game because he's definitely a ball hawk, but at the end of the day I think Gbatu can handle him.

Finally the Toreros return their do it all special teamer in Emiliano Salazar. He went 15/18 on FG attempts last season with a long of 47. He only attempted 1 50+ yarder. He also took a majority of their punts with a 44.76 yards per punt average. He performed all of their kickoffs with 27/65 going for touchbacks.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, this is an extremely winnable game for the Aggies. I would be extremely disappointed in another close game a la Portland State. Get the offense going early, disrupt their offensive line, and play mistake free and this should be a big win.

GO AGS!

Yes, the batted passes were surprising/frustrating. You expect to see more of those with smaller QBs standing in the pocket, but Cleeland is not a small guy. I think he found Gbatu plenty once the offense actually started humming as he still finished with 8 receptions for 100+ yards.

There were several of those deep passes that were so close to being there. I mean the receivers were getting open downfield, ball just beyond the finger tips. The passing game looked good in the 2nd half for the most part outside of the batted pass that got intercepted. The offense just can't find itself going 33% completions in a half if they are planning on throwing the ball 40 times per game.

Wasn't acceptable then, wouldn't be acceptable now.

I'm not saying that you take San Diego for granted, but I am saying that the talent disparity between the Pioneer League and the Big Sky is significant enough that if we play up to our potential we should blow them out. I mean, several Pioneer teams already lost to D2 opponents already this season.

If the offense gets going in the 1st quarter then we should handily take care of business. If the offense played like they did in the 2nd half over the course of the entire game against PSU we would have blown them out. Pioneer League is bad, we have no excuses to not blow them out.

AGGIES WIN! AGGIES WIN!

TOOOOOOOOOOOUCHDOWN AGGIES!

Holy ****! LETS GOOOOO

Now defense, LOCK THEM THE **** DOWN!

LETS GO!

Please please please get the 2 point conversion

if they score almost certainly I would say

Pathetic

FG good, but an 8 point game now