In the committee’s ranking after games of October 26,, South Dakota was 4th, Davis 5th.
In Massey ratings after this week that the Committee looks at they are still 4th and Davis 5th. I think SD just needs to be within a touchdown of North Dakota State game to remain 4th, unless Davis wins by more than two touchdowns.

Football players are schooled to always blame the other teams success on their errors.
Remember the grief given to the Stanford player who said Davis was a good team?
The coach established a rule that they were not to talk about again.

As regards to what the worst case would be if Davis loses to Sac. There is no telling because there is no definition on how the committee rates teams. A couple of weeks ago, when writers first started doing these playoff projections the assumption was that Davis would lose to both Montanas and beat Sac, and at 9-3 be seeded outside of the top eight. Sac on paper would be a weak opponent and a loss wouldn’t look good.

One area on defense that gets little attention is the cornerbacks. In the Eastern Washington game we had to move a safety to start at corner
After watching the Montana game, Mike Rider who previously coached cornerbacks at Montana State, was very impressed with the Davis cornerbacks, both from a coverage standpoint and willingness and ability to tackle
The last two games the cornerback starters are Verner and McWilliams, Those two guys were initially at Boise and Cal respectively and from high school were the level if recruit we don’t have a shot in getting. Cotton, a starter until an injury caused him to miss the Eastern Washington game is back as well. So that is an example of where Davis is improved and deeper than just a few weeks ago,

Can’t be too pessimistic about a game with a touchdown point spread.
All the common opponents you cite except Portland Davis allowed late scores after having the game in hand. There is a improvement trend in Davis, both offense and defense. On defense they have got guys back form injury, both starters and reserves that generate some pass rush.

You produce great content Colter, much appreciated.

In the “Riden with Rider” episode this week, which I highly recommend Aggie fans viewing, you got the Connors familily story wrong. Rex and Porter don’t have an older brother who was an Aggie, and they are twins.

Once again people think Porter is a younger brother to Rex.

I think the play is to try to score and get a lead, which will make them move away from running as much. As usual Davis will play situational football and run more with a lead.

Interesting fact gleaned from this interview is during the week, Plough coaches the scout offense against the defense, and let the offensive coaches put in the game plan with the #1 offense, He says he does that to foster the perception that he is the head coach of the whole team, and is not just the offensive coach.

The Riden’ with Ryder featuring former coach Mike Rider is a good one to listen to, Rider is really impressed with Davis. He makes an observation about corner backs being really hard to find at any level and in FCS they often sacrifice size, and he wonders how Davis got its corners who he thought were exceptional. Interesting because that is not much commented on.
Colter Nuanez gets the Connors family confused thinking their was an older brother Connors and I’m not sure he knows Porter and Rex are twins..

Considering how many graduate, it is a bunch.. There are 28 grad students and seniors, almost all i think would have have acholarships. Will lose some non seniors as well for various reasons.
Not all the seniors will have used up their eligibility, but most are HS class of 19 or 20 so some will graduate and move on to other things.

Many seem to have forgotten how good Davis was in the 2005 and 2006 transition despite both were 6-5
2005 Loss to Number 7 New Hampshire 17-13, beat Stanford, which was 4-4 in the Pac 10, 17th ranked N. Dakota State, 10th Ranked Cal Poly
2006 Beat #20 Montana State 45-0, but lost to 3 top 10 FCS teams, all on the road, plus South Dakota State and TCU.

The selection process is very opaque. They don’t look at polls officially although they are no doubt aware of them. They look at Massey ratings, and ESPN result and predictive metrics that aren’t published, then make subjective judgements from won loss record, strength of schedule, key injuries, head to head, common opponents etc. It makes me very uncomfortable. It is so undefined as to make it entirely plausible that we could end up 10-2 and not in the top 8. For example Idaho, we beat head to head, we would have a better record than, but they could say they were missing their QB in many games, and seed them above Davis. Loosey Goosey selection system.

They could have started the season with a o line made up entirely of players who had started a game last year, but then Povey who was on the camp roster didn’t return at center.
Two transfers then earned starting roles at guard and a redshirt freshman who saw no action last year took over at center. The left guard, a transfer from Stony Brook,, had played tackle there after a year as a tight end, so new to playing guard. So a learning curve
The line’s performance seems to have picked up coincident with David Main starting the last few games at right guard.

It increase audience involvement as they take a guess as to what the question was, similar to Jeopardy.

I do think that that was one of the more comprehensive summaries of the Davis team by an opposing coach at a press conference. Good articulate coach.

We have a choice between a senior who has hardly played, two 3 star 2024 recruits or 4! projected 3 star star 2025 recruits. They would be foolish not to have a competition.

Perez has two seasons where he played in three or four games, the second of those, last year was due to injury. So he has a redshirt year and a year he could petition for, might be here for two more years.

Davis roster makes no attempt to list eligibility, just academic class level. Look at every recruit from 2023 they are all listed as sophomores. Red shirt years are not declared. I do think they rely on accurate participation records, not something in evidence at Davis.

Alternatively based on Sagarin ratings:

Sac State’s primary reason for offering scholarships and later moving to 1AA was because they couldn’t compete in the non scholarship environment. Within a few years they couldn’t compete with Davis when they were 1AA and Davis was Div 2.