In 1981, Cal Poly was a scholarship school coming off a D2 national championship year, and had won three of the preceding four meeting with Davis. Davis didn’t play comparable opponents in league, and only tied for the title.

I know this isn’t a new observation, but the depth chart doesn’t bear more than a passing resemblance to the game starters. For instance Cotton has started three of the five games and isn’t in the depth chart. Mouisset has started the last two and he isn’t either.

That’s two press conferences where Hawkins says a player on the punt team calls the play. Hawkins doesn’t know it’s going to happen. They coach it, and turn when to call it over to a player, in this case Smalley.

Those are our two leading receivers in terms of yards, Larison is sixth in catches.
But your point generally is correct, we don’t complete passes down field.
The Montana State commentator on the broadcast indicated they were lining up all within eight yards of the line of scrimmage, to stop the run and the short stuff.
I don’t think Hastings is very accurate with the deep throws.
I don’t think the receivers we're playing are fast for this level of football. Davis, Babb possibly exceptions to that, but the rest are possession receivers,
We’re playing a number of guys who might make yards after catch, Gilliam, Tompkins, Hutton, Larison. Against the teams we’ve played so far with good defense that’s difficult to rely on.

That’s right, probably low on their priority list, I think moving the came to a different package is kind of a rip off, or to be more polite an incentive for people to buy more. Since they’re squeezing fans for money they should deliver.

If we bring another QB into the rotation it would be because he can throw the ball downfield.
When TT is in to take a direct snap, they aren’t trying to fool anyone. When that works it’s because if TT being difficult to tackle. He is unique among our QBs in that respect. Now if he could only pass.

I think the conferences like to have their games in cable packages, so it’s something they seek in negotiations, This game was scheduled that way since June.
https://bigskyconf.com/news/2022/6/28/two-big-sky-football-games-to-air-on-espn-linear-networks-this-fall.aspx

I wouldn’t vote us in the top 25, but at least one based on comparative scores does.
https://www.college-sports-journal.com/college-sports-journal-sagarin-fcs-top-25-oct-2-2/

Only one of the teams listed has had a tougher schedule than Davis, that’s South Dakota.

Three of our losses are to teams in the top 6 and the fourth was to Cal.

We give up too many big plays to be happy with the defense. The pass plays you might chalk up to being thin at cornerback due to injury, but then there are the huge runs.
I think there is enough talent on defense that we should expect better results. We play a lot of guys, maybe they’re not all on the same page.

I don’t know that Speckman’s philosophy, to the extent we employed it was working. I wanted it to work, but the results weren’t there. If you can’t keep defensive linemen from penetrating you can’t have much success with the ball carrier running horizontally.
Babb has got to prove himself after sitting out. The wide receiver coach didn’t watch in 2019.

Both MSU and Sac rely on transfers more than Davis does and I think Davis is a hard place to transfer into either as an undergraduate or graduate student.

Hawkins’ best year was his second, when the team was 10-3. Davis players just seem to not get much better through the years. It’s common for players to have their best years early and then stagnate. We’ve actually had a lot of turnover of assistant coaches.
Davis rarely has the bigger stronger team and relies on scheme to get an advantage and against good teams that have seen them before that doesn’t consistently work. They don’t play meat and potatoes football to use the Eastern Washington coach’s phrase. How much of that is recruiting versus coaching vs player development I don’t know.

There is no way we had a shot at recruiting Chambers, either this year or out of high school. And he’s started more games than Hastings has, so it’s not surprising that he’s better than Hastings, who’s only started this year because the likely starter washed out, and started last year only after the first string got injured.

I wish Hawkins hadn’t gone down the road of touting his team so much. No objective observer rank a 1-3 team in the top 15 without that team having a quality win. Davis doesn’t have an impressive win, and has a poor win/loss record.

However, computer rankings where strength of schedule matter look better.
Sagarin would have us at #7.
https://www.college-sports-journal.com/college-sports-journal-sagarin-fcs-top-25-sept-24/

I don’t want to defend Gomez from all criticism, but I do think it’s flawed thinking to criticise his field goal percentage of 40% when two were from 50 yards.

Here is an observation from an article about valuing field goal kickers,
Of the 355 FBS kickers who attempted a field goal in the 2017 season, only 49 of them (13.8 percent) hit a field goal of 50 or more yards. Total field goal percentage would give you no context that most college football teams do not even attempt field goals of this length.

http://www.optimumscouting.com/news/expected-points-a-better-way-to-analyze-place-kick

This game was lost by game decisions, not overall offensive philosophy.
Talent at positions is going to vary between years. Gould would not necessarily had better kickers this year.
Hawkins, without apologizing said that they need to rethink some of their strategies in different zones of the field. All I can think is that Gomez must have shown a lot more in practice than he’s shown in games. Maybe some of that is on the snapper and holder.

Gandhi and Winston Churchill. That’s viewpoint diversity.

That pass to the tight end in the goal line was a bad choice because the play designer expects the tight end to catch the ball with his back to the goal line but to fall across the goal line. He has no momentum.
The refs contemplated calling an illegal receiver down field, so maybe the play intended to be thrown behind the line of scrimmage to preclude that.
We have a class of plays where we throw behind the line of scrimmage to receivers without blockers. This was one of those. Either the defenders need to be fooled or miss a tackle. It’s classic Davis “we are outmanned but we’ll fool you” stuff.

I just happened to be watching the end of the first half series. The last three plays before the blocked field goal were Hutton’s reception after a Hastings scramble where he got out of bounds, and then his reception where he almost got a TD but didn’t get out of bounds, forcing use of a time out with 10 seconds left, and then the pass to Castles for no gain. That Castles play started with 10 seconds left and ended with 3 seconds and a timeout. That was a slow developing play to run with 10 seconds left, and Castles didn’t cross the line of scrimmage. That play took up enough time that they could only run one more play, which they chose to be the field goal.
Some may see something different to complain about, but from about the fifty with a little over a minute to play they completed two passes to Chaz Davis, ran Gilliam once up the middle to call timeout because the refs had started the clock after moving the chains, had two completions to Hutton and got to the one. Not bad, except the last Castles play and the field goal choice.

The expected field goal percentage of a kicker with an average leg at 50 yard in college is going to be very low. Hawkins may have an idea from practice that he can make them but most kickers would not. It makes a huge difference if you can get just a few yards closer.

Sacramento isn’t unique as a place you can raise children, With a good income you can raise a family just about anywhere.