I think the player primarily talked about regarding his hands taped up is backup Uilisone Amone, who didn't play this last week. Obviously there are other players dinged up or out.
I'm curious about Alexander.

Defense has been good, but I heard on the Texas A&M Commerce vs Grambling broadest that the Lions had more passing yardage in the Davis game than any D1 team playing that weekend. The defence has been tough to put in drives against but yields many big plays.

Aside from Rex Connors, Jayden Stanley, Uilisone Amone, Joey Carrillo who has reportedly been injured?.
Porter Connors played, Grant Garretson played and both played well.
Mystery absence is Markeeze Alexander, who played at Cal only, after being a mainstay previously..
Reminds me of Noa Masui who started at Cal two years ago but has seen very limited action since perhaps due to an injury sustained in that game. He played in this week's game and forced a fumble.

Davis faces many obstacles, among them these:
1) Fans here are biased toward only watching the top level of competition. Many fans here aren’t native to the town and region they live in, so they don’t have the feeling that the local team is “our team”. They’d rather watch the NFL.
2) To the limited extent that local counts, people apparently don’t think Davis is local to Sacramento, a mind boggling fact.
3). We have entered a phase where the major conferences are engaged in anticompetitive practices. The 5 million FBS fee is a barrier to entry and the ridiculous 105 scholarship count is going to allow big programs to hoard talent so conferences like the mountain west will have the quality of play of FCS schools and FCS schools the quality that Div 2 teams had years ago.

Teams can be pretty sure Miles under center means a quick pass to someone in the backfield. They have done it a couple of times in two games and thats what it has been.
The fly sweep appeared in the SUU game as well, sometimes the motion without the handoff. The challenge with the fly sweep is preventing the defense getting penetration because the runner is running parallel to line and not much behind it. Any penetration disrupts the play. Dobbins got snagged by the ankle against SUU.

Perez isn’t a senior in terms of eligibility, he is a redshirt Junior, having olayed in only 3 games in 2021.

Perez is a good running back, but I think Fisher is a better ball carrier.

Our FCS opponents have been so weak this year that not having a complete blowout makes Davis look bad by comparison to their other results.
For instance NAU and Montana State both rushed for 339 yards against Utah Tech, compared to Davis’ 133. And it was tough to get the 133, gained at 2.9 yards a carry. Davis’ rushing attack seems to have taken a big step back this year. What is to blame? All new interior line starters, new OC, new play caller, Perez getting more play than his talent warrants, not fired up for opponents or what?

At least 3 times on the pregame show the play by play guy referred to SUU as a Big asky team.

Following up on who the freshman defensive.linemen who are likely to play are.
There are two freshmen defensive linemen:
Rayne Mayo.Jr...Listed originally as 6'2" 285,.now on the roster 320lbs so likely is a nose tackle. We know Amone was playing.with his arms taped due to injury.. Toki also may have been injured. He went down after being run into by the running back. He played after that but I think his last play may have been the touchdown SUU scored to bring them within 4. Rayne's parents have Quam roots. We have a tradition here of big Pacific Islander Nose Tackles.
The other Freshman DL is Jake Williams 6'3" 295 lbs. Interesting that he's out of the high school Stacey Dobbins attended before transferring to Bosco, and redshift freshman offensive lineman Souriolle also went to that school, Chaparral in Temecula.

CJ wore 25, a retired number of Sam Paneno, a player who lost his leg due to a game injury.

Yeah, but the Cal game the score was what was expected even though the game was more competitive than expected. The next two games were closer than predicted, in the score and also comparative stats.

Oddly enough, Utah Tech has given up exactly 339 yards rushing to each of their two Big Sky opponents, Montana State and Northern Arizona.
Davis ranks 10th in the Big Sky in rushing attempts and yards, and 11th in average per rush. If Davis can’t run effectively against Utah Tech that will be a serious red flag.

There are clips of Plough’s press conference posted today, but the whole press conference isn’t posted anywhere.
The SUU coach had some strong praise of Davis, on a radio show..
Team executes all the time.
Well coached
NFL running back and defensive end,
They play together as a team, stick together.
Good weight program because all their players are really stout.

The good thing about Idaho being ranked so high is that a respectable loss to them would likely leave Davis still ranked. I was afraid Idaho was going to lose games with their QB out, so that even a win by Davis wouldn’t get much credit. Now a win by Davis would vault them in the polls.
I’m surprised Davis is currently ranked as high as they are given they really haven’t had impressive game scores.

Given Davis’ schedule is so loaded with tough late season games, beating the teams they are expected to beat early in the season is a must,
SUU was a tough opponent. In Sagarin’s end of season rankings last year they had a better rating than Davis, so not surprising the game was close.
i don’t think Texas A&M Commerce is going to have a record that contributes much to the Davis reputation. Losing to Grambling is embarrassing.
In both games the Davis defense gave up too many yards while holding a lead in the second half, so how they end games is something they need to improve.

Someone from Davis should sign off on the stats before they become official.
Apparently the NCAA owns the stats database. That was the reason given to me by the Director of Communications Football as the reason they still had Eli Simonson listed as playing in no games in 2023, even though he started every game. David Collins , the person I exchanged emails with this Spring and Summer thought that the NCAA would fix that issue before the season, but it is unchanged,

SUU is playing Idaho State Bengals.

Massey ratings are based on results, and scores.of games. Reputation and the committee's perspective isn't a factor. Davis' victory over commerce is diminished by Commerce's loss to a weak team this week.. And Davis probably did not.meet the predicted margin against SUU..

They really have a problem with the duplicate numbers. Offense and defense are tough concepts for the stat keepers.. This is a multiyear issue.
The wrong info is now in the official NCAA stats as shown in the “final book” for the game so we can expect that Tompkins will never be credited with that catch in the team, conference or national stats. A link to the book: https://ucdavisaggies.com/documents/2024/9/14/37743.PDF