215# according to this year’s roster
RB 5'11" 215 LBS SOCIOLOGY
41
TEHRAN THOMAS

A better article than the commercial competition;

https://theaggie.org/2018/09/06/uc-davis-football-2018-season-preview-and-game-1-recap/

Sample size this year is too small to generalize.
I like computer ratings where they put all the scores in and get a output that ranks teams, but that takes a half dozen games to get meaningful.
We don’t know what beating San Jose signifies because we don’t know how good or bad they are.
In San Diego vs WNM case,comparative statistics might not be meaningful if the game was not in doubt.
Like when we played TCU Boise or Oregon and they didn’t need to run up the score

I think San Diego deserves some respect based on their playoff performance the last few years. Maybe that talent is gone, it’s probably hard to maintain consistency at that level, but they’ve been a decent FCS team as long as we have. Sometimes it’s easier to be the big fish in a small pond. I assume they are good, a more or less average opponent for us. I expect they are less talented but more cohesive and better coached than San Jose; a different challenge. I’d rather see a shutout than a shootout.

I think it will be higher scoring and closer Aggies 45 - 35, or something like that. We score a little more than our average of last year because we’re better on offense and give up something around our average on defense. We have to show we can cover, which we didn’t prove successful at against SJSU. Maybe this game the defense will have a better outing, proving me wrong. D did a good job getting the ball back for the offense but gave up too much yardage, mostly to passes in the 2nd half, and now they face an accurate QB for the whole game.

And the ORs dont necessarily include the starter

I just noticed the order of the players in the depth chart listing is alphabetical
The entire depth chart is the same as last week, including listing cornerbacks as safeties and vice versa!
Well at least I learned the name of the school isn’t Cal-Davis,so there's that. Wish it were though, goes nice with the helmet logo, kind of retro

I think the broadcast Identified him as Will Martin,

our freshman OL starter from last week, parks, isn’t listed. Probably means nothing.

How do we know you’re not a San Diego fan just messing with us?

They were clearly not ready to play.
Here is a quote from the author of the why SJSU is going to "thump" Davis:
Victor Aquino of The Mercury News in San Jose did not have a lot of good things to say about what he saw in the opener:
"The Spartan defense was overwhelmed by the Aggies’ up-tempo offense and perimeter passing and it didn’t help that the initial three-man rush had no effect slowing quarterback Jake Maier. The Aggies scored on their first possession, marching 75 yards on 12 plays. In the first half alone, they racked up 35 points and more than 400 yards of offense. In. The. First. Half."
https://247sports.com/college/washington-state/Article/Washington-State-football-The-Early-Glimpse-of-Wazzu-vs-San-Jose-State-121369864/

I was watching the stats page and I noticed that we had over 300 yards on first down in the 1st half.
Also averaged almost 8 yards a carry on first down. It's as if they hadn't bothered studying us at all, looking past us to their real challenges. Pretty silly for a team we've been competitive with in the past, but they have no institutional memory at SJSU.
Not surprising they did better after they woke up and started playing with desperation.
Now this week we have to play a veteran QB with an accurate arm. Interesting if we can avoid the pass yardage SJSU gained against us when they finally put in someone who was accurate.

I think Gould lucked into Manzanares,a jc transfer summer walk-on.
But I find it interesting that while you would expect Gould to excel in recruiting running backs, our best two freshmen RB recruits may be in last year’s class, Hawkins’ first.

I think Gould had an outlook that was something along the lines of if you execute well and you’re the better team you’ll win. Problem was we weren’t often the better team. You have to win some where you’re not the better team so you can become a place where better players want to go. No upsets under Gould. His style is more suited to Stanford.
If Gilliam and Thomas are as good as they show promise of being, Hawkins in his first year got a better haul of running backs than Gould did in any of his freshmen recruiting classes.

we seem to have two very good backs judging from small samples of work.
We also seem to have some young linemen who have won starting jobs in the offensive line. Not sure about the Sac game last year as far as whether having a big lead made then soft against the run but we had three backs put up a lot of yardage, This week against a supposedly good line, if we accept their opinion of themselves in the pregame hype, we had success on running plays. So it will be interesting to see what happens this week.

yeah probably that and they apparently love Gilliam.
So after puttting up good rushing numbers against Sac last year and San Jose this year, do you think we’ve got a good running game? Hopefully this will again be the case against San Diego.

I listened to the entire stream and they may have speculated that but they didn’t say it, it was more along the lines of them thinking they see his number on the sidelines.
His status is obviously a noteworthy issue.
I would have liked them to note the three first time starters on the offensive line and comment on how the line was doing with the new starters

I understand the partisanship.
It would have been nice to hear the starting lineup, and some commentary there on,
Maybe it was in a portion not streamed but I had to wait until the final stats were posted to see who played; if they didn’t touch the ball or make a tackle they weren’t noted. Exactly what does our color commenter from UCLA bring to the broadcast?

I believe the radio announcers thought he was on the sidelines suited up. But as usual they left room for doubt; one thing you can say about the radio team is they aren’t too informative. Maybe someone at the game looked for him?

There’s that also. The game featured phases. Before the QB change our defense had the better of it against San Jose. After the QB change they consistently moved the ball, but our defense rose to the occasion a few times.

I see your point regarding the defense; but in their favor they had two interceptions, s fumble recovery and forced six punts. When you have an offense running without a huddle and scoring on multiple possessions in a about a minute off the clock you can’t judge the defense just by yards allowed.They got the ball back for the offense without allowing a score multiple times.