No, they werent happy with him for some reason,

He's last years starter

And we haven't seen Tehran or Logan Montgomery.

Boy it would be great to learn something from the announcers

We haven't done great on third down

1st Down Total Yards 325
Thats unreal.Even first down rushes we average 7.8 yards

A bevy of receivers, that they can't cope with. I'd love to hear their coaches conversation

Defense holding up their end.
San Jose has not had an unassisted by penalty drive of any distance.

New guys Crawford and Gilliam are big additions

Prediction:
Maier throws for 300+yards with a big gain by a receiver not named Doss
Aggies rush for 150+ yards using several backs
We score 30+ points,
We get a turnover or two maybe a fourth down stop
We eek out a win

[ I think the Spartans will be a challenge for us but they don’t give the impression of having their act together. Question is, are we a legit FCS playoff contender? If we are we should beat a bottom dwelling FBS team. My expectation is that San Jose is moderately improved from last year but that’s based on new recruits,new coordinators. Are they ready to go game 1? If we are ever likely to beat an FBS team, isn’t this the time?
But I thought we would beat Sac last year, so what do I know

Reading the San Jose stories in the Mercury news or mountain west coverage they expect to dominate because FBS vs FCS
They think their defensive line, which was the weakest part of their defense last year, to be better because they say it will. Early in camp the idea was that their seniors would provide senior leadership, but help was coming from recruits.. Now suddenly those seniors are the strength of their defense.

They think they'll win because their schedule gets tougher so they have to not only win but dominate.
A lot of wishful thinking. I hope their players have that same mindset, thinking they will dominate us, because when they don't they'll feel the pressure,

The concern about our offensive line experience may be well placed.
From our depth chart, which I think isn't too reliable, at left offensive tackle we have a red shirt freshman, and the Sac CC transfer from last year who played defense at sac city college, and was recruited as an offensive lineman here. He added 50 lbs according to roster. So two guys who've never played.

In regard to offensive line weight, a comparison from our game notes, our smallest guy is listed twice:
UCD Offensive line
LT 290 285
LG 305 296
C 277 290
RG 277 300
RT 300 298

San Jose Offensive line
LT 307 287
LG 308 284
C 284 285
RG 303 280
RT 289 275

If we lose it will be due to better players not bigger players

odd that they were ranked 129 against the run even though they had two linebackers with prodigious numbers of tackles, both of whome either graduated our moved on to give pros a try.
Not saying they won’t be a challenge for us. Except for our last game everyone was. Hoping we continue the running success we had against Sac, although maybe that was partially due to their lead

Their QB probably left because he lost the job.
I checked San Jose OL size vs our last opponent Sac and Sac is bigger. Not to mention the really big guys in the Big Sky.
On defense we need to get the ball back somehow. Takeaways or punts.
Extrapolating from the move of a safety to linebacker and a linebacker to defensive end that we are trying to have more speed on defense.

I too have had high expectations that haven’t become reality.
This game will tell us a lot.
We have a lot of positive answers to questions most teams are struggling with, but we have a few things we need to prove:
Do we have some semblance of a running game? Do we have to throw the ball on third and three, or are we a threat with the run?
Can we get consistent stops on D? Is their punter going to make a regular appearance?

There is not a major difference in the size of the lines. They have one massive guy on defense and a couple of offensive linemen who outweigh ours by less than 10 lbs which is less than 3%. Their number two OL guys are smaller or the same size as ours, depending on who we start.
We are used to playing bigger teams than San Jose

re the Daily Democrat’s
http://www.dailydemocrat.com/sports/20180828/ucd-set-for-season-opener-thursday

concern about young offensive linemen; we do have a lot of redshirt freshmen and freshmen linemen plus a few sophomores. But on our two deep depth chart we’ve got 7 upperclassmen and we have returning starters at three of the five positions.
Author takes Hawkins literally on the twenty passes to Doss. He interprets that as completions. That’s tough to do if you run the normal number of plays but hopefully we’ll run more due to hurry up no huddle offense.
Plough/Speckman/Hawkins are not going to be one dimensional given the other ball handlers on our team.

It will be Maier for sure.
Dr Mike,and anyone else at the game...Give us a report of how the svelt version of Tehran looks from a running back perspective. It seems he added a lot of weight between high school and last year and has since dropped 15 lbs and is back near his HS weight

That’s so last year, give the new guy a shot

I agree with both of your points. We want to know what’s going on and some of us are some distance away. So we need to get info about football from the data sources, not just personal stories etc.
I do appreciate at least seeing who are candidates to start in the depth chart. Once the game starts we know who’s actually #1