Me too,
Media and poll voters don’t expect much. We were 5 & 6; lost to Sac, and our schedule is tougher, The time to prove them wrong is just weeks away.
Success to me is do several of the following, doesn’t need to be all:
1) Beat San Jose
2) Beat a team in our conference we haven’t beaten since we joined, either Montana or Eastern Washington These are both on the road
3) Beat everyone in FCS in California
4) Have a winning record

So many questions so few answers, the joy of rooting for the Aggies!
Hopefully coaches identify talent and find spots for a lot of guys to succeed. Our JC WR is interesting. Was an all state punter in high school. Didn’t catch too many passes at American River, or punt. But with all our QBs throwing passes in practice we need a lot of receivers.

No huddle fast tempo will also get the number of plays up.
We won’t be one dimensional. We have a few other wide receivers in addition to our returning starters coming off injury. Plus good redshirts, freshmen. Jarred Harrell redshirted after injury, he was a 10.7 second 100 guy. Remember the big plays against Weber by Vaughn, one 60 yards? I’d love to get an update on how Harrell and Vaughn are.

Not much change there I think he averaged 10 catches.
To throw to Doss 20 times we need first downs so there are lots of plays and everyone else gets plays too.

He’s great. Wish we had two of him.

Some of the teams ahead of us we’ve never beat so not much to argue about.
Maybe this is the year we knock off Eastern Washington and/or Montana.

A lot of quality thinking went into that prediction of needing a dominant win.
San Jose has to to be expected to dominate because:
They were horrible last year,
Still don’t know who their QB should be
Have to replace most the offensive line
Lost their best defensive lineman
Have a guy who is a true freshmen and walked away from Cal last year after Cal gave him a late offer which looked better to him than his commitment to Cal Poly. This freshman is projected a starter.
In summary a unsettled team. They probably have good running backs, receivers, so we could lose.

Note the spread in the sbnation article has us favored. We should be a much more polished team for the first game. On offense we know who our players are and they know each other. That is a big advantage in the first game, against a rebuilding team with a new offensive coordinator.

Good marketing idea. Can’t rely on newspapers anymore, especially since Enterprise behind paywall and Sac Bee giving local FCS teams little coverage

Not unprecedented for us to move a safety to linebacker, or outside linebacker to DE. We might be able to do this during games with these guys, have player out on field move from one position to another
We reallly do seem to have a lot of DBs.
I’m interested in whether Sayles is healthy. Started a game for us as a freshman, redshirted last year.

Faulk is an interesting case, won a high school championship in Georgia as a freshman, prior to moving to California and quarterbacking Christian Brothers,as a senior, setting their school passing record. Similar size as Rodrigues and Harris. Kid got an incredible amount of press. His coach coached at Sac State when Safron was there and compares the two.
He and Rodrigues and Niko Harris all played in the greater Sacramento area and have some similarities in terms of size and apparently style of play. I expect these players are probably behind Brock for now based on never playing D1 football. But interesting competition.

Do you hav by thoughts comparing Gunnor Faulk and Rodrigues?
Gunnor seems to be in a preferred walk-on status, on the roster but no picture.

I think we need to win to open eyes. We need to beat one of these teams we haven't beaten since joining the conference, like Montana, Eastern Washington. Nationally, beating Montana or Eastern would be the eye openers for FCS fans, polls voters. Our reputation in the conference is still in the bottom half of the league. In the Big Sky, reputation is all about beating Montana, Montana State and Eastern Washington. I think if we beat San Jose and San Diego, we will have accomplished a lot, but in the Big Sky world they would still be snoozing.

So if you bring in more JC guys they have to be better than those JC guys you recruited last year Usually only have them for two years, so they need to be able to get playing time. We also have two and three star underclass men and other veterans they would also need to be better than to make a difference. JC transfers are useful if you have immediate need. That was more true last year than this.

I’m happy to see who’s in the two or three deep.

On D, I hope we have a lot of competition and some new faces earn playing time. As you said we are more experienced; defensive coaches were new to league last year. so they’ve learned something too.
The last two years we’ve brought in some good defensive players and I think they’ll show that this year.
Recruiting JC players is a bandaid. The guys we recruit as freshmen should be better by the time they become juniors to most guys coming out of JC.

First two games are winnable but tough and will show where we stand.
Looking forward to seeing a depth chart, even one with lots of ORs. Love to know how our non freshman redshirts and other players who missed games at end of season are doing health-wise.

San Jose didn’t really shine at throwing the ball last year. This projection assumes they’ll be able to throw better against our bad defense. Their bombs away games seem to be just over 50% completion with for 180 yards. The assumption the author makes is that we’ll still be bad. But who knows?
If we are bad again defensively it will be a long year,

Odd coincidence of Christian names.
Our best depth seems to be wide receiver, too bad about losing a big linebacker. But not sure where he would end up in depth chart with all the other competitors

Rhymes with the soda pop brand, Nehi

I suspect they never asked to travel across the country to play a non scholarship team at the Toom. Not much glamor in that, even factoring in the steam tractor,