Disaster

TD GILLIAM!

Good drive, took advantage of a favorable field situation, got the ball to the best runners and good things happened

Oof Castles ran into the concrete looks like, that could be really severe

I've been following the San Diego State season this year as well which has remarkably a similar trajectory to UCD's. Good defense and punting keeping them in games, a LOT of inconsistency on offense and questions at QB.

The difference with SDSU, though, is that once they have some jitters they settle in with some good high-reward, low-risk downhill running that generally keeps drives alive and avoid procedural errors and turnovers. I just don't see that recognition or composure to find what works and stick with it from the Aggies this year

There was some success earlier where Hastings was just getting the ball off to the usual suspects quickly and it was the only non-Trent thing that really worked against Poly

And here's Magic

To my untrained eye when HR or Magic are in at QB the offense behaves a bit like a triple option, but is much more traditional when Hastings is in even when they're technically running the same looks. Easier to defend his passes when it's more obvious when he's going to pass and has less time

Easier to block when you get a head start, I'll give Special Teams a pass for this one

Offense looks ok when we're not making procedural mistakes and just getting plays off fast

The days of being at a speed and size disadvantage at every position seem to be gone so we really need to see more of just decent ball movement and sustained drives. Not asking for the world, just consistency

Offense just looks unprepared

Repeat of my usual complaint that if we're going to stick with our academic recruiting limitations then the expectation should be that UCD is always the most prepared and well-executing team on the field, when frequently it's the other way around

Defense = on point
Special teams = clicking
Uniforms = crisp
Offense

Hastings?

Weber up by 14 after the two-point conversion

This actually doesn't affect Ags' conference hopes as much as one would expect, but it would be good for our resume at this point if Weber shows improvement

Looks like slight chance of precipitation in SLO but not much. When I saw the dreary weather in the SLO pictures on the football team's Instagram I got instinctively scared, but honestly UCD is so run-heavy that rain might benefit the Ags more than Cal Poly. Still getting used to thinking of them as anything other than a pure option team

There's no Cal Davis logo in the rotation. Script Davis is probably the closest we have to that but it's always stand-alone in that form

Though I understand Daft is not entirely to blame for the offense under Gould, I don't think it should be forgotten that he was a key staff member, arguably THE key one after the HC himself, during the objectively worst stretch of UC Davis football history in decades. And where we were particularly plagued by utterly predictable and stale playcalling and bad clock management.

It looks like he's rebounded and found a good gig at Dartmouth, and if that leads to an HC job there or a bigger OC job elsewhere that's great and he can continue to spread Aggie Pride and Sochor's legacy there. But building a winning culture at Davis means that our AD has to emphasize that performance matters when hiring and especially re-hiring people, so I'm hoping that Daft makes his way elsewhere for a few years. I don't feel bad saying this because it doesn't look like he'll be short on work anytime soon.

I'm convinced that the tilted block UC DAVIS is purely designed to be visible from a distance/on TV/ on a small screen and was not chosen for actual aesthetics. It does succeed on that front

Agreed. I have a hard time mustering up a defense of a celebrity doing something that would get the average worker fired/disciplined/shunned in their workplace, and I think using slurs to talk about members of your organization and sharing topless photos of coworkers in documented conversations to a supervisor would qualify.

And ignoring the morality of the above (not that one should), it's a serious lapse of judgement when you're paid millions in the spotlight to do anything but maintain a squeaky clean record when you're talking to people in the organization. Based on the kind of person Gruden seems to be in private and his judgement calls, I personally wouldn't want him to work for me if I had the choice, nor would I think him qualified to be a leader on the field and in the community based on that either.

Edit: Changed to "a supervisor" to reflect that it wasn't his team's owner. Point still stands that technically all of the NFL is the same organization, especially since some of the slurs were directed at the commissioner himself

I think the difference is that in 2018 the team passed the "eye test" with soaring colors in every game but EWU. Yeah most of our points against Stanford were at the very end but we kept it competitive for three quarters. Our offense basically scored at will vs SJSU.

And even though Montana wasn't doing that hot, what the Ags did in Wa-Griz was unprecedented, so I think anybody following that box score basically counted it as a quality win

It must be good for team morale that even the 4th-string guy in the game's most visible position practices for moments where he'll be counted on for key plays. (Also since there were 9 linemen in on the Gunnor Package I imagine some of those guys don't get much playing time, on offense anyway)