Human polls are currently in agreement with Sagarin and Massey ratings That Davis is a #11-15 team, but probably for different reasons. Voters are giving us the benefit of the doubt and ignoring the Cal loss; computers are giving us credit for the Cal loss. All rankings are probably directly or indirectly baking in last year's ending rank too.

No exception this year, as I understand it. Hoping for a quick score in the 1st quarter to get the students into the game early

Massey has UCD at #12 and #5 in the BSC as of now; Sac leapfrogged us with a surprising bump from beating current #50 Nicholls at home (as you may recall that was the committee's "quality win" that they said helped make the case for Sac over Davis last year).

Can't read too much into this small sample size other than a reminder that Sac is not going to be penalized for losing two FCS games and any win over a team in the top half of the FCS can influence models and voters.

https://masseyratings.com/cf/fcs/ratings

They hosted Utah a few years back, but it's grim for them. On the flip side, SDSU was fairly consistent in hosting at least one Pac game a year since I was a fan, even before the new stadium.

I would expect Davis to have luck somewhere between those two by being in a good recruiting ground and not being a commuter school. An expanded Aggie Stadium and locker room facility would probab;y be significantly better than SJSU's aging facility as well

Ags performed basically as Massey predicted — favored against SUU by a FG. Course that doesn’t tell the whole story of spotting them the pick six, SUU’s missed FG, etc.

Thus might turn out to be a bit of a quality win though if SUU solves their special teams problems

I don’t think Tompkins has even had a touch yet no?

The shovel pass is new and yeah we had a truck play but still not much in the way of sweeps, gadgetry, anything that would get playmakers the ball in the Hawkins era

On the contrary, this gives me a lot of 2017 and 2019 vibes

My weekly rant that if we’re going to have among the strictest academic requirements in the FCS then the expectation should be we have among the least penalties in the FCS. We’re not going to win on athleticism so we have to have precision

It’s ok makes it more exciting to spot them 7

Offense might marginally improve just with Tompkins healthy and all else equal …. But that’s if MH can hit him in a forward pass because we’re not doing really any sweeps, pitches, direct snaps etc to get playmakers the ball.

Relatedly, going to harp again that I hope the staff considers bringing back the wildcat package for the Red zone. Ungainly, predictable, but got the ball in 50% of the time at least

On the remaining schedule, Idaho, SUU, MSU, and Montana all have wins over FBS or FBS transitioning teams. Offense can’t execute like this vs the big hitters later

TD Williams!

I wonder if it’s just pressure/ nerves? Maybe he’s just lights out in practice but just overthinks things in games or something

Scott said the inner thoughts out loud

As predictable as Hawkins’ wildcat red zone package was, it also was mildly successful against FCS defenses.

I feel like just having ten guys block for Lan or TT can’t be less one dimensional than this

I'm predicting a two-possession loss to the Beavers, but I hope to be surprised. It's a rebuilding year IMO

UCD offense performed comparably and arguably even slightly better than Auburn's against Cal -- would have been more obviously reflected on in the score without the missed kicks

Four of the teams on our schedule now have an FBS win (counting Cal, and Montana beating a transitioning team). Every win will be critical this year for a playoff push

and pressured the QB on a would-be int that got negated by PI. He's game-changing out there

Speaking as an SDSU fan, they’re in basically full rebuild with a new system and apparently freshman QB. They also haven’t had a decent offense in the better part of a decade. That was a prime setup for an FCS scare.

Maybe A&MC might move the ball marginally better vs the Aggie D but like others have noted we should both get going on the ground and have a bit of a better attack through the air than SDSU did at first