Yikes....!

I kept reading the Sac State article down below, even Gipson said the replay showed him "clearly" out of bounds on that pivotal late pass play vs. Montana.

When you get wins stacked up and have it going, it's amazing the breaks that come your way.

As for the criticism on Hawk, yeah, it's all absolutely true in terms of winning these games with highly ranked opponents.

However, while the article eludes to the roster building and recruiting by the Gould regime, it doesn't mention the fact that in Year 1, Plough and Hawk went down south and found QB1 Jake Maier at Long Beach City College. He also has found players who have played huge, Buchanan, Perryman - who transferred to Washington and was starting, Castles who transferred in from Cal, good number of 3 star guys on this season's class...among others...so Hawk has found plenty of talent, and has demonstrated an ability to win more games than Gould so I think that's a dumb argument as to the 2018 season. However, let's be clear, Gould's staff went and found Doss, and he was huge in 2018.

Brutal. I think it's good to have a contrary perspective but this is probably a bit of hyperbole on the contrarian side.

A couple of things stood out to me:

• Only a few of Hawkins' seasons were winning seasons -- the piece misstates that it's been 2 of the last 5 when really it's been 3 of the last 5, and there are decent odds of this season as well (if you take Massey's 45% chance to win tomorrow plus some small chance of winning @Sac). 3/6 with potential for 4/6 is far better than the 6 years preceding Hawkins.
• It was interesting to break down where Hawkins' wins have come from but I bet if you broke down a lot of BSC teams' records you'd see a substantial chunk of their wins coming from the bottom half of conference and unnoteworthy non-conference games. Sac also has a protected rivalry with Poly, and EWU has one with Portland State, etc. Not to mention the other schools get D2 teams on their schedules which we pretty much have stopped doing.
• We used to lose games to the above teams, sometimes badly. It's not clear to me what other hire except some bonkers signing like Petersen could satisfy admin and fans alike and also drag us from being one of the worst teams in D1 to a team that's actually going .500+ with our recruiting limitations.

Gipson was out of bounds. Sac got lucky on that call and Montana got screwed. It happens.

It reminded me of the horrible call that killed the Aggies final drive at Sac State some years ago when our receiver clearly caught the ball inbounds but was called out. Biggs went out of his mind along with every Aggie fan. You hate to see games decided on missed calls but it happens.

I like to win, but there is a lot more to Hawk than his W-L record, although i sure would like to see him beat Taylor.

Boy was that article a disaster. I mean, Hawkins isn't perfect but that article was not great.

-He acts as if it's a criticism of Hawkins that Hawkins won with Gould's players. It is a criticism of Gould that he couldn't get it done with those players. The fact that Hawkins took a team that was a combined 7-26 over the previous 3 years and led them to a 10-3 record, a co-conference championship, a playoff bye and a playoff win in just his second year with a bunch of players he didn't recruit is remarkable. Even in his first year the Aggies were only 5-6 but their losses were to a 10-3 FBS team, 3 FCS playoff teams and 2 teams that went 7-4 (the top 5 teams in the Big Sky).

-He seems to value beating Sac State a bit too much. He mentions that Gould's only saving grace was beating Sac 3 times in 4 seasons. Personally, I'd rather be a solid team that makes the playoffs but loses to it's rival than a bad team that goes 3-8 with one of those wins over it's rival. Ideally we'd be both better than Sac and a good team. But if I'm picking one, give me the good team.

-Obviously he either can't count or doesn't know what constitutes a winning record, as was covered above. We've had winning record in 3 of 5 seasons. And as I covered above (about 2017) and in another thread (about 2019), we literally only lost to good teams those years. I know eventually we've got to start beating good teams but a 5-7 team with losses to either FBS teams or FCS playoff teams doesn't mean we're a bad team.

-He mentions that Idaho can hang it's hat on beating Montana and losing by just 3 points to Sac this year but then with us says that narrow losses to SDSt and Weber are noteworthy but there are no brownie points. Just mention Idaho beating Montana then. But if you're going to give Idaho brownie points for losing to Sac, do the same to us. Also, while yes, wins and losses do matter, there's a difference between playing good teams tough and getting hammered by them. It doesn't have to be black and white. When we're talking about where we are as a program and how close we are to being where we want to be, how you're faring against good teams absolutely matters.

-He says no coaches voted for us in the latest poll when in reality we got 3 votes (reading is hard!).

-He says 17 of Hawkins's 36 wins at UCD were against Poly, Idaho St, NAU and Northern Colorado but then only cites the combined record of those teams this year. Doesn't make sense. Those teams weren't awful every single year. And even if they were, there's something to be said for not laying an egg and losing to a bad team. Unless I'm missing one, we've got one bad loss (2021 to Idaho State) in his 5 years.

-Says Taylor has raised the bar too far out of Hawkins's reach. Before I admit that, I'd like him to answer which coach has more playoff wins at his current school? I mean, that metric is as good as any other he put forth in his article.

-He also seems particularly hung up on what realistically can be considered nothing more than a comment by a coach excited about his team during the preseason.

Like I said, Hawkins isn't perfect. But this is nothing more than a hit piece from a dude who appears to have an ax to grind with Hawkins.

Chris Carter 2009. That one hurt.

I’ve been disappointed at the lack of upsets, but they are called upsets because they’re unlikely.
Davis played in a tough league and have played tough out of conference games. I think Davis become a more talented team overall in the Hawkins era. The top teams in the conference are all better teams than they were a few years ago. The COVID extra year and the liberal transfers have benefited teams and some like Sacramento have benefited from transfers more than Davis. But that’s a short term boost. I think theyre still going in the right direction. Davis run game looks better than it ever has, at least to me, and defense better depth than ever.

"Erase the 2018 season and Hawkins’ record is 26-23."

Uh, why?
Erase the 2019 season and Hawkins' record is 31-19......

Dumb article...also, what is the Vacaville Insider?

Erase none of Gould's seasons and his record was 10-22, which included two 2 win seasons...abysmal to make comparisons to Hawk's record...and in his big 4th year where his guys are there to turn the corner, the team was terrible, and finished 3-8, but you know, beat Sac so it was a good year. I've always given Gould credit for beating Sac, but that's all he really accomplished...and Taylor wasn't coaching/recruiting there.

LOL. I missed that part in my post. Like you can't just remove a guy's best season like that. The season happened. And even though it's better than what we've done in his other seasons, the schedule was partly the reason for that. We missed Weber and Montana State (2 of the other 3 Big Sky playoff teams) and we also got a 1-11 San Jose State team.

You can only beat who is on your schedule, for good or for bad. We were a minute away from hosting an FCS Semifinal game that year.

yep, you nailed it on every reverse engineered contrarian point. Guy’s obviously has an axe to grind. Shows Solano Community college 1979- present for education on his Facebook page. Maybe he hasn’t graduated from JC (or can’t edit) I am not on Facebook so only got a quick view on browser. Man those Gould years were painful.

Most places Hawkins.would be subjected to just this kind of criticism, it’s not strange given we’ve had so much trouble compared to Sac down the road.

Who is this guy? He has something against Davis as does the Bee. But, the Bee doesn't try to make the players look bad as he does when he writes. I actually am embarrassed I sent to Solano JC first, but I could not afford 4 years at Davis. After graduating from JC I got accepted at Davis and earned.my degree. He must have transferred to Sac State to try to bring athletes down by saying the things they do wrong and never says what they do right. But, notice the Sac players do no wrong never have and ever will if his pen is movong. Troy a Taylor has recruited how many of his own players in 2 years? I say Troy did well developing the athletes he inherited. He has also recruited some good ones. I think Taylor has done a great.job . As has Hawkins. !etc compare the first 5 years of Taylor to the first 5 years of Hawkins. Taylor hasn't reached the semi finals yet. But, he may this year. But, ?looking at stats UCD is the kind of team that can beat any FCS team as long as officials don't call l a receiver out of bounds on a catch where he is about 4yards in bounds.Chris Carter was obviously in bounds and every sac fan knows it. The officials felt sorry for Sac losing so many games to UCD.

My verdict is still ou tthis year on Hawk. The quote that this is the Best team in Aggie History, by the Head Coach raises the bar VERY HIGH. With that statement we need to win out and make the play-offs to be even close to the best team in UCD history. Hawk open the door VERY WIDE with this bold statement. Can anyone help me understand why he would make that statement?

Critical error, we've had a winning record in 3 of 5 seasons, and it could easily be 4 out of 6. Year one was correcting the nose dive.

Hawkins won with Gould's key recruit, Keelan Doss, who had Jake Maier at QB. Cody and Hawk landed JM. Hawkins also dramatically remade the roster after Gould's exit, and a number of Gould's top recruits came and left. We were minutes from a national championship date.

I like Coach Gould, good man, great RB coach, but he was 12-33 as our HC. 7-26 his last 3 years = .212. 5-19 in league those last 3 years. Two of his wins those last 3 years included D2 Fort Lewis, and NAIA Southern Oregon, which takes his D1 record to 5-24 (.173).

I agree we need to start winning tough / big games.

Regarding Sac State. Coach Taylor will lose 2 senior QBs this year, so next year will be much different.

Maybe he was trying to instill confidence in his team? I do prefer Sochor, Foster, and Biggs approach... more balanced.

I think this is the only logical take. Otherwise it just sort of sets them up for a good chance of failure - at least in the W-L department.

My interpretation of Hawkins meaning on best Davis team is that he’s talking about talent,
Obviously this team is more talented top to bottom than any of the D2 teams although they may have had some outstanding players. It’s also a more talented team than any of Biggs or Gould teams, Biggs didn’t even get full complement of scholarships for a few years. Only in Hawkins era have freshmen been able to play in four games leading to more depth and the COVID extra year allowed more experienced players on the roster. So in that context his comment makes sense. He’s looking at a deep roster.
Problem is other teams are deeper too.

cmt brings up a good point in a specific criticism of one of Hawkins' years that I just expanded a bit -- almost all of Hawkins' losses across his whole Davis career were to FBS teams (specifically Pac teams except for SDSU) or FCS playoff teams. All of his losses in 2018, Spring 2021, and 2022 fall into that category.

2017
FBS record: 0-1
Playoff-team record: 1-3
Other FCS record: 4-2

2018
FBS record: 1-1
Playoff-team record: 2-2
Other FCS record: 7-0

2019
FBS record: 0-1
Playoff-team record: 1-6
Other FCS record: 4-1

2021S
FBS record: 0-0
Playoff-team record: 0-2
Other FCS record: 3-0

2021F
FBS record: 1-0
Playoff-team record: 0-3
Other FCS (and transitioning D2) record: 7-1

2022
FBS record: 0-1
Likely playoff-team record: 0-3
Other FCS record: 5-0

If I did my math right, then Hawkins is a bonkers 30-4 against non-playoff teams. Ironically including FBS doesn't hurt that number that much, he's 32-5 against non-Pac, non-playoff teams and 32-8 against everything but FCS playoff teams.

However, he's essentially never won against playoff-caliber teams not named University of San Diego; the only time the Aggies have beaten a legit playoff contender under Hawkins was our actual playoff game vs Northern Iowa coming off a bye.

And the Big Sky is one of two powerhouse conferences, so odds are we'll face 3-4 playoff caliber teams every year.

I agree we need to start winning tough / big games. — movielover

It's definitely a frustrating spot to be in. On one hand, it's good that we're not getting hammered by the good teams and are generally in these games late. And it's definitely good that we're handling our business against bad teams. Shows that just because the opponent isn't a quality one, that we're not overlooking them. So you could say we're up for every game and not really having any letdown or look ahead games.

But on the other hand, when you're getting so close, you want to get over the hump. And for the most part, we haven't been able to do so.

I can't explain it but I really like Hawkins. Maybe because he's a solid coach and a grad of the school. He's also older so I don't see him leaving at this point. The stability is a good thing. We all knew the schedule would be front loaded and just getting to where they are now is solid coaching.

Chris Carter made the catch....end of story. That loss really made 2010's stormy comeback more special. Yet 2009 seems to be remembered more.

if losing by ten or more is getting hammered, not getting hammered by the good teams is a hopeful but recent trend.

“ Chris Carter made the catch....end of story. ”
Same game, our kicker was totally leveled by one of their guys, took him out of the game, no flag. With that said, i suspect J street fans have their own examples. Maybe in the long run it evens out, but it sure stings during the game.

Admittedly I forgot about the ending to the 2021 season.

Yup, though worth noting that there's some causality here. We've been so consistent in racking up wins against the lower Big Sky that any team that beats us gets a minimum-decent win for their playoff resume and any team that loses to us is usually a bubble team at best (unless it's their only FCS loss, which hasn't happened yet). So our conference losses are more likely to be playoff teams and our wins are more likely to not be, partly because of the outcome of our game.

Biggest example I can think of recently is Weber in 2021; they would have been a 7-4 at-large team if they somehow figured out how to stop our freshman QBs in the 4th quarter. Instead my heavy-handed sorting puts them in the same category as the Cal Poly win that year.

I was going to mention that game but because they had their preferred QB out I’m not sure it’s an exception to your observation.

So far, Hawk's getting some good redemption tonight.

Correct. Ags handle Idaho - ranked #14 by the FCS Stats poll, and #20 by the NCAA.