I have to say that we were simply outplayed. The game looks pretty even statistically. Same number of turnovers, total yards about the same. Take away our missed pat and their 85 yard TD run and it's a tie game. The saddest words in the English language are "what if."

well for perspective - Aggies started 1-4 last year. However, they went on a 5 game league win streak and of course lost to Sac State to miss playoffs. They have put themselves in a real bind now and will have to clean things up. They probably need to win out to make playoffs.

Kick coverage and not being able to get off the field on 3rd and long hurt.

I don't understand the thought process of giving 80% of the carries to one runner, many up the gut for no gain, when we know Chukwudobe can break tackles.

It seems Montana made halftime adjustments and we didn't. Their little guy hurt us, as did special teams.

Remaining schedule is...

@ Weber - they don't seem to be top tier this season, but we historically struggle with them
@ NAU - beat Montana, lost to Sac by 1, and is currently beating Weber
vs PSU - 3 losses (2 to FBS and 3rd to Montana state), destroyed CP
@ ISU - score-wise paying Montana similarly to us
vs Sac - looking like the 3rd strongest team in Big Sky behind MSU and Idaho

there's AT LEAST 1 loss in there and I would suspect more in reality

Bright side of this is a lot of underclassmen got a lot of quality time in a very meaningful game. The experience gained is great, but damn, the Aggies are starving for playmakers.

they brought in Leon-Guerrero and he didn’t do much. I really don’t think anyone other than Larison was going to have much of an impact. I don’t think Chukwodobe is going to get many carries- coaches are going with others, and I understand going with fisher due to his future potential and developing him. Unless you had a Larison busting. TD run today - it wasn’t going to be a game that would be decided by the run game. In any event I do think they had too many rushing attempts.

According to the Montana fans this is one of the weakest Griz teams they've seen in quite a while and yet they just beat us in our house. That doesn't give me much confidence about the rest of the season.

Would you believe that for the sixth game this year they list the wrong player in the starting lineup.. If there is a record for this category of screw up they probably have surpassed it.

Not particularly detail-oriented.

Nice set of photos from the game:

https://www.sacbee.com/sports/college/article280266794.html

Davis is not a good defensive team. They have some outstanding players, but the results aren’t there.
They gave up third down conversions 9 out of 19 times. Sometimes they just looked foolish, like on the third and 17 when the qb ran for it successfully on a planned run. It gives the impression that they weren’t prepared,

I thought McDowell played very well. His elusiveness extended a lot of their passing plays and although he only hit on 56% of his throws, he made a lot of them in the clutch without getting picked. A big difference was also in the return game. UM gained 126 yards, UCD netted 14.

Our special teams play was not good tonight and Montana took advantage of it.

Super hot and sunny, wear the all blues.

The broadcast was TERRIBLE. The color guy was all "Cal Davis" and just could NOT unlearn it. The PBP guy was often confused and the video was blah. The guys in the small white truck do just as well. Maybe the Montana guys have bigger cameras? This production house should not be back. Probably we didn't have a say in it, but I'd rather have watched our own production.

Peace Out

OK, had time to catch up on the forum to digest.

1. I thought defense was relatively skillfull this game/this year as opposed to previously, in terms of (most) tackling quality, finding the ball, contesting a lot of catches, etc. They're still being burned by just faster and stronger athletes making plays but hey, that's going to happen against Montana. And of course they're just on the field too much.

2. Arguably penalties kept the Ags in the game but hey, that's an area we DO expect to significantly outperform the Big Sky on. (I checked FCS stats today, UCD is the second-least-penalized team in the nation). Penalty differential actually matters in matchups with similar offensive stats.

3. I felt the playcalling wasn't putting our guys in a position to succeed, frankly. From my untrained eye it looked like there was a lot of (relatively) slow-to-develop runs or screen passes behind the line of scrimmage on early downs, leading to minimal yardage and frequent 3rd-and-8+. Miles being his old self doesn't fully compensate for him not having the same squad of athletes to dump the ball off to in key situations and not being a running threat himself.

4. Still possible to get to 7 wins and therefore an at-large bid (I think a Big Sky team with no bad losses gets the nod at 7, like Idaho last year). The window of opportunity is getting smaller, but if we win 4 out of 5, we're in. Two of those wins would by necessity be out of Weber, NAU, and Sac. At least we have Sac at home and the magic of a rivalry game introducing some wrinkles there. We absolutely need Tompkins and Perez back to get to that record I would think, and obviously hoping for Larison.

This was a bad game for the defense. They were out there for a long time because they gave up a high percentage of third down plays. They gave up 31 points to a team averaging 21. The offense moved the ball enough to remove the “they were out there too long” excuse.

Still possible to get to 7 wins and therefore an at-large bid (I think a Big Sky team with no bad losses gets the nod at 7, like Idaho last year). — Zander

I love the optimism, Zander. Maybe it's just me still feeling a bit hungover from yesterday's disappointing loss but I'm feeling less optimistic by the week. By all accounts, this is not a strong Montana team by their standards by any means. They've struggled this year against weak competition and appear to be a middle of the pack Big Sky team and I think that's exactly where we are also...right in the middle.

Here's how I think we stack up today in our remaining games given what I've seen of us and the rest of the league so far:

Weber does not appear to be as strong as they typically are but we're playing in Ogden and we always have a tough time with them. I think we'll be slight underdogs going into that game.

NAU nearly beat Sac on the road. They're a really good football team and Sac hasn't dropped off much from last year's success. I think we would lose by at least 14 points to either of those teams if we played them next week.

I'd say the Portland State game is a toss-up at this point with the Vikings having a slight edge since the game is in Portland and game at Idaho State is going to be much tougher than most folks expect.

I see us, at this point, going 4-4 in the conference at best. We simply haven't shown that we can beat the better teams in the Big Sky. Hawkins keeps telling us that the program finally has the talent and depth to be a contender for the Big Sky title but we're not seeing it yet. The games against EWU and Montana were close but we aren't winning those kind of games and those teams are not as good as Montana State, Idaho and Sac.

Injuries on offense have hurt us for sure and a lot can change between now a the end of the season in the Big Sky. I'm a loyal fan and I'll be rooting for us until the end but I'm just not that optimistic at the moment given how things have gone so far this season.

Part of my optimism comes from thinking that these games aren't going to be independent events. I'm thinking that if the Ags figure stuff out on offense / get the personnel back in order to beat Weber on the road, then I feel much more confident against NAU. If the Ags beat both Weber and NAU, then barring another injury I think it's looking very achievable to go 2 for 3 against PSU, ISU, and Sac.

If the Ags show some improvement before losing to Weber but then solidly beat NAU with a semi-healthy offense, then I feel somewhat better about building momentum and picking up PSU/ISU wins then everything comes down to the Causeway, and anything can happen there.

Flip side of course is that I'll be much more pessimistic if we get blown out at Weber and there's still no sign of at least one of Larison, Tompkins, or Perez returning to form.

That's a good point, I was really frustrated by the third and long failures. I felt like the D was trying or hoping to force them into some risky situation to make a big play but that only really happened once by forcing the fumble on the long QB run early. I'll admit I don't have a very good eye in a live game for things like missed coverages or getting fooled on QB draws so I don't know where the individual errors were on those plays though

We kept going to that screen pass to the left side and the Montana defenders read it every time except when TT ran it once.
I could only catch part of the game on a small lobby TV but there was a HS coach sitting next to me. He told me he watched the EWU game and predicted LL was going to get hurt. His comment was that you just can’t work a RB like that without consequences. He was convinced that LL’s injury was precipitated by a coaching decision.

I think we do have the talent when healthy. I think we turned into a running team after Plough left, but haven't adjusted our recruiting.. We have a roster with very few recruited running backs ( Larison, Ward, Perez, Fisher) and a pocket passer and we are now a running team. On defense we seem out coached. In the two conference games we lost the opposing team seemed to make adjustments in the second half and moved the ball freely after being stifled in the first half. Teams find answers to our defense in every game in the second half.

i had the same foreboding on that. When a team is focused on a single guy on offense it leads to gang tackles and the officials allow too much after the players forward progress is stopped.
On the other hand, there are lots of teams that get away with it.

I seem to remember Plough's offense still running a lot of halfback dives up the middle, but with the difference that there was 1) a lot of talent available at 1st and 2nd string RB and wildcat QB and 2) really solid short passing options to very good receivers and TEs. Maier -> Doss bailed us out of a LOT of 3rd and longs.

So I'd argue it's partly a rushing threat recruiting problem, but also a receiver shortage as well. Except for maybe Hutton I would say there isn't a downfield guy as reliable as even Harrell or Crawford on the roster this year, let alone an all-star like Doss available to bail us out.

Momma's at the old Bistro 33 site was the clear unanimous winner this weekend. Virtually every breakfast item was $9.95.

I had the bacon & eggs, toast, and potatoes... which were a cross between potatoes and potato chips which were perfectly seasoned. Real cloth napkins, amazing patio, and now table service - with new staff just trained.

The Manager comes from Cafe Italia, Cindy's, and Dos Coyotes (?), so she knows what she's doing. Lunch and dinner aren't the same bargain, but market appropriate. Pizza by the slice at $3.95 another option. Huge space. FIVE STARS. I may post in the OT section later.

The issue is lack of depth at running back, not lack of good guys at the top of the depth chart. UCD has better run blocking than when Plough and Keane were here. Since they left we run more and are better at it. This is not a knock on them but people and teams get better at what they do. But if you intend to be a running team you need more than a couple of guys you have confidence to play. To get more than two guys you need to give out a running back scholarship or two every year. Davis hasn’t
We had downfield passing in this game and we had 359 yards receiving. We have reliable receivers. Chaz Davis to name one has had good games against Cal, Oregon State, Eastern Washington and Montana.

Regarding our running backs, it seems we aren't going to see much of Chukwudobe. I think there's something in his "100% full throttle downhill" running style that Hawk feels isn't the best for us. Fisher looks like he has some real talent especially for a true freshman but Hawk has said he prefers to redshirt him. I'm not sure if he's already played to much too be redshirted at this point though.

Totally agree now that I know more about our RB corps from these past weeks' injuries and media coverage, I wrongly assumed starting the season that there was a room of 4+ guys behind Larison and Perez ready to go back there. It seems like we have talent at receiver, but the ball just isn't being spread around that much compared to the squad Maier was throwing to, which I admit is more of a gut feeling than keeping track of the stats

I believe Fisher has one more game he can play before redshirting under the current rules. In retrospect probably not a good thing for the season prospects that he got carries in the OSU blowout, but hindsight is 2020 and at the time I'm sure it seemed like a low-risk way to give a freshman some reps against talented defenders

Yes, and, since Fisher is from the Portland area, he probably had family and friends in the stands and Hawk wanted to get him into the game so they could see him play. Nice move on Hawk's part to do that at the time.