I liked Shredville. Was exciting to watch and seemed to attract strong QB’s and WR. So maybe will help with recruiting if his plan is to reimplement the up tempo offense.
I feel the same way. If Plough can juice up our passing game to the point that it's a legitimate threat and Lan Larison stays here for the next season, we could have a two headed monster on offense. Man, that would be a whole lot of fun to watch.
I certainly hope that the pass game will improve under Plough considering it's his specialty. It was kind of a rough look when our most effective offense was... Well... Just Larison whether it was wildcat or handoff.
I found it refreshing to run the ball down the other teams throat. I hope they can still do that with Plough. If you’ve watched aggie football through the years a poor run game is a frequent feature. Third and 4 had to be a passing down.
Big unknown is whether we’ve prepared another QB. Evidence of never playing a second QB, almost uniquely in the conference, is that they don’t feel they have one. Foolish considering that Hastings will be in his sixth year if he comes back.
I'm nowhere close to the most senior Aggie on this board, but I've been watching since the 90's. I think the Aggies have actually had a fairly strong track record of running the ball over the last 10 years with guys like Gabe Manzanares, Manu Luuga, Joshua Kelley, Ulonzo Gilliam, and Lan Larison. I'm not dumping on having a good run game. It's an important aspect of football, but in today's football you have to be able to throw the ball somewhat effectively especially if you find yourself down in a game. We were lucky to have Larison this season because even with a good, but not star, level RB we likely would have had a losing season.
At Coach Sochor's memorial, I believe KO said the first time Soch recruited him, Sochor kinda overlooked him. Something else had Soch's attention, thus KO went to Sac.
"Tight ends coach Tim Plough, who has accepted the head coaching job at UC Davis, will remain with the [Berkeley] program through the bowl game and will work with the quarterbacks, Wilcox said."
" “Coach Plough is uber-intelligent,” Mendoza [quarterback] said. “As a coach, he’s a guy who has helped me develop a lot. It’s an honor to work with him these next two weeks.” "
So Plough will likely be splitting time during a crucial period. Who will do in-person recruiting for him? We need competition and depth at QB and WR. He can possibly get out to NorCal spots, CCSF, etc. Maybe skip a practice day to go nab a key recruit.
From what I’ve seen from tweets from recruits, they usually reference position coaches and not the head coach. I think its honorable that Coach Plough is fulfilling his Cal responsibilities through the bowl game.
He's in a unique position in that it looks like he'll be HC and OC. Sure, it helps Cal.
He'll be spread thin if he wants to change any staff, help recruit and evaluate talent / needs. I thought it would be icing on the cake to bring in the HC, be it Hawkins or Plough, to close the deal. He can make phone and zoom calls. We'll see. But it seems we're two steps short on offense at a key juncture. We've had one QB excel in a dozen years? Our top receiver had 430 yards receiving.
I recall a story that Davis was looking at O’Brien and Tony Eason. Eason was always a doubtful and went to a D1 school (Illinois??). Little UCD pondering two of the QBs drafted in the first round in the ‘83 NFL draft.
It’s a pretty high bar you have when you say only Maier excelled. I guess you disagree that Hastings was good 2022? Rodrigues was also good until he got injured trying to play like Tompkins. We have a tendency to expect the QB here to not only be all league but to be a pro prospect. That was possible in the 1970s 1980s because big college football didn’t recruit pro style QBs, except for Cal and Stanford, everyone else was running option offenses,
In 2022 Davis had outstanding offensive stats. Production fell off with many of the same players, but they would have made the playoffs if not for key injuries. I think Cody Hawkins departure hurt the offense, he was the QB coach as well as the offensive coordinator, and apparently a pretty good one. But the sky is not falling, we have a three star qb commit, and a three star freshman, we have a number of good receivers. We desperately need another running back for depth
Big question for Plough is, how widespread will the tree shaking eliminations be at various Coaching positions. Obviously, he'll want to bring in his guys, and a lot of them may already be in Davis, but no doubt, some of them aren't.
The coaches here that Plough hasn’t worked with are mostly on offense Burke, Chapatte, Shanbour, Allen, Shimabukuro. Almost everyone on offense except Mike Cody.