I don't know, I felt like the D was better in some big games under Watts, and we made no adjustments in the SUU game. 50+ points to Slack? Wow, can't remember that happening in any game I saw. It was awful. With that said, I didn't pay as much attention to injuries this year, so that could have had something to do with it.

Do you have any facts to back up this 'weakest schedule in years' comment? FBS bowl team, 4 FCS playoff teams, and 2 more bubble teams. According to the Massey ratings this season was the 3rd strongest schedule in school history behind only 2005 and 2006. The Aggies had 5 DI wins, as many as the previous 3 seasons combined, and they won 4 of those by over 20 points. The previous staff had ONE 20+ point DI win their 4 years here.

The previous coaches were all nice and knowledgeable people. But as a collective staff they were not the sum of their parts. I'm glad they're all doing well but what we have now is 100x better.

I quit the old message boards because of all the negativity. Came here this year thinking it might be better after a decent season. But you all are still just as ridiculous.

Honestly, this season was a success for both schools. Neither were supposed to do much of anything and both were exciting to watch. I think the future finally looks bright for college football in the Sac metro area.

The Ags five wins in 2017 were: Cal Poly (1-10); Portland (0-11); Idaho St. (4-7); North Dakota (3-8); and USD (non-scholarship). We played one FBS team (San Diego State) instead of two like we did in (2014, 2015, 2016) which gave us one of those wins. So in other years we would be 4-7, with a loss to Slack. C+ at best. Please explain to me why I should feel like we are 100x better when our defense gave up an average of 46.25 points in the last 4 losses in the season.

Celebration of mediocrity only leads to acceptance.

Embrace the healing power of AND.
We had a reasonably rough schedule AND we lost to all the good team and only beat the bottom teams. You are both right.
In my opinion we are in the middle of the conference instead of near the bottom so that’s improvement.

No question we improved. But there was pretty much nowhere to go but up.

We're partly just seeing regression to the mean. The last three years of Gould were probably an underperformance -- swaths of injuries to key players don't help, and last year we literally gave a game away when a return guy unnecessarily fielded a punt -- so the likeliest thing regardless of the staff was some improvement by a win or two. Maybe we can credit the staff for not hindering that improvement.

I'm admittedly bitter about the poor performance the last two weeks. I wonder how Tedford takes an 0-12 Cal team, and then a 1-11 Fresno St team, and completely turns them both around to 7+ wins in his first year? What are we missing?

it’s better than regression to the mean. We have a good QB for a couple of years, a promising freshman runnin back, depth at wide receiver, good TE. I think we’ve reestablished our rep as a good place for QBs and receivers to spend college career. Now we need to shore up the defense and offensive line. Rome was not built in a day.
Some people thought the previous coaching staff has been unfairly maligned, and there is some truth to that. The new staff has got a lot of credit, maybe too much. But the new staff definitely restored our passing game, and I think that is the only way we can have success at this time.

The new staff has got a lot of credit, maybe too much. But the new staff definitely restored our passing game, and I think that is the only way we can have success at this time. — Riveraggie

And they have brought back some of the excitement of attending games. The entire game day experience is vastly improved this year. Now we just need to get the Aggie Pack back.

On that subject, we were tailgating near the spot that the band and cheerleaders were warming up. One of the cheerleaders came over, introduced himself to us, and we had a very pleasant conversation. He is an exemplary young man. I asked him about the Aggie Pack and game marketing on campus. He told me "they" do not hold pep rallies or any other organized platform to excite the students about the games. This needs to change.

Honestly, this season was a success for both schools. Neither were supposed to do much of anything and both were exciting to watch. I think the future finally looks bright for college football in the Sac metro area. — Phantom Hornet

Well said, I can agree with you on that :).

This was a successful season.

I am looking forward to next season with renewed excitement!

we faced essentially the same Big Sky schedule as Sac, except we had Weber as a conference game, they had it as non-conference. we played San Diego, they played Incarnate Word. We had SD State, they had Idaho. We played the top 5 teams in the conference in our 8 Big Sky games. Granted we got the bottom 2, but Idaho State notched a FBS victory (yeah, Nevada is weak). Hard to call it 'easy'.

PH -> I have never met you, nor have any idea what you look like BUT i could picture the look on your face when we got the ball back with 3 minutes to go, after scoring 26 straight points, with a chance for a win!

I thought it was a longshot for Sac to make the playoffs. Had Montana won, there was absolutely no chance. Since they tied with EWU (and both were 7-4) and lost to them, i figured the Eagles would go first. Committee fooled me with taking neither!

What are we missing?

About $1.6 million...

About $1.6 million... — The Big Easy

What, don't you remember..... "Davis is a drugged up crooked team always have been always will be. they are a money team with connections as you could tell they had as many coaches a s players and in all liklihood these refs were treated to dinner and drinks after the game and the ref in the white hat that stabbed ISU and Peoples in the back had to show up for his cash pay-off in the back room and they all rode together on the bus back to Davis laughing all the way."

And and FBS school with a 50,000 seat stadium and a larger, more-likely-to-donate fan base.

I think we were much more competitive than last year.

Shoot...I forgot our slogan for the year...

D.U.C.T. How could I forget!

The team was fun to watch but when you give up as many points as the ags did you will end up with a mediocre record at best. If I were recruiting I would focus on both lines. After watching Wisconsin Beat michigan I realize why a normal looking offense can be undefeated. The line of scrimmage is the answer. Imagine if the ags had an upper quartile defense even in the big sky? They would be league champs.

As the kids today would say...That was funny AF

Very positive on many aspects, an overall successful year. Passing game an A-, passing game fan friendly, gameday experience a B+/ A-, and many other positives.

Hawk landed a top-5 QB in record time, Gould and staff didn't land / develop one. Awesome receivers also added. I don't understand why a RB who gains 48 yards in 3 carries at NAU doesn't play in 2 subsequent games. I'd love to see the replay on that 90 yard run, at 230 pounds.

Have no insight on why our defense is in the bottom fifth of the league. Our local paper decided to run an article on the equipment manager during Causeway Classic week over Robert Tucker (DC), special teams, etc. Will Dunning or BG write an article with insight?

Don't forget that Fresno doesn't have the high admission requirements that UC Davis does. I know JT is a good coach, but he recruits players who get close to APR issues. The FBS team I follow is Cal, and one of the reasons for his firing there (besides yrs of underperforming) was academic failings of players which drew a backlash.

Fresno State has lower athletic standards than Cal and certainly lower than us too (ours are probably higher than the Bears or UCLA). Not at all surprised. But, I always enjoy seeing California FB teams (except U$C, J St Tech, and Stanford) do well. So good for the Bulldogs.

Tedford did it in his first year with two prior coach's players...and had massive turnarounds. Can't blame admissions or recruiting on that. I don't think its a coincidence, and I think its a product of his skill as a coach. Once might be luck, but twice...that's him.

I also agree the academics are, and will continue to be, a huge issue for us.

Our defense was worse (poor schemes and few adjustments), our offense much better (better game plans for the most part), and our special teams were equal or worse (although they didn't lose us any games this year on bonehead plays, our kickoff and punt coverage is downright scary). Hawk needs help from the university, and they need alumni money and student support. Hard not to have a better year all things considered, but celebrating this season as a success is a sad state of the program. I'm sure Hawk is not remotely satisfied with this year.

(although they didn't lose us any games this year on bonehead plays, — OldAggie

Well, I can think of two where the receiver tried to field a bouncing punt inside the 10 and lost it. The last one was last week. That one play and the subsequent score that sac got was one of several plays that cost us the game.

Interesting considering Coach Tucker was highly successful, and Coach Foster is a legend. We played a lot of young players. We are either deep at LB, or have a lot of equal pieces.

the numbers were awful on D, maybe injuries...I don't know.

sounds like there are some good players redshirting. conversation at the reunion was that the scout team defense had been tearing it up for several weeks, indicating that we'll be better next year. maybe some new plug-in additions will help make us much better. i thought our DB's were better this year in coverage, although susceptible to the big play. that might have dictated our scheme (very few blitzes). most of our DB's are back next year (Culberson will be a loss), which is good. Bua and Weaver were solid, and will be missed. lots of RSFr and So's playing big minutes -> they should be better.

we lose 2 solid OL (Bertero and Sulka) and i'm not sure who is in the pipeline. recruiting OL at this level is really tough. the good guys get grabbed quickly by the big schools.

Yes. Looks like first part of the season we switched our backup center to LT. We redshirted coveted recruits Carson Crawford and Cam Trimble.

Looking at computer rankings is a way to quantify objectively whether we’ve improved.
In Sagarin’s rankings we went from ranked 197 to 152. There is a numerical rating number that can be used to predict games. Probably not intended to project between years, but it would indicate if this years team played last years team, this years team would be a 10 point favorite.

Sac is doing a good job of getting recruiting very athletic players. That's not unusual for them. The difference, I think, is that this year Jody Sears had a more disciplined group and they didn't shoot themselves in the foot with penalties and bonehead plays as usual. I think it's good if both schools have competitive programs. I hate losing to the Hornets as much as any Aggie fan but I'd rather play a good Hornet team than a bad one and I'd rather have us, Poly and the Hornets at the top of the Big Sky rather than the teams further north.

Both programs have their challenges for building excellent D1 football programs. Sac is a commuter school with little support from fans in greater Sacramento area and even less support from their students. This was perhaps their best D1 team ever and their fan support was disappointing.

The Hornets have not had a successful football legacy like the Aggies have had either albeit the Aggies' legacy is from the D2 era. They do, however, have a big advantage in being able to recruit from a much larger pool of players because of the high academic standards required of potential Aggie recruits.

The Aggies have some similar problems to Sac in that, although we have a fairly dedicated group of long time Aggie fans, those numbers seems to have dwindled recently due to our struggles at the D1 level. We also suffer from acute student apathy like the Hornets even though we are not a commuter school. The Davis area is small compared to the greater Sacramento area and, even though it continues to grow, our fan base from the community has not grown.

I think Blue and Hawkins have us on the right track but our challenges in growing the program are difficult. I'm hopeful we'll be a contender with good fan support in another couple of years. If that doesn't happen then I think that the ultimate future of Aggie football could be in jeopardy.

We had excellent student turnout in 2 Home gms (out of 4 stdts in session). Huge improvement in game atmosphere, though I wonder if the video board distracts our millenials. Two new studs on D line might go a long way and successful run game to get D some adjustment time.