I don’t know that Speckman’s philosophy, to the extent we employed it was working. I wanted it to work, but the results weren’t there. If you can’t keep defensive linemen from penetrating you can’t have much success with the ball carrier running horizontally.
Babb has got to prove himself after sitting out. The wide receiver coach didn’t watch in 2019.

Both MSU and Sac rely on transfers more than Davis does and I think Davis is a hard place to transfer into either as an undergraduate or graduate student.

Hawkins’ best year was his second, when the team was 10-3. Davis players just seem to not get much better through the years. It’s common for players to have their best years early and then stagnate. We’ve actually had a lot of turnover of assistant coaches.
Davis rarely has the bigger stronger team and relies on scheme to get an advantage and against good teams that have seen them before that doesn’t consistently work. They don’t play meat and potatoes football to use the Eastern Washington coach’s phrase. How much of that is recruiting versus coaching vs player development I don’t know.

There is no way we had a shot at recruiting Chambers, either this year or out of high school. And he’s started more games than Hastings has, so it’s not surprising that he’s better than Hastings, who’s only started this year because the likely starter washed out, and started last year only after the first string got injured.

I wish Hawkins hadn’t gone down the road of touting his team so much. No objective observer rank a 1-3 team in the top 15 without that team having a quality win. Davis doesn’t have an impressive win, and has a poor win/loss record.

However, computer rankings where strength of schedule matter look better.
Sagarin would have us at #7.
https://www.college-sports-journal.com/college-sports-journal-sagarin-fcs-top-25-sept-24/

I don’t want to defend Gomez from all criticism, but I do think it’s flawed thinking to criticise his field goal percentage of 40% when two were from 50 yards.

Here is an observation from an article about valuing field goal kickers,
Of the 355 FBS kickers who attempted a field goal in the 2017 season, only 49 of them (13.8 percent) hit a field goal of 50 or more yards. Total field goal percentage would give you no context that most college football teams do not even attempt field goals of this length.

http://www.optimumscouting.com/news/expected-points-a-better-way-to-analyze-place-kick

This game was lost by game decisions, not overall offensive philosophy.
Talent at positions is going to vary between years. Gould would not necessarily had better kickers this year.
Hawkins, without apologizing said that they need to rethink some of their strategies in different zones of the field. All I can think is that Gomez must have shown a lot more in practice than he’s shown in games. Maybe some of that is on the snapper and holder.

Gandhi and Winston Churchill. That’s viewpoint diversity.

That pass to the tight end in the goal line was a bad choice because the play designer expects the tight end to catch the ball with his back to the goal line but to fall across the goal line. He has no momentum.
The refs contemplated calling an illegal receiver down field, so maybe the play intended to be thrown behind the line of scrimmage to preclude that.
We have a class of plays where we throw behind the line of scrimmage to receivers without blockers. This was one of those. Either the defenders need to be fooled or miss a tackle. It’s classic Davis “we are outmanned but we’ll fool you” stuff.

I just happened to be watching the end of the first half series. The last three plays before the blocked field goal were Hutton’s reception after a Hastings scramble where he got out of bounds, and then his reception where he almost got a TD but didn’t get out of bounds, forcing use of a time out with 10 seconds left, and then the pass to Castles for no gain. That Castles play started with 10 seconds left and ended with 3 seconds and a timeout. That was a slow developing play to run with 10 seconds left, and Castles didn’t cross the line of scrimmage. That play took up enough time that they could only run one more play, which they chose to be the field goal.
Some may see something different to complain about, but from about the fifty with a little over a minute to play they completed two passes to Chaz Davis, ran Gilliam once up the middle to call timeout because the refs had started the clock after moving the chains, had two completions to Hutton and got to the one. Not bad, except the last Castles play and the field goal choice.

The expected field goal percentage of a kicker with an average leg at 50 yard in college is going to be very low. Hawkins may have an idea from practice that he can make them but most kickers would not. It makes a huge difference if you can get just a few yards closer.

Sacramento isn’t unique as a place you can raise children, With a good income you can raise a family just about anywhere.

Even Idaho looks tough.

I don’t think Sac State is anyone’s dream job. He’d go to other than Cal.

We’ve lost the last six games against teams at our level or higher. Hard not to find that discouraging. But none of those were we favored to win.
These games this year looked like football games and not the routs we experienced at the end of last year. It’s better to be frustrated with the coaches decisions than with the lack of talent on the team.
We played too conservatively on offense, making too many dump off passes, completing passes on third down short of the first down line , and the field goal decisions. Game plan was to avoid turnovers and not beat ourselves and that beat us. Defense isn’t good enough to play like you don’t need touchdowns.

I’m frustrated but also heartened by the close loss. The team matched up with Weber very well. We could run the ball against a really good defense, And we didn’t get run over. Our DBs are more athletic.
I think the coaches own this loss, but for little things like the play calling when we were not quite in make-able field goal range and ran Larison wide for a loss, and the two complete passes that got us back to 4th and 8. We have too many passes complete for yardage that doesn’t help, might as well have tried something downfield. An interception downfield is better than setting up a fifty yard field goal attempt when you have a kicker that doesn’t have the range.

I think the defense might be growing into something special. We’ve got some good young players. Blake Cotton had eight tackles,
Budgett played a bit but seemed injured, Rex Connors didn’t play, and Ambagtsheer and Suani haven’t played and they’re both on the depth chart so must be injured. That’s actually a lot of guys off our depth chart.

Yep. I think many foresaw that that would be our record after five games.
I think the school isn’t promoting the team like they did a couple of years ago, maybe lulled into complacency by last years attendance when we were nationally ranked most of the year.

The biggest controversy was where Dan was accused of blowing a lead by not running out the clock when continuing to throw gave Cody some record.
“Colorado blew a 28-point lead at Kansas when the Jayhawks scored 35 points over the final 11 minutes for a stunning 52-45 win.”

Yes. How many passes did we complete for virtually no gain, and how many did we complete short of the line of gain on third down. We have receivers coming back to the ball but not running deep enough to afford to do that.

This is the first Weber game in memory where we didn’t get physically beat.