I think it comes down to talent and player development. And I think maybe bring in a run oriented offensive line coach.
Historically there seems to be a UC Davis style of line play that involves lateral movement, like for screen plays, and not as much power blocking. I noticed the Boise offensive line got a lot of criticism earlier this year, that they apparently were able to resolve by changing focus of practice. We had two offensive line coaches near end of Biggs era, because Keane, now the Boise coach, being a former UCDavis lineman didn’t coach run blocking well, and needed some mentorship. Now we have a former UC Davis tight end from that era as our offensive line coach.

That’s one way of looking at it.
Another is that we lost that game by getting gashed by huge plays in a way that is all too familiar. Not arguing that they weren’t a better team than 2021 but they shared some of the same major deficiencies.. Very few playoff teams would given up a touchdown 47 seconds after taking the lead with about a minute to play. Eastern dominated us in a game earlier that year so I’m not sure Eastern > Maine implies UCD > Maine.

it’s better than 1982. I’m sure 82 was a better team for its level but not better head to head.
2018 team is arguably better but Hawkins has a better view if talent, so maybe this team more talented but that team achieved more because they won their first playoff game. But SDS is better than NIU was in 2018

The best team in Davis history doesn’t give other teams the shakes at this level.

I assume they’ll have to take scholarships away to get down to limit later.

We basically play three down linemen. a nose guard a defensive tackle and a defensive end. There usually two of the big guys Chuba and Bryce for example and one lighter guy and then a “rush” linebacker. They steamrollered us on the edge more than up the middle.
They play a four down lineman defense and 4/3 linemen are often lighter the the three down linemen teams.

I don’t know the details of the scholarship limit. First I heard of it was Hawkins press conference last week. He mentioned it after the game also.

We definitely did have some bigger interior defensive linemen this year. Elsewhere not apparent progress.

They have more scholarships because scholarship limits waived due to Covid extra year. We didn’t utilize that hence our small recruiting class

he was moved to the “Rush” position which is basically a standup defensive lineman . I think he was a strong side linebacker when he had his impact year. Now he’s more frequently blocked by a offensive tackle rather than a tight end or back.

Regarding size in our lines, we had big nose guards/ defensive tackles but small or at least light defensive ends. The only defensive end with notable statistics is Ambagtsheer with four sacks and 22 tackles. If we consider the Rush position a defensive end, we got only half a sack all season from Eaton. Our linebackers are smallish for college football. Now that they’ve made targeting so commonly called, there aren’t many ways for our linebackers to legally stop a strong running back from getting yards after contact.
Our offensive line seems to want to be light and physically fit. Most actually lost a few pounds for this season, and weigh about what they did when recruited That’s great until we meet the bigger playoff teams and then we can’t handle them.

Suani played. Toki I only noticed on special teams, he is in the field goal unit.
Neither of those guys will quite give us what Rodgers does because they’re short.
I assume Babb quit and won’t be back wish it weren’t so.

That’s fine but when will we end the decades of being physically overmatched by the top teams? It was appealing back in the no scholarship era to watch undermanned teams compete through misdirection and screen passes. That’s not so entertaining 40 years later. We shouldn’t have to have a rare quarterback to be effective. Put Hastings on SDSUs lineup and he would have dominated. Put their guy on ours and he still loses. Defense same thing, against playoff level teams we get gashed. 10 yards a carry? Not many QBs will fix that. And we were dominated physically early in the game as soon as they started running.
The Eastern Washington head coach, Best, said they learned in the spring playoffs that they had to play bigger, and to play bigger they had to get bigger. That’s doubly true for us because we have never not been pushed around by Eastern Washington.

We lose two starting wide receivers, a starting tackle/guard a starting DT, a starting linebacker, a starting safety, and some sometimes starter reserves. Collectively that’s a lot of playing time.

We saw next to nothing of our class of 21 recruits, which was a small class.
Bryce Rodgers is going to be missed. Nobody similar in roster. Nobody like Harrell either that we’ve seen.

I think we need to change the way we develop offensive linemen. Some teams get big framed kids and they add a lot of weight. Colton Lamson is the only guy who plays for us who has followed that path. Everyone else is roughly the size they were recruited as.
We improved our run game at the end of the Biggs era with a proven offensive line coach brought in to assist Keane. We need to do something like that again.

Let’s see Gunnor!

Well I hope it’s SDSU because I’d hate to think we’d look this bad to a team Sac beats.

Hawkins said that one statistic he values is yards per carry. These guys averaging ten yards per carry. That can’t be overcome.

I think criticizing the quarterback is fine but we can see in this game that we lack the physicality we need at this level. Hastings could look ok with SDSU running attack.

I don’t think they are trying to develop Hastings, I suspect we’ll see someone else next year