Interesting fact gleaned from this interview is during the week, Plough coaches the scout offense against the defense, and let the offensive coaches put in the game plan with the #1 offense, He says he does that to foster the perception that he is the head coach of the whole team, and is not just the offensive coach.

The Riden’ with Ryder featuring former coach Mike Rider is a good one to listen to, Rider is really impressed with Davis. He makes an observation about corner backs being really hard to find at any level and in FCS they often sacrifice size, and he wonders how Davis got its corners who he thought were exceptional. Interesting because that is not much commented on.
Colter Nuanez gets the Connors family confused thinking their was an older brother Connors and I’m not sure he knows Porter and Rex are twins..

Considering how many graduate, it is a bunch.. There are 28 grad students and seniors, almost all i think would have have acholarships. Will lose some non seniors as well for various reasons.
Not all the seniors will have used up their eligibility, but most are HS class of 19 or 20 so some will graduate and move on to other things.

Many seem to have forgotten how good Davis was in the 2005 and 2006 transition despite both were 6-5
2005 Loss to Number 7 New Hampshire 17-13, beat Stanford, which was 4-4 in the Pac 10, 17th ranked N. Dakota State, 10th Ranked Cal Poly
2006 Beat #20 Montana State 45-0, but lost to 3 top 10 FCS teams, all on the road, plus South Dakota State and TCU.

The selection process is very opaque. They don’t look at polls officially although they are no doubt aware of them. They look at Massey ratings, and ESPN result and predictive metrics that aren’t published, then make subjective judgements from won loss record, strength of schedule, key injuries, head to head, common opponents etc. It makes me very uncomfortable. It is so undefined as to make it entirely plausible that we could end up 10-2 and not in the top 8. For example Idaho, we beat head to head, we would have a better record than, but they could say they were missing their QB in many games, and seed them above Davis. Loosey Goosey selection system.

They could have started the season with a o line made up entirely of players who had started a game last year, but then Povey who was on the camp roster didn’t return at center.
Two transfers then earned starting roles at guard and a redshirt freshman who saw no action last year took over at center. The left guard, a transfer from Stony Brook,, had played tackle there after a year as a tight end, so new to playing guard. So a learning curve
The line’s performance seems to have picked up coincident with David Main starting the last few games at right guard.

It increase audience involvement as they take a guess as to what the question was, similar to Jeopardy.

I do think that that was one of the more comprehensive summaries of the Davis team by an opposing coach at a press conference. Good articulate coach.

We have a choice between a senior who has hardly played, two 3 star 2024 recruits or 4! projected 3 star star 2025 recruits. They would be foolish not to have a competition.

Perez has two seasons where he played in three or four games, the second of those, last year was due to injury. So he has a redshirt year and a year he could petition for, might be here for two more years.

Davis roster makes no attempt to list eligibility, just academic class level. Look at every recruit from 2023 they are all listed as sophomores. Red shirt years are not declared. I do think they rely on accurate participation records, not something in evidence at Davis.

Alternatively based on Sagarin ratings:

Sac State’s primary reason for offering scholarships and later moving to 1AA was because they couldn’t compete in the non scholarship environment. Within a few years they couldn’t compete with Davis when they were 1AA and Davis was Div 2.

Montana State has played consistently well throughout the season wheras Davis has only played to that same level for the last few games. Davis had a pattern of giving up scores late to make games they had control of early narrow wins. Idaho game is an example of that.
Montana State’s statistical advantage over Davis is their defense, both in points allowed and yardage totals, but Davis is narrowing that gap over the last few games.

Idaho is in the conversation for a top eight seed only by people who haven’t noticed the Davis win over Montana. That ended the but who have they played argument against Davis, as now they can say they beat Idaho and Montana.
Idaho’s out of conference schedule appeared tougher early in the season than it appears now. Wyoming is a weak FBS team and Albany and Abilene Christian are weaker than Southern Utah

I’m not sure if his helmet came off, but i think it was this play:
SG] HASTINGS, Miles pass up the middle complete for 8 yards to DOBBINS, Stacy caught at the UM45 and advanced to the UM45 (GRADNEY, Trevin), 1ST DOWN. PENALTY UM Face mask on GRADNEY, Trevin enforced 15 yards from the end of the play at the UM45 to the UM30 and results in automatic 1ST DOWN.

The next game is a bigger game than yesterday’s., because its for the league title.
I would say it is bigger than a than a first or second round playoff game. Part of that is Davis has such a loss streak going with this team, similar to Eastern Washington.

Davis was not below average 1AA team in most of the Biggs era. 2006 they were ranked half the season and beat Montana State on the road 45-0. In 2008 they lost to a ranked Montana team by five points in Montana
They played in a conference which often has 3 of the 5 teams ranked.North Dakota State, South Dakota State and Cal Poly were all ranked teams. They beat San Jose State in 2010. They did hover around .500 but with a tough schedule.

Delaware is transitioning, which is why they are unranked. Not much of an upset if at all.

It is just math for the computer rankings. No bias, thats what the algorithm yields.
By the way we look better in a tiny way because East Texas A&M won against Stephen F Austin, and SUU beat Northern Alabama.

i don’t think bidding is involved. Sixteen team are seeded top eight get a bye, next eight get a home game.

Plough press availability after game[
https://406mtsports.com/uc-davis-coach-tim-plough-on-30-14-win-at-montana/video_743bfbd6-3f45-597c-8cd1-605e042f5a73.html