The San Jose game is a big game for us. They’ll be better than last year in all likelihood. They point to getting beat up with a tough early schedule that took a physical toll on their young players. But we go into next year with our team pretty set offensively while they still need to figure out who their QB is. On defense we need to figure things out, we return a lot of starters and guys on the depth chart, have a bunch of redshirts and some good quality freshmen. If our defense doesn’t improve I’ll start missing Watts.

With the broncos doing what? I’m sure Watts is a bright guy but he had not even been a position coach at the collegiate level when he became our DC. The role, the league, the players, everything was new to him. Same can be said of Gould in his first year.

OldAggie, Tedford promoted Watts who now has experience that he didn’t have when he was named our DC. When he joined our team his experience was as a high school defensive coordinator and a graduate assistant. Tell me that Gould didn’t hire Watts based on personal relationship, same as he hired a the other graduate assistant from Cal. It makes more sense for Tedford to hire him now that he has four years experience.
My point was also we can’t give Watts total credit for Fresno’s defense as he wasn’t defensive coordinator last year.

When Gould came in there was excitement similar to Hawkins arrival. If coaches are going to turn around a program they need to capitalize on that excitement or it dissipates. Gould’s best year was his first, but I see that year as a missed opportunity; we lost winnable games that first year, like Northern Arizona at home,
We’ll see where Hawkins goes from here; it seems we did well enough on the field to recruit a good incoming class. Hawkins is a better promoter, better play caller, has a experienced staff, and has a football vision that is more relevant to what we can do here.

Watts learned on the job at Davis, given the job with very light background. He was just a linebacker coach at Fresno. Got hired due to relationship with head coach both places. Not to take anything away from him but he hasn’t had notable success yet. I’m not mourning the loss of watts.
Gould wasn’t a bad coach but I don’t think his style of play was ever going to work for us. He brought in some talented players who didn’t fit in and left. He had some good young coaches who learned on the job. Offensive line coach left after a year. Gould was learning on the job also.

Movie ,
when other schools are paying perhaps 300,000 for a coach who coached here without notable success then other people in that line of work are going to look for similar opportunities. Can’t blame them. Happens in other fields as well; absent other non financial rewards people do better in today’s world by job hopping to fill out a resume.

Rule of thumb to buy a house you should expect to live there for four plus years. Most football coaches should rent unless they have a four year contract. Otherwise it’s speculating. I think we have maybe one coach who has been with us for four years. Anyone buying a house today has an even chance of it being worth less than they paid for it in the next few years. Like the last time prices outstripped wages.

Movie, re Hero sport list, do you notice the lack of any defensive linemen with any size bigger than Cade Peacock?
I suppose that's because this list is mostly reflective of guys the FBS schools made offers to, and FBS don't want size without speed.

The last Cal game includes debut of safety Ernest Sayles III. His younger brother is a linebacker on our roster and played some two years ago, perhaps starting a game; last year apparently redshirted. Was an injury involved?

When you lose 52-3 fewer fans make the next trip. You then have fewer fans, trip making or not. Leaves a bad taste.
If I recall correctly the mediocre QB was undefeated against Sac State in four games. Wish our current QB was undefeated against them.
The game really illustrated our inability to cover or tackle a five star receiver. This remains our biggest problem when playing a good team even at our level, when a quick/fast guy gets th ball with a little space it’s a touchdown.

Maybe we’ll be better by then and it will look like a game.

It’s come to me that Ploughs tweet is likely a metaphor for spring practice starting. That Aggies are the Giant, albeit a sleeping one. The boat is the stadium.

I think we have blended some fly plays into the offense, but we aren’t a fly offense. I think we’ve borrowed bits of this and bits of that. Because we still feature a pocket passer and some longer developing routes we look like the current pro teams, at least to me who doesn’t watch a lot of pro football. Some of the college spread teams feature a QB who is a running threat, and short quick passes to receivers that have running back skills.

the just noted walk-on is a wide receiver who played at American river with hunter Rodriques 35 catches.
On defense we return our starting Nose Guard and defensive tackle, have a touted redsirt from last year who is a big guy probably at 6’4” 300 lbs next year and added the new 6’ 325 lbs guy who Thetoe thinks will be a contributor. Gould’s last recruiting class had 5 DL, three or four are stil on team and just getting where they contributed last year. We brought in a JC guy Cloud who started for us. We have bodies, the likelihood of a walk-on JC guy being better than the guys we have are slim. Coaches have to figure out how to get the job done. We returned most the secondary and added four more tall defensive backs. we’ve got a boatload of defensive ends and linebackers some of whom are actually good. We need some players to step up and be great.

“WE ARE NOT A SPREAD TEAM!!!”
We often look like a spread offense.. three or four wideout receivers,QB in shotgun, frequent no huddle.
Is Plough trying to build a brand or is there something different about shredville? I know their is something different but what?
If it’s in relation to the walk-on, spread receivers are classically shifty types who are dangerous ball carriers. I would imagine a 6’5” receiver would be more of a possession receiver.. Perhaps we are a pro type offense now that the pros run a lot of spread plays. Any thoughts about that?

Maybe the new walk-in is the GIANT
6’5”

I wonder what the door to door travel time getting to a remote Big Sky location is compared to getting to Harvard.

It’s not great PR when you get blown out. I really think the embarrassment we had with the games against Cal and Fresno State were net negatives to recruiting and attendance.

I wasn’t advocating playing either UCLA or Cal, just saying Northwestern might not be any easier. My main point is.that we should schedule teams where we might have a chance for an upset, and avoid programs that are consistently top tier FBS. Some FBS schools are beatable by teams at our current level about 50% of the years. San Jose state is an excellent example. Two or three years ago they were pretty good, last year they were pretty bad. Hawaii and Nevada are up and down teams. Stanford has gone through periods like that, in 2005 we caught them on a down year, but they’ve been consistently good since so let’s not schedule them. Once we start beating teams like Nevada, San Jose State and the best teams in our league the we can revisit playing Cal, Stanford etc. Think NDSU which started by beating Ball State and Minnesota when UMN was really horrible,

Northwestern might be a little challenging; sometimes they are really good. Too far to travel to get pounded; we might as well play cal or UCLA. Better to schedule Rice.
Service Academies would be nice to schedule although they were pretty good this year.
Although we can’t foresee the future we should avoid games where it unlikely we would ever win.
But some of the FBS teams vary so much year to year that we would have had a shot with last years team. San Jose, Hawaii and Reno are examples. Their valley years drop below our good years, so it’s not hopeless, although no sure win. I wish we had played any of those 3 last year.