As a streaming only customer, upgrading was easy. I had disney+ hulu, and I just changed my subscription to a new bundle of ESPN unlimited in the Disney+ app. Cost me 35.99 a month, they prorated the service until my billing date. The ESPN app looks different after upgrade. I had to watch a little Montana women’s soccer to be sure I hadn’t lost ESPN+.

The author loves Ty Richardson, mentions him every time he talks about Davis.
Davis had lots of guys on defense that are interesting, but only Richardson and Connors made his list.
Rutchena, Psyk, and Porter Connors honorable mention.

I’m sure you are right but the defense has 3 lineman, 3 linebackers and 5 defensive backs.
I take your word for that not being a 3-3-5.

The depth chart is laid out for 3-3-5, their base defense.

Regarding “It is a little odd that Psyk isn't on top”
I belatedly figured out how the depth chart order works.
When they say OR, they list the players they are ORing alphabetically.
So the positions like defensive tackle and end everyone is tied for first, but listed alphabetically.
When players are not separated by an OR the order means ranking. This may seem obvious but i didn’t parse it.

we will only know who is at the top of the list when they play a game and we see who starts.
They list so many of the freshmen, even guys who were lightly recruited, i wouldn’t attach much meaning to it.
However, Cravin and Cofield were top prospects, they may play and one of them might not redshirt, thats my guess.

You can find the depth chart in this document last page.

https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/sidearm.nextgen.sites/ucdavisaggies.com/documents/2025/8/20/25FBGameNotesMERCER.pdf

They have posted the game niotes in the schedule and there is a depth chart. Lots of ORs
The players aren’t listed in alphabetical order. Make of it what you will.

DE 96 Jaden Few (Fr., 6-5, 250) -or-
94 Jacob Psyk (Gr., 6-3, 265)
-or-
56 Julius Ray (Jr., 6-2, 250)
Does that mean Jaden Few is the #1 guy? No way.

Interesting they list so many freshmen. I doubt most of them play but they must look good

They moved Nava to Main’s spot at right guard, put Porotesano at right tackle.
If you listened to Ploughs press conference he said this year was the first that players gained weight. The roster weight are updated. Zaire Collier is 320lbs, Jace Rodriguez the left guard is 305, Porotesano is 300 Eli Simonson at 295 is the lightest lineman likely to start.

Here is the video offensive position preview.

They posted the text version of the offensive position review.
Not much to say about it, although they claim David Porotesano is a returning starter which i don’t think is right.
We seem to have lost OL Souriolle, Strange trajectory for his career. He played in his first game as a true freshman against A&M Commerce, which is a rare thing for an offensive linemen. I’m pretty sure he was on the summer roster.

https://ucdavisaggies.com/news/2025/8/19/2025-football-positional-preview-offense.aspx

i listened to the posted press conference video twice, Plough said “PJ” was injured, one time he said a broken collarbone. He also mentioned Carrillo and Main haven’t recovered completely and won’t play until later in season.
The mystery is who he meant by PJ.
Main being out ends the all five starters on the o-line are back analysis.
David Porotesano is featured in this promotional image is a likely starter.

Rodrigues was a little on the thin side to be running, 6’0 170lbs.

Who is PJ? He is injured, broken collarbone. Main and Carillo not recovered from surgery.

I checked the Media Center to see if they have put up Game Notes, but they aren’t posted.
They misspelled the word denotes as donates

There is an hour long podcast on the team site, Plough and David Collins

https://ucdavisaggies.com/news/2025/8/18/football-catching-up-with-tim-plough.aspx

They had the first weekly press conference today according to the media center. Don’t they usually post those?

Assuming Sac makes it into the FBS, would you still want to play Sac every year if Davis only plays one FBS game? Playing two FBS games is not advantageous to making the playoffs. That may not be true if Sac isn’t good, but hypothetically if Sac played at a level of a Pac12 team, would you want to play them exclusively as the one FBS game?

If Sac makes it into the FBS, and Davis remains in the Big Sky, do you favor Sac being the only FBS team Davis plays? Davis doesn’t want to play two FBS teams, it would diminish their chance of making the playoffs, assuming Sac is any good. Is a home and home arrangement with Sac even with big crowds as lucrative as the payoffs Davis gets from major FBS teams?

People let their bias against Sac States style color their predictions.
Sacs challenge integrating new players is shared by every team. Davis is the island of stability and has to replace 12 starters. Senior heavy classes due to 2024 being the end of the line for most players who were anything but a true freshman in 2020 meant losses to graduation were more than normal. People argue that teams like Idaho have shown the ability to reload, but FCS teams were exceptionally deep in prior years due to the extra year. Idaho has been hit by heavy transfer losses in consecutive years, at some point depth suffers.

The idea behind having a three man line is you have moved a player off the line of scrimmage so he is harder to block and can move laterally. Teams started to go that route when there were a lot of option offenses in the 70’s. It was effective against the run.
The “new” approach is the 3-3-5, which removes a player from the traditional front seven, and provides a fifth defensive back. They went to that to counter the numerous receivers in spread offenses, they have five DBs to cover 5 potential receivers.
They can play one of the linebackers at or near the line of scrimmage, as essentially a defensive end, so in effect they can have four linemen if they want. It is harder for the offense to anticipate what the defense is going to do, which is probably the key thing. Lots of players can potentially blitz.

It would be interesting to know if the coaches doing these previews are so lackadaisical about the effort that they do it off the cuff and leave out the transfer safeties and nose guard or whether that part of their response ended up cut out, or whether the transfers looked so unimpressive that they aren’t worth mentioning. I’m leaning towards lackadaisical.