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.

Southern Utah and Utah Tech added to Big Sky schedule, and Sac dropped. With the two new Utah schools thats 9 conference games, leaving room for only 3 out of conference games.
Teams can play out of conference whenever they have an open date, but the league schedule fills up the schedule later.

Preview. Weird that they only name Psyk, Rutchena and Ty Richardson out of our grad transfers.
Davis wouldn’t be a top 15 preseason team without players that don’t get a mention in this video, Derrell Porter, Riddick, Batson, and Allen.

I meant Allen, so i edited my post.

My guess, uninformed, and almost surely wrong is that our lineup looks like this 3-3-5
DL Carrade ?
NG Porter ( porter can reportedly play anywhere on the D-line, so we could play a bigger nose guard if desired)
DE Psyk
LB Porter Connors
LB Rutchena
Rush Goligoski ?
Boundary Safety Rex
Field Safety Batson
Nickel Riddick
Corner Allen
Other corner lots of candidates but i’ll guess Ty Richardson the transfer from Tufts.

Batson reportedly had an upper body jnjury. He was great until he got injured, which finished him for that year. He came back the following but he had been replaced and maybe not 100%. Supposedly 100% now.
He was a free safety.

Khalani Riddick rated as the number 12 FCS safety, Rex Connors number 1.
Now it would be nice to know whether Riddick is playing safety here at Davis. Is he, Batson, or someone else going to start alongside Rex?
https://ucdavisaggies.com/news/2025/8/15/football-rex-connors-named-top-returning-fcs-safety-by-hero-sports.aspx

The USC buyout of their game with Davis was in 2021. Played Tulsa instead. Ended up with an FBS win and a lot of money..

The FBS rule for neutral site games is 70 but I couldn’t find any FCS equivalent rule, and the usual rule is 58. Davis played about that number when they beat Tulsa, but I think the humidity is going to be higher in Birmingham, 70 percent humidity and 88 degrees for the day, don’t know what it will be at 7:00 PM.. .
Maybe there are specific rules for this game. It is an unusual situation.

Joe is mistaken, it didn’t take the Aggies years to have a winning record, they were 6-5 in 2005 and 2006

Head coach Jacobs played offensive line at Ohio state. Offensive coordinator Soto first college job was at Davis as a QC analyst under Gould, he then moved on to a small school as the o line coach. Those two have coached together at three schools. So with that background you would expect they like to run.
We know that Davis also only returned two starters on defense, so the teams are even there. Linebacker may be Mercer’s biggest question mark.

One of our tougher games this year. Mercer’s offense is largely intact from last year but strengthened with transfer offensive linemen. They lost a QB to Oklahoma but return the QB they started the year with prior to injury. They have veteran running backs one of who weighs about 230ln, and veteran receivers. We aren’t likely to have a very low scoring game. Can the Davis defense mesh with all the new personnel in the first game?
Game features Hero Sports #2 ranked defensive end Zock for Mercer and #5 defensive end Psyk for Davis.

i suspect he will and you will be sworn to secrecy.

Here is the report on the Secondary from the Davis Enterprise. The headline says Kicking Game Lineman Competitive but the article doesn’t mention linemen, just Ridley and the Secondary.

“Plough talked about the Aggies’ defense, in the secondary where several players are vying to playing time when opponents have the football. The bulk of the players on the 2024 UCD team graduated.

“It’s hard to single out one guy in that secondary,” Plough said.
The coach thanked his staff for building up the players to cover an opponents’ passing game and running backs who bust through an offensive line and are looking for room to run.

“Feels like we’ve gone out and got some great players,” Plough said.”

Then they talk about Rex. No other DB named.
It seems easier to get classified information than to get a non all-american player’s name from a newspaper covering camp.

Any hope for the traditional position preview series on the team site? It’s that time of year.

Why would UCD want to move a home game, potentially with playoff implications to a neutral site game more conveniently located for opposing teams fans? It would be inconvenient for students, Davis fans, vendors, and community businesses.

Especially since Sac is going to want home games, and FCS rule [limits travel squad for fcs games to 58. If they play an FBS team they can bring 70.

Nine conference games starting in 2026.

https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/townnews/game/big-sky-conference-moving-toward-9-game-league-schedule-for-football-in-2026/article_c13d60fa-3a07-514a-8e31-94d6ac564b94.html

Looks likely no Causeway game in 2026.
Davis has a full slate of out of conference games.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/uc-davis-sac-state-causeway-classic-football-in-jeopardy/

Now that camp has reached the time to install game plan for Mercer, they must have settled on a QB if Plough is to meet his objective of having a clear #1. He probably has.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is listening does it make a sound?.