2023 Week 6: Montana (4-1) @ UC Davis (3-2) OK, had time to catch up on the forum to digest.
1. I thought defense was relatively skillfull this game/this year as opposed to previously, in terms of (most) tackling quality, finding the ball, contesting a lot of catches, etc. They're still being burned by just faster and stronger athletes making plays but hey, that's going to happen against Montana. And of course they're just on the field too much.
2. Arguably penalties kept the Ags in the game but hey, that's an area we DO expect to significantly outperform the Big Sky on. (I checked FCS stats today, UCD is the second-least-penalized team in the nation). Penalty differential actually matters in matchups with similar offensive stats.
3. I felt the playcalling wasn't putting our guys in a position to succeed, frankly. From my untrained eye it looked like there was a lot of (relatively) slow-to-develop runs or screen passes behind the line of scrimmage on early downs, leading to minimal yardage and frequent 3rd-and-8+. Miles being his old self doesn't fully compensate for him not having the same squad of athletes to dump the ball off to in key situations and not being a running threat himself.
4. Still possible to get to 7 wins and therefore an at-large bid (I think a Big Sky team with no bad losses gets the nod at 7, like Idaho last year). The window of opportunity is getting smaller, but if we win 4 out of 5, we're in. Two of those wins would by necessity be out of Weber, NAU, and Sac. At least we have Sac at home and the magic of a rivalry game introducing some wrinkles there. We absolutely need Tompkins and Perez back to get to that record I would think, and obviously hoping for Larison.