QB - JVM looked more poised and did a good job making decisions. One bad throw into double coverage deep but other than that did not take many risks. His reads on the Pistol formation read-option looked really good. That should improve with more reps throughout the season. Needs to put a little touch on the ball for his short passes.
OL - best OL performance in over two years. The UC Davis defense is formidable and disciplined. They are little changed from their team last year that held SDSU to 182 net rushing yards and 12 points. This was good preparation for the MVFC defenses. The Center is really playing well. Congratulations to coach Harvey and strength coach Bowman. Your work with the group and their resulting progress was good to see.
RB - efficient runners - quick feet - good forward lean. The blocking by this group needs to improve - going back and watching the replay they were getting either run over by LBers or just whiffing on them too much.
TE - good blocking efforts by the TEs that played. They were the one position group that looked not covered well on pass situations by Davis. Not sure if JVM threw it their way once.
WR - good blocking by the group. They struggled to create separation from the tight press coverage Davis ran all day. Too many drops by the group.
DL - interior DL is improved. Their pad level was low and were not letting the OL establish a good push. Drew Iddings is playing extremely well. Having Greer, Jacobs, Praska, Davis rotating at the interior is a real strength. Praska will only get better as he learns the position.
OLB - Starr was getting the attention of two blockers when he approached the box. Lage was all over the field making plays.
ILB - solid play - really impressed how well true FR Wessel played. New addition Johnson played well - seemed to let OL get on him a little too much. Guziec was a good run stopper, but is probably the weakest of the group in coverage.
Safeties - Taverna and Swift are playing fast and aggressively. Both hit hard and stepped up on runs.
Corners - really solid play. Good speed. When both Knox and Bryant got beat deep they disrupted the respective passes. Bryant's late hit out of bounds did not prove to be fatal, but that was a bad one.
Special teams - this was glaringly the weakest area. Kickoff coverage were out of their lanes and it cost the team lots of yardage. Low snap on punt team hurt us. (I still think having someone as vital as Bouma play long snapper is a huge mistake). I fear this weakness will be exploited again by the MVFC teams.
Really solid improvements in many areas. Realistically this is going to be a very tough year. This team has a long way to go to be competitive with the top half of our conference.
Fans need to learn how to cheer and if the students could survive to see the second half, it sure would be nice.