The season is nearing its end for the Idaho Vandals.<\/p>\n
The Vandals (4-6, 2-4 Big Sky) travel to California for their final road trip of the season to face the Sacramento State Hornets (6-4, 4-2) at 6 p.m. today.<\/p>\n
The Big Sky Conference matchup will be played at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, Calif., and will be broadcast on ESPN+.<\/p>\n
Sacramento State is unranked but is receiving votes in the Stats Perform FCS poll and in the American Football Coaches Association poll. <\/p>\n
In the head-to-head series, the Vandals have the edge 3-2 with the first meeting dating back to Sept. 16, 1998. In the most recent meeting in 2023, the Vandals won 36-27. In Sacramento, the Hornets have the edge 1-0.<\/p>\n
Idaho coach Thomas Ford Jr. said he expects Sacramento State to test the Vandals and that it will be a hard-fought matchup.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo as we move forward in the Sac State week, we\u2019re going to see another team with a lot of talent,\u201d Ford said. \u201cCoach (Brennan) Marion\u2019s definitely compiled a very good group in terms of their talent. They\u2019ve got a lot of athleticism, length, speed all across their offense, defense and special teams. (It) will certainly be another challenge for us to go on the road and get a road win versus the Hornets.\u201d<\/p>\n
A \u2018street fight\u2019 in Sacramento <\/p>\n
Two weeks ago, Sacramento State passed the ball just six times in a 35-13 victory over Eastern Washington. The Hornets rushed the ball 56 times and gained 376 yards and five touchdowns on the ground. <\/p>\n
Senior running back Rodney Hammond Jr. ran the ball 22 times for 208 yards and two scores. <\/p>\n
For the Vandals\u2019 defense to slow down the Hornets in any way, it will have to stop the run and force Sacramento State to throw the ball.<\/p>\n
Ford called the matchup between the Hornets\u2019 offense and the Vandals\u2019 defense a \u201cstreet fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCoach (Cort) Dennison and I were talking about it this morning, you got to prepare like it\u2019s a street fight,\u201d Ford said. \u201cThere\u2019s no rules. You got to go in there with that type of mentality that you\u2019re going to go in for a 12-round fight, and you\u2019ve got to keep punching until there\u2019s no more time left.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ford said that the mentality of \u201ckeep fighting\u201d has continued to develop for the Idaho defense and especially the young players on the defense in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so I think our ability to be physical up front, our ability to change the picture for them, not allow them to have great angles on each play, is going to be huge,\u201d Ford said. \u201cAnd forcing them into throwing the ball is going to be something we have to do to win the football game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Idaho offensive fixes <\/p>\n
In Idaho\u2019s last contest against UC Davis, the offense sputtered in key downs in the 28-14 loss. <\/p>\n
The Vandals went 1-for-11 on third down and 2-for-6 on fourth down.<\/p>\n
To compete with the Hornets, Ford said they need to be better at moving the chains.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to do a better job on conversion downs, and we\u2019ve got to do a better job in the red zone,\u201d the Idaho coach said. \u201cThose are two areas that we\u2019ve really struggled this season. And we\u2019re going to make some changes to make sure that we can improve on those things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ford said that no matter if the issue is execution or schematic, if the Vandals continue to fail on third down, they are forcing their defense to be on the field for extra possessions, which causes a mental and physical toll. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The season is nearing its end for the Idaho Vandals. The Vandals (4-6, 2-4 Big Sky) travel to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[34253,34252,121,123,122],"class_list":["post-54910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-idaho-football","tag-idaho-vandal-football","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}