Ballot’s in: Here’s the case for Sacramento State football winning the Big Sky title

Sacramento State football is making winning a habit.

In the Big Sky preseason media poll, the Hornets earned my top spot for the second year in a row. In 2021, Sacramento State was tabbed to finish fifth in both the media and coaches poll. They finished 8-0 in conference play, good enough to win the conference outright and they were the No. 4 national seed in the FCS playoffs.

The 2022 team might be even better than any team Sacramento State head coach Troy Taylor has had.

On offense, the Hornets return nine starters and a handful of players who got meaningful reps last fall. That includes quarterbacks Jake Dunniway and Asher O’Hara, who thrived under center last season. Dunniway, a junior, passed for 12 touchdowns and 2,576 yards last season. O’Hara, a junior, passed for 899 yards and seven touchdowns while running for 662 yards and nine touchdowns.

The two-quarterback system is here to stay. Dunniway is the passing threat, while O’Hara offers a running dynamic. It only works if they get along. They both share high praise for one another. They know the different dynamic each of them adds to the offense.

Returning with the quarterback duo on offense are running backs Cameron Skattebo and Marcus Fulcher, wide receivers Pierre Williams, Jared Gipson, Chris Miller, Devin Gandy and Parker Clayton and All-American tight end Marshel Martin. The Hornets scored 30.3 points per game last season, which ranked third in the Big Sky.

With the experience returning, the offense could be even better this season.

Skattebo is my pick for breakout player on this Hornets roster. In only 57 rushing attempts last season, he rushed for 520 yards (9.1 yards per carry) with six touchdowns. His role will be larger this season.

In his career with the Hornets, Taylor is 15-1 in Big Sky play and 9-0 on the road. The lone loss was at home to Weber State in 2019, a team the Hornets shared the Big Sky title with in 2019. That was Taylor’s first season.

Fans of other FCS teams and some national media were critical of Sacramento State’s playoff seed last season, citing the strength of schedule. The Hornets avoided playing Montana State, Weber State and Eastern Washington last season. All three of those teams finished in the top six of the conference.

The conference schedule will be more challenging this season. Sacramento State hosts Montana at home on ESPN2. It’s the first time the football program will appear on an ESPN TV channel (as opposed to the ESPN+ streaming service). The Hornets also face Eastern Washington and Weber State, both on the road. The Causeway Classic against UC Davis is in Sacramento on Nov. 19.

How recruiting changed the program

Before Taylor was hired in Dec. 2018, Sacramento State struggled to attract top local talent.

That all changed when Taylor and his staff arrived on campus because they made it a priority to recruit locally. When Taylor took the job, there were no Folsom High School players on the roster, which is where he coached at prior to stops at Eastern Washington University and the University of Utah as an offensive coordinator.

Sacramento State now has 10 players on the roster that were on Folsom’s last state championship team in 2018.

It’s not just Folsom players. Sacramento State last month landed Capital Christian running back Cameron Sampson. He tied with Folsom’s DeShawn Lynch from the 2020 class for the highest-ranked commitment in program history.

Sacramento State is also tapping into the NCAA transfer portal for talent. They landed a former four-star linebacker from the University of Texas in Ayodele Adeoye last month. He had opportunities from other FBS programs but chose Sacramento State because of a connection with running back coach Malcolm Agnew and wanting to “get back to the basics.”

Adeoye is expected to play a huge role this season and has two years of eligibility remaining. Sacramento State also got another consensus four-star recruit in Folsom’s Ariel Ngata in 2020. Ngata saw his first action late last season after tearing his Achilles during spring football in 2021.

Ngata and Adeoeye could be anchors on the Hornets’ defense, along with Jett Stanley and Marte Mapu.

Another key addition from the transfer portal the Hornets got this offseason was cornerback Caleb Nelson, who played at Folsom under associate head coach Kris Richardson and most recently was at North Dakota.

Despite recruiting talent from the transfer portal, Taylor still believes in recruiting players out of high school. Sacramento State just landed one of its best recruiting classes in program history from the 2022 class that include local talents such as Sampson, Elk Grove’s Zeke Burnett, Rocklin’s Elias Mullican and Sacramento’s Lamont Johnson-Burrell.

Taylor said last year in regards to the portal, “We still believe that the best way to build a program is to sign high school guys that fit into what we’re looking for and develop them. In general, we’re going to build our program by bringing in high school guys and developing them. We’re big on the development process of bringing our athletes and helping them to improve and then you see the dividends.”

The talent is there for Sacramento State to threepeat as Big Sky champions. But, the preseason polls can be unpredictable. In 2019, the Hornets were picked to finish 11th in the Big Sky by the coaches and 12th by the media.

If anything is for certain, it’s this: The Sacramento State football program isn’t a secret. It’s not a hidden gem. The Hornets are establishing themselves as one of the elite programs in the Big Sky and FCS.

The biggest question is can Sacramento State maintain that success? Here’s one vote of confidence.

This story was originally published July 18, 2022 at 8:49 AM.