BOISE, Idaho — Wednesday Weekly: October 18, 2023.
There are still some blue and orange-colored glasses as Boise State licks its wounds during the bye week. From the glass half-full side: Outside of the rout at Washington, the Broncos have lost by two points to UCF, three points to Memphis and one point to Colorado State. They were lucky to be in the game against the Knights, but they should have beaten the Tigers and (of course) the Rams. Boise State should be 5-2. But it isn’t, say the glass half-empty people. The Broncos are 3-4 with five games left. They talk about “the standard” at Boise State. Well, the minimum standard is a winning season. They have 25 of those in a row, but they have to go 4-1 the rest of the way to get there. Included on the schedule are Wyoming and Air Force at home and Fresno State on the road. What do you think?
The 1997 Boise State season is not one you want to compare anything to. But here we are. After the Broncos’ shocking 31-30 Hail Mary loss—in a game the Broncos led by 20 points with 6:12 left—the program is at its lowest point since the 58-0 loss at Washington State in ’97. The 37-point loss to the Huskies last month was already the largest margin of defeat since then. The pressure is on coach Andy Avalos to save this season. The thing to remember: Nobody is taking this harder than the players. If you saw Marco Notarainni at the postgame press conference last Saturday, you know what I’m talking about.
THE ’BRAND’ TAKES A HIT
This is somewhat like relegation in soccer, TV style. For the first time since Fox contracted with the Mountain West for football telecasts (and Boise State home games in particular), the Broncos have been sent to FS2 for the Wyoming game a week from this Saturday. That’s despite the Cowboys producing a solid season so far. But Boise State has fallen from 68th to 85th in Chris Vannini’s ranking of all 133 FBS teams in The Athletic, and Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News has the Broncos at No. 6 in his new Mountain West power ratings. Meanwhile, it’s a late-afternoon kickoff is at 3:30, which give fans mixed emotions. It’s still Daylight Savings Time, so the LED light shows will be muted. As much as Bronco Nation has despised late October and November night games, that’s still kinda too bad.
AND THEN CAME THE LAST SIX MINUTES…
There’s one thing that’ll tell you a lot of what you need to know about the six-minute meltdown in the Boise State-Colorado State game Saturday night. The raw stats. The Broncos held the Rams to 11 yards in the first quarter and 60 in the second—71 in the first half. CSU did net 110 yards in the third quarter, but hey, they had 401 yards for the game. I think you know where this is going. Colorado State gained 201 of their yards in the final six minutes and 12 seconds of the game. It was that bad. The other raw stat: three turnovers in the first half. It looked at the time like Boise State survived them. But they bought the Rams some time. Take even one of those turnovers out and let Ashton Jeanty keep pounding, and there could have been another touchdown. And we’re not even having this conversation.
ONE DEFENSIVE PARADOX
There’ll always be something to unpack from the Boise State-Colorado State game. And since the Broncos don’t have a game for us to look ahead to this week, we may as well keep going. You can’t accuse Boise State of being in an all-out prevent defense on that final drive against the Rams. The Broncos were blitzing, but one blitz left linebacker Andrew Simpson on the Mountain West’s best receiver, Tory Horton. That was on the 44-yard completion with six seconds left that got the Rams in position for the 33-yard touchdown on the game’s final play. And that happened six minutes after what I thought was a great call by defensive coordinator Spencer Danielson: lining Simpson up at EDGE and then dropping him into coverage—right where Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi didn’t see him for what should have been a game-clinching interception.
JEANTY: ALWAYS A POSITIVE SUBJECT
The salutes to Ashton Jeanty only grow. The Boise State sophomore star has made the ESPN and CBS Mid-Season All-American Teams as the “all-purpose” player. And why not? Jeanty leads the nation in all-purpose yards at 180.6 per game. He also tops the country with his 15 touchdowns. Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports now has Jeanty at No. 10 on his list of Heisman Trophy candidates. To say he’s the bright spot in an otherwise disappointing Broncos season is an understatement. With his 212 rushing yards at Colorado State, Jeanty now has a pair of 200-yard games this year. And it’s in rushing that we await his first big milestone of the season. He’s second in the nation with 868 yards on the ground. That means—going into Game 8—Jeanty is only 132 yards away from a 1,000-yard season.
AROUND THE MOUNTAIN WEST
There’s a non-conference game Saturday for 22nd-ranked Air Force, but it’s a monster one at Navy, the first leg in the battle for the coveted Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy (a 10 a.m. game on CBS). So the Falcons will remain 4-0 atop the Mountain West in the meantime. The problem for Air Force: quarterback Zac Larrier is out indefinitely following an injury last Saturday versus Wyoming. The only other team undefeated in league play is UNLV at 2-0, and that’s becoming a story. The Rebels, who received votes in the Coaches Poll this week, host the suddenly confident Colorado State Rams Saturday at Allegiant Stadium. CSU is 1-1 in the Mountain West—the other three teams with one loss, Boise State, Wyoming and Fresno State, all have byes this week.
A GOOD TIME TO TALK HOOPS
Maybe the biggest buzz out of Mountain West Basketball Media Day last Thursday came from the conference that shared the podium in Las Vegas. Saint Mary’s was picked over Gonzaga to win the West Coast Conference, shining a brighter spotlight on Boise State’s neutral-site game against the Gaels in December in Idaho Falls. Then the preseason AP Poll was released yesterday, with Saint Mary’s at No. 23 and the Broncos receiving votes. Also of note in the AP Poll: potential Broncos opponent Florida Atlantic is ranked 10th, Gonzaga 11th and San Diego State 17th. And receiving votes from the Mountain West along with Boise State is New Mexico. No other Broncos foe appears in either AP or the Coaches Poll. (There are rumors that Boise State beat Cal by 15 points in their “secret scrimmage” over the weekend.)
USA Today writers Eddie Timings and Erick Smith have five snubs in the preseason Coaches Poll. (They refer to the Coaches rankings because those are the ones hosted by USA Today.) They note that “with the exception of San Diego State, last year’s eventual Final Four were nowhere to be found in the initial Top 25.” So they ask who might be breakthrough teams this season? One snub is Boise State. Write Timings and Smith: “Leon Rice has slowly built a consistent winner in Boise. This could be the year that translates into a longer stay in March Madness. The high-scoring and experienced Broncos trio of Tyson Degenhart (14.1 ppg), Max Rice (14.0 ppg) and Chibuzo Agbo (11.5 ppg) will be joined by former Division II standout Cam Martin, a medical redshirt at Kansas last year, to bolster the frontcourt.” Raise your hand if you hope they’re right.
IDAHO HITS A SPEED BUMP
While Boise State was trying to stay in control in Fort Collins on FS1, Idaho was trying to battle back against Montana in Moscow on ESPN2. Like the Broncos, the Grizzlies led 17-0 in the second quarter, too, which has been the kiss of death this year. But the Griz were able to hold off a furious Vandals comeback for a crucial 23-21 Big Sky victory. Idaho’s connection of Gevani McCoy to Hayden Hatten made it tense with two fourth-quarter touchdowns. The two TDs gave Hatten 28 receiving scores for his career, breaking the 54-year-old Vandals mark held by Jerry Hendren. Idaho has a bye this week, but the crazy Kibbie Dome scene will likely repeat itself on October 28 when second-ranked Montana State visits Moscow.
NICE PRELUDE TO AN EPIC REMATCH
You’ll see in my “This Day In Sports” item below that this is the anniversary of historic NFL futility for the Seattle Seahawks. College of Idaho inflicted similar misery on MSU-Northern in a 59-0 rout last Saturday at Simplot Stadium. The Coyotes defense allowed only 17 yards of total offense to the Lights, the fewest yielded in program history. Now it’s the moment of truth, as the Yotes travel to first-place Carroll College Saturday. It was the Saints who knocked C of I out of the NAIA playoff picture on the final day of the season last year with a 21-6 win in Caldwell. This time Carroll, 4-0 in Frontier Conference play, is facing a Yotes offense that has scored 160 points in its past three games.
MERRITT WELL-POSITIONED DOWN THE STRETCH
Troy Merritt has made the cut in all three of the PGA Tour fall tournaments he’s entered. Last week he wasn’t top 10 like he was in the first two, tying for 64th at the Shriners Childen’s Open in Las Vegas. But Merritt is still in great shape to maintain his fully-exempt tour card for next season, as he’s No. 115 in FedEx Cup standings. The former Boise State star needs to be in the top 125 a month from now when the season ends. There are four tournaments left—Merritt is not playing in this week’s event, the Zozo Championship in Japan.
THIS DAY IN SPORTS…October 18, 1977:
The Seattle Seahawks gain the fewest offensive yards in NFL history in a 24-0 loss to the Los Angeles Rams in the Kingdome. “Gain” is probably too strong a word, as the Seahawks were held to minus-seven yards, including 23 rushing and minus-30 passing. And this was with Jim Zorn at quarterback on the heels of a two-week stretch that saw Seattle combine for 65 points and 802 yards. The Seahawks got back to it after the debacle, rolling up 97 points and 1,347 yards over their next three games.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra and anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK. He also served as color commentator on KTVB’s telecasts of Boise State football for 14 seasons.)
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