Fresno State drops fourth in a row, losing at Boise State, and its offense is shrinking
Fresno State has been reduced to a team that lacks identity. It has nothing to lean on, partly due to injuries and inconsistency. But that’s where it is, and that was the difference in its latest loss, the fourth in a row, a 40-20 setback Saturday night on the blue turf at Boise State.
The Broncos are no great shakes, either, and the Bulldogs’ defense did a solid job for a long enough time in slowing down quarterback Taylen Green in the run game.
But from the 5:35 mark in the third quarter, the score tied, Boise State was able to get ahead and stay there on the strength of its run game, even with Green playing the role mostly of a big-time run threat.
The Broncos (4-2, 3-0 in the MW) went ahead on a 5-yard touchdown pass from Green to running back George Holani, capping an 11-play, 63-yard drive that included nine rushing plays. Then in the fourth quarter, Boise State ran 23 plays from scrimmage, and 22 were runs, most by running back Ashton Jeanty (11).
Boise State churned out 316 yards on the ground, which is the most Fresno State has allowed in a game since Hawaii pounded out 323 in a 2020 opener when the Bulldogs were playing through COVID-19 with no spring practice, no summer workouts, and an abbreviated fall camp.
Fresno State (1-4, 0-1), missing injured quarterback Jake Haener, had no way to answer.
The Bulldogs are just very limited at the moment.
Backup Logan Fife hit 14 of 25 passes for 134 yards and was intercepted twice for a second game in a row, and with a fumble in the loss at UConn has turned it over five times in his two starts. He has completed 69.5% of his passes (41 of 59), but his yards per attempt has gone down every week from 11.7 at USC to 7.1 at UConn and to 5.4 at Boise State in an offense that seems to be shrinking every week.
WILL BULLDOGS GIVE NO. 3 QB A SHOT?
“Well, he missed a couple of balls,” coach Jeff Tedford said, assessing the play of his backup quarterback. “Obviously, interceptions, we don’t want. The second was thrown behind (Jalen Moreno-Cropper), then the other one over the middle. I thought he handled the noise and the environment pretty well, but it comes with experience to know the time that you have and when you can throw the football and when you can’t.
“I thought he battled hard with his legs and scrambled to make a few first downs, but we got stuck in the second half with bad field position getting sacked. We had a guy open, but we missed the protection. They’re learning experiences for him. But each one of these things, this is a really valuable experience for him, in this type of environment, to handle this and the speed of the game. That’s the No. 1 defense. He’ll continue to get better from these experiences.”
It didn’t appear Tedford was ready to give No. 3 quarterback Jaylen Henderson much of a shot.
Henderson got into the game for one play, a 2-yard red zone run from the Boise State 11-yard line in the first quarter, following an interception by linebacker Malachi Langley set up the Bulldogs in the red zone. But Fife returned on the next play following a Broncos’ timeout, picking up four yards. Running back Jordan Mims took a direct snap, gaining another four yards. Fife got the final yard, scoring on a 1-yard run.
It took four plays to gain 11 yards, which perhaps is not surprising. Fresno State generated only 233 yards at 3.8 yards per play.
It has failed to hit 300 yards in back-to-back games for the first time since it went three in a row in 2015 with 247 in a loss at San Jose State, 89 in a loss at San Diego State, and 194 in a loss to Utah State. And, in the two games Fife started, the Bulldogs have averaged 3.9 and now 3.8 yards per play, which are puny totals. Before this season, Fresno State had averaged less than 4.0 yards in a game twice in its past 61 games.
Fresno State has a deep set of playmakers in Moreno-Cropper, Nikko Remigio and Erik Brooks outside and running back Jordan Mims. But it doesn’t run the football with any consistency. It doesn’t make plays down the field. The Bulldogs had two plays of 20 or more yards - a short pass that tight end Raymond Pauwels Jr. turned into a 29-yard gain and a 21-yard scramble of a pass play on a 3rd-and-9 when the snap got away from Fife, who was able to chase down the loose football and fling it toward the right sideline where Remigio was wide open.
The Broncos had an outside zone run, Holani and Jeanty, and pounded out a 20-point victory.
Fresno State has few credible answers at this point and it could be without Haener again this week when it plays San Jose State, which has a defense that is leading the Mountain West Conference in points allowed.
BY THE NUMBERS
11: Rushing plays of 10 or more yards by the Broncos with a high of 59 yards by Holani. The Broncos gained 197 yards on those 11 plays.
0: Rushing plays of 10 or more yards by the Bulldogs. The longest run from scrimmage for Fresno State was seven yards, by Mims.
78: The Bulldogs’ conversion percentage on third-down plays in the first half. They were 7 of 9.
17: The Bulldogs’ conversion percentage on third-down plays in the second half. They were 1 of 6.
3: Running backs who rushed for 100 or more yards against the Bulldogs in their past two games with Holani gaining 157 yards and Jeanty 109 and joining UConn back Devontae Houston and his 105 yards.
8: Consecutive losses against FBS opponents for Tedford, dating to the final four games of the 2019 season.
8: Plays from scrimmage by Fresno State in the final quarter.
Minus-34: The Bulldogs’ play differential in the second half of its past two games. They were minus-21 (20 to 41) at Boise State and minus-13 (24 to 37) at UConn.
13: Average yards gained on five kickoff returns by the Bulldogs. Boise State went into the game ranked last in the Mountain West in opponent’s kickoff return average, allowing 26.4 yards and one touchdown on 10 returns.
8: Red zone scores in eight trips into the red zone for Boise State. The Broncos scored four touchdowns and had four field goals.
This story was originally published October 9, 2022 at 7:32 AM.