Fresno State hits accelerator and with Haener back may have separator in conference race

If there is a separator in the race to a Mountain West Conference football championship, Fresno State just might have it in Jake Haener and a passing game that has taken off since the Bulldogs quarterback returned from a lower leg injury.

In a 55-13 victory on Saturday over Hawaii, Haener hit 24 of 29 passes for 327 yards with touchdowns of 7 and 59 yards to Jalen Moreno-Cropper, 16 yards to Erik Brooks and 11 yards to Nikko Remigio.

It was Haener’s fifth career game with four or more touchdown passes, and the 16th time that he has passed for 300 or more yards. He is closing in on the school record of 20 games with 300 or more passing yards set by Derek Carr, who played in 44 games while Haener at this point has played in only 24.

In a weird and wonky year in the Mountain West, Haener could carry the Bulldogs a long way.

Half the teams are averaging 20 points or less in their conference games, and few have shown much proficiency or consistency in the passing game.

But with Haener back the Bulldogs put up 32 on San Diego State and 55 on Hawaii, and at kickoff for those games the Aztecs were allowing just 18.6 points in their conference games and the Rainbow Warriors just 19.0.

Haener had a bit of revenge in front of him against the Rainbow Warriors, after throwing seven interceptions and going 0-2 against them with losses last season and in the COVID year, 2020.

“Definitely loved getting after it tonight,” Haener said. “My coach from high school called me and said something about the Joker. He said something about ‘He who laughs last laughs best,’ or something like that. So, it was fun to get back out there and get a win playing them for the last time.”

HAENER, WIDEOUTS HITTING AT HIGH PERCENTAGE

And, with little pass rush pressure coming from the Rainbow Warriors and working with a run game that churned out 245 yards, he sliced them up. Haener was 4 of 4 in the screen game, 9 of 10 throwing short and hit throws down the field consistently for the first time this season, going 3 of 4 for 106 yards and two touchdowns on passes that were 20 or more yards down the field.

Fresno State scored six touchdowns and two field goals on its first eight series and Haener hit his last 12 passes before exiting the blowout victory in the fourth quarter, three of them for touchdowns.

The Bulldogs also converted 8 of 12 third-down plays against a Hawaii defense that had allowed opponents to convert on only 36.5% of their third-down plays and have now been at 60% or better in three games in a row — 62.5% at New Mexico, 60% against San Diego State and 66.7% against Hawaii.

That has not happened going back through the 2009 season.

“I kind of touched on it last week,” Haener said. “In this game, people can look too far forward and stuff like that. A lot of the execution and great plays that our guys make come just obviously staying in the moment. That’s a testament to how we prepare and what we do during the week.

“I don’t think you can look at the next drive. You have to stay in the moment, stay prepared for each play and execute the look that’s given to you and just keep rolling at a high level.”

The 82.8% completion percentage is the third highest in a single game in school history, and it has the Bulldogs passing game in rarefied air. Through nine games they have three wideouts in Zane Pope (82.9%), Remigio (81.4%) and Moreno-Cropper (81.2%) who have receptions on more than 80% of their targets, which are big numbers.

The last team to pull that off over a full season was Alabama in 2020, and there have been years past where there were only three wideouts in the entire country who had reception percentages in the 80s.

In 2013, when Derek Carr lit up the Mountain West, the Bulldogs didn’t have a single wideout in the 80s. Davante Adams was at 72.8%, highest among that 1,000-yard trio that included Isaiah Burse and Josh Harper.

In the two games since returning from that lower leg injury, Haener has hit 58 of 74 passes (78.4%) and is averaging 360.5 yards per game with seven touchdowns.

FRESNO STATE BACK OVER .500 MARK

But the Bulldogs, over the .500 mark for the first time since an opening victory over Cal Poly, are starting to fit pieces despite ongoing injury issues on both sides of the football.

Defensively, cornerback Cameron Lockridge, a transfer from Hawaii, scored on an interception return against his former team and over the past four games the Bulldogs are allowing an average of just 15.0 points.

Keep that up, and the Mountain West will be hard-pressed to keep up with the Bulldogs, who are tied atop the West Division of the Mountain West with San Jose State but hold a head-to-head tiebreaker advantage.

Fresno State (5-4, 4-1 in the MW) next plays Friday at UNLV on a short week, but the Rebels have lost four in a row and managed to gain more than 300 yards just once in those games.

“We’ve just got to try to keep playing one play at a time and practice one day at a time,” coach Jeff Tedford said. “I talked to the team about, you know, the chain of destiny is one link at a time. It really is, right now. We’re on a short week coming up. It’s going to be really important that we get healthy, take a couple days to make sure we get fresh and ready to go and get ready to play an excellent UNLV team on the road on a short week.

“I think it’s indicative of what we could be, if we do what we need to do. I don’t think we turned the football over tonight, which is a huge plus. We converted a lot of third downs, I thought. I thought we played overall a really good game, in all three phases.”

BY THE NUMBERS

8.5: Sacks this season by defensive end David Perales, who had 1.0 against the Rainbow Warriors. That is the most in a season by a Bulldog since 2015 when outside linebacker Ejiro Ederaine had 9.0.

1: Punt by Fresno State, its fewest in a game since it had one in a 38-14 victory over UNLV during the 2013 season.

0: Turnovers by the Bulldogs, breaking a streak of six games in a row where they had lost at least one fumble or threw an interception.

8: Rushing plays of 10 or more yards by Fresno State. It had 21 going into the game, fewest in the Mountain West.

2,715: Career rushing yards for Jordan Mims, who with 123 against the Rainbow Warriors moved into seventh on the Bulldogs’ career rushing list.

67.9: Completion percentage for Jake Haener in his Fresno State career, on pace to set a school record. He could throw 17 incomplete passes in a row and still be ahead of Derek Carr’s school record 66.6%.

9: Fresno State has had at least one rushing touchdown in its first nine games for the first time since 2014 when the Bulldogs opened the season with 13 in a row.

1: Penalty against the Bulldogs, who are averaging just 4.2 per game. Fresno State is second in the Mountain West in fewest penalties per game after ranking last a year ago with 7.6 per game.

This story was originally published November 6, 2022 at 7:31 AM.