Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
UNLV wasn’t good, but don’t call it regression
Tony Sanchez has a 24-hour rule. It means no matter how his UNLV football team performs on a given weekend — delivering a victory or tasting defeat — his players and staff need to move beyond it and focus on their next opponent by the time they arrive for practice the following evening.
Problem: I’m not sure the Rebels can rid themselves so easily of the stink that was Saturday afternoon.
In a week when the program received a $10 million donation toward building an on-campus training facility and a proposal that could one day deliver UNLV an NFL stadium as its new home took another step forward, the Rebels responded with an awful performance against Central Michigan.
The Chippewas won 44-21 before 19,922 at Kelly/Shorts Stadium, a game that on paper was supposed to offer by far the most even matchup for UNLV over its first
three games.
Turns out, Central Michigan resembled a piece of 22X17 and the Rebels a post-it note.
“I told them to chew on it,” Sanchez said. “They need to. So do the coaches. There were a lot of things we could have done better as a staff. At the end of the day, I told (the players), ‘Man up. Don’t be a coward. Show up (Sunday), lift the damn weights, eat the food we feed you, get in the film room, look at yourself critically, get better and go win the next one.’ If you’re going to walk around feeling sorry for yourself, you’re going to regress into that old muddle we have been in forever.
“We’re trying to change a 30-year-old culture of not playing competitive football. On days like this, you can’t regress and fall back into it. We just have to man up. These things happen. You don’t want it to happen too often, but it happened. We have to go cowboy up and get ready for the next one.”
The problem with his regression analogy is that it really doesn’t fit UNLV, at least not in the manner of being capable enough to beat good people.
You can’t regress from something you’ve rarely done.
The last time UNLV beat anyone of note in nonconference play was 2008, when the Rebels won at thenNo. 13 Arizona State and followed with a home victory against Iowa State. It’s also true both teams finished that season with losing records, going a combined 7-17. UNLV finished 5-7.
The Rebels now have lost 18 straight nonconference road games.
They are 0-11 in the Eastern Time Zone.
Regression? Try a forgetful pattern of doom.
What will aid the Rebels this season is that the Mountain West, after a few teams, again offers a collection of miserable sides, meaning the improvement UNLV has made — it has, although none of it showed Saturday — should be apparent against several of them.
A defense from UNLV that ranks as one of the nation’s worst statistically after three games and an offense that completed just 37 percent of it passes Saturday and rushed for an average of 2.6 yards when you take away an 85-yard score should appear more than capable once league plays arrives.
That’s where things stand in Sanchez’s second year. UNLV is better, and yet miles and miles away from anything more than solid when facing inferior opponents and a tossup against ones with similar flaws, which is to say many.
UNLV has little chance, absolutely none if it performs as it did Saturday, against anyone better than itself. Which isn’t exactly regression. It’s just decades-long worth of reality.
“There is a point in every season where a switch kind of flips,” junior quarterback Johnny Stanton said. “Hopefully, this is the game that does it. Obviously, you want it to happen before the season, but this game hopefully will be taken as a wake-up call.”
It was a disaster in every phase. The defense allowed 499 yards for a second consecutive week. Cooper Rush as Central Michigan’s senior quarterback played most of the afternoon with the ease of a guy throwing the ball around at the park on Thanksgiving, completing 20 of 33 for 352 yards and a
stadium-record six touchdowns. Six!
UNLV’s offense was beyond anemic, led by receivers who dropped far too many passes from a quarterback who threw far too many inaccurate balls. Stanton became so frustrated, he was overthrowing screens by 4 yards.
It began as a good day for special teams when the Rebels blocked a punt in the end zone for a touchdown and a 7-0 lead, but they eventually had their own blocked punt that resulted in a safety.
I suppose the best thing UNLV did was distract Central Michigan’s kicker enough that he missed three field goals.
The Rebels certainly weren’t disciplined, given their nine penalties for 94 yards.
“I’m disappointed,” Sanchez said. “We have a long, long way to go, and I think we forget sometimes where we are coming from. This week was a good one off the field — a lot of great things happened — but we have a lot of work to do on the field.
“I don’t think anyone thought this was going to be an overnight hit and because we got something magically donated, we’d automatically win football games. You still have to line up right, still have to recruit better, still have to develop kids.”
The silver lining: Positive results appear to be ahead the next few weeks, when UNLV hosts bad teams in Idaho and Fresno State, meaning the Rebels have every chance to be 3-2. UNLV didn’t regress Saturday. They just played someone good. In the world of UNLV football, that usually means a 24-hour rule of tasting defeat.