Grading the Pack: Strong, receivers take next steps

Grading the Nevada Wolf Pack’s 34-32 loss to the Fresno State Bulldogs last Saturday in Fresno, Calif. . . .

QUARTERBACK: A

Carson Strong put up a career-high 61 passes, completing a school-record 49. He threw for 476 yards and four touchdowns and nearly completed a heart-stopping comeback to send the game into overtime. No team in the country puts as much pressure on its quarterback as the Wolf Pack and Strong thrives under that pressure. Strong, with help from his receivers, was the only reason the Wolf Pack was even in this game. No, it wasn’t a perfect performance by the Pack quarterback. When you throw 61 passes it is never perfect. And Strong’s mistakes (an interception on an ill-advised throw and a lost fumble) were devastating. But he had to battle an annoying Fresno State pass rush the entire game and nearly pulled off the comeback under pressure. Strong is simply as good as any quarterback in the country and, as we saw on Saturday,  the Wolf Pack isn’t afraid to use him.

RUNNING BACKS: B

There is only so much you can do with 15 carries by the running backs. That’s all Toa Taua (12) and Devonte Lee (three) got the entire game and they did fairly well, picking up 68 yards. Taua had 62 yards on his 12 carries and even gained four or more yards on nearly half (five) of those carries. But it still wasn’t enough to convince the Pack to give him the ball more than three times the entire second half. He even exploded for 28 yards on one of those three carries and it still wasn’t enough. The Pack never ran the ball even once in the fourth quarter. Lee only had three carries the entire game and picked up 11 yards on one of them. He also caught five passes (Taua had three catches) so he certainly contributed. But Lee was stopped for no gain on a 4th-and-1 attempt from the Fresno State 33-yard line late in the second quarter and, well, that was enough for the Pack to all but forget about the run the rest of the game.

RECEIVERS: A +

Romeo Doubs simply turned in one of the greatest performances by a Wolf Pack wide receiver in school history. Doubs tied a school record with 19 catches (Nate Burleson had 19 in 2002 against UTEP) for 203 yards and a touchdown and nearly tied the game with a brilliant catch in the back of the end zone on a 2-point conversion attempt from Strong with two seconds to play. The only thing that stepped the Pack comeback was that Doubs landed about two yards out of bounds. The Pack tossed 21 passes to Doubs and he nearly caught them all. Taua, one of the best backs in the Mountain West, has only had a handful of games in his career with 21 or more carries. Doubs also wasn’t alone in the Pack pass party. Tight end Cole Turner caught eight passes for 105 yards and two touchdowns, including a 12-yarder with two seconds to play. Justin Lockhart caught six passes for 83 yards and a clutch 30-yard touchdown. Tory Horton had six catches for 49 yards. The Pack receivers made Strong look like a kid in a 1935 penny candy store with a hundred dollar bill in his pocket. So many choices, so many yards and so many touchdowns available.

OFFENSIVE LINE: C

If there is a weakness on this Pack offense, it is up front. Strong was sacked five more times and was severely harassed on his fumble in the fourth quarter. The Wolf Pack offensive line has allowed 19 sacks over its last five games. That trend has to be corrected. One of the few times the Pack put trust on the offensive line to run block at a meaningful moment resulted in no gain by Lee on a 4th-and-1 try from the Fresno State 33 late in the second quarter. The Pack backs ran the ball just 15 times combined but more than half of those carries (eight) resulted in a yard or less.

DEFENSIVE LINE: C

There wasn’t much to like by the entire Wolf Pack defense, a group that surrendered 461 total yards, four touchdowns and two field goals. And it all started up front as Fresno State running back Jordan Mims had 134 yards on 23 carries. Ronnie Rivers also had a 64-yard touchdown run and wasn’t touched until he got near the end zone. The Wolf Pack pass rush, hailed as the best in the nation going into the game, all but disappeared against a team that throws nearly as much as the Pack. The Pack front was manhandled on a few big runs against Hawaii two weeks ago and that trend continued against Fresno State.

LINEBACKERS: C

Fresno’s big runs (the Bulldogs had 15 runs of five or more yards and five of 12 yards or more) were as much the fault of the linebackers as the defensive line. The Pack front seven simply vanished at times at Fresno State. Lawson Hall did have 10 tackles and recovered a Fresno fumble and Daiyan Henley had eight tackles. Hall and Henley are always active. But there are games when they don’t make many game-changing plays and this was one of them. Fresno’s Jordan Mims and Ronnie Rivers ran the ball a combined 26 times and picked up 214 yards, many in huge chunks.

SECONDARY: C

Fresno State quarterback Jake Haener completed 26-of-38 passes for 256 yards and two touchdowns. It took Haener a while to get heated up (his first five passes fell incomplete) but he scorched the Pack secondary once he did. Haener attacked the Pack secondary for the most part, completing 12 passes of 10 yards or more. None of his 38 passes ended up in the hands of a Pack player. The Wolf Pack secondary went up against a team with a quarterback and a group of receivers about as good as the ones they face everyday in practice and, well, now they know how opposing defenses usually feel after facing the Pack. It’s not a lot of fun.

SPECIAL TEAMS: B

A game-changing special teams play would have been nice but it never came. Still, the Pack didn’t lose this game because of what it did on special teams. Brandon Talton made his two field goal tries (38, 32 yards) and both his extra points and Julian Diaz averaged 46 yards on three punts, dropping two inside the 20. Romeo Doubs had a timely 17-yard punt return to set up the final drive and Jamaal Bell brought a kickoff back 33 yards and Bentlee Sanders returned one 30 yards. The special teams story, though, is more about the what-ifs and not about what actually happened. The Wolf Pack elected to punt from the Fresno 38-yard line on fourth down early in the second quarter and ran Lee ran for no gain on 4th-and-1 from the Fresno 33 late in the second quarter. In the third quarter (down 21-16) and in the fourth quarter (down 34-32) the Pack went for two points after touchdowns and missed both times. Talton makes one of those 50-plus yard field goals, the Pack wins. He makes both of those extra points, they go to overtime.

COACHING: A

This Pack team never loses confidence in itself and that all starts with the head coach. Strong and the offense nearly pulled off a memorable comeback and the only thing that stopped them was the field was about two feet too short. Neither team’s defense had any answers so don’t blame the Pack defensive coaches. Playing defense in college football against top-flight quarterbacks and receivers is as impossible as playing goalie in a NHL overtime and shootout. If anything, the Pack coaches might have out-coached their counterparts on the other sideline on Saturday. Fresno State, for some reason, became over-the-top conservative in the fourth quarter with a 31-23 lead with about a dozen minutes to play. The Bulldogs, forgetting Haener’s dozen completions of 10 yards or longer, ran the ball on 12 of their final 15 plays. The Bulldogs played scared and it almost cost them the game. If it wasn’t for a 43-yard field goal by Fresno’s Cesar Silva with 5:48 to play, Strong’s 12-yard touchdown to Cole Turner with two seconds left to play would have won the game and we would be celebrating one of the most dramatic Pack wins in history.

OVERALL: A

Yes, we’re giving a grade of A to a Pack loss. That’s because the Pack will gain more in the long run (namely against San Diego State, San Jose State and Air Force next month) from its furious comeback effort on the road at Fresno State in a loss than it did from blowout wins over Hawaii, Idaho State and New Mexico State. Strong and the receivers finally took the next step on Saturday on the way to becoming unstoppable. Yes, they’ve put up big numbers before. The difference on Saturday is that it happened against a good defense and under tremendous pressure. That was a physical defense that Strong shredded. Kansas State punched the life out of the Pack offense and defense back in September. Fresno State, it seemed, was on the way to doing the same. But Strong and the receivers took things to the next level. The Wolf Pack plays the rest of the season the way it played at Fresno State it won’t lose another game this year.