Joe Santoro: Pack has played itself into must-win territory

Sports Fodder …

The postseason starts now for the Nevada Wolf Pack football team. As far as the Wolf Pack is concerned, it has a string of four bowl games in a row starting Saturday night at San Jose State. Win all four and then the Pack can go to a real bowl game. Then again, these next four games couldn’t be any more real for the Wolf Pack. One loss and the season is officially a disaster. That’s why each of the next four games should be called the Save Our Season Bowl. Get a funeral home and a life insurance policy company to sponsor the games. Make the coaches travel to the games in a hearse and fly the flags in the stadium at half-mast. Paint a skull and crossbones on the side of the Pack helmets (it’s better than a pink “Pack” logo and stripe, right?). You don’t, after all, want to forget the gravity of the situation. Every game, every play, every quarterback switch could mean the end of the season as far as a bowl game is concerned. This is the Wolf Pack football version of the NCAA basketball tournament or a bettor’s survivor pool. In a season that has been filled with more blunders, mistakes and, yes, gaffes, the Pack now has to be perfect for four consecutive games.

•••

Is the task of winning the final four games to get a bowl invite yet another Pack pipe dream? So what? College football, especially Nevada’s meaningless mid-major version, is one pipe dream after another. Only the coaches — and now the players — get rich. The fans just get frustrated and bored out of their minds. But in this strange series of ridiculous events that has characterized this Pack football program since the end of the 2021 season, winning four in a row on the tail of a six-game losing streak would fit right in. And, don’t forget, this is all this beleaguered program has left right now if it wants to be noticed outside the McCarran circle this year. Yes, of course, there is always the Fremont Cannon at stake in the final game against UNLV to keep your silver and blue hopes alive. But do you remember any significant celebrating in the streets after the 2016 and 2017 teams beat UNLV in the final game of the year to finish with five and three wins?

Winning the cannon is nice, all well and good and, on some levels, important for the program as a whole. But if all you have in a season to hang your hat on is a win over UNLV, well, it’s time to reassess your goals. Beating UNLV in a season that falls short of six wins and a bowl game is sort of like opening up a huge box with a leg lamp in it and calling it a “major award.” It will be only slightly more meaningful than getting an orange slice and a fruit roll-up after a soccer game for 6-year-olds. A bowl game, though, should be the minimum requirement for a successful college football season these days. Is it really all that strenuous to win half your games as a mid-major? This Pack team, thanks to its current six-game losing streak, had made a bowl game feel like going up on the podium and accepting the Super Bowl trophy. It could turn this lifeless Pack football program around. It could build interest in the off-season, give hope for the future and a much-needed boost in recruiting. It might even keep a half dozen or so players from rushing to the transfer portal after the year and, fingers crossed, maybe even sell a season ticket or two. Don’t worry: if the Pack wins its last four games, you’ll also have your complimentary parting-gift blue cannon to fire into the night sky down in Las Vegas on Nov. 26 as a bonus.

•••

The challenge facing the Pack the rest of the season is not impossible. Winning at least the final four games to get to six wins has been done before over the last 15 (2007-2021) FBS seasons. Just last year, North Texas and Old Dominion won their last five games after starting the year 1-6. Miami of Ohio won its last six after an 0-6 start in 2016. Georgia State (2015), Rice (2012), Tennessee (2010), Southern Mississippi (2008) and North Carolina State (2008) all won their last four after 2-6 starts. Miami of Ohio (2016) and North Texas (2021) also got hot after losing six games in a row (like the Pack now). Old Dominion (2021) and Southern Miss (2008) turned their seasons around after five-game losing streaks. Isn’t this why the Pack paid a 58-year-old first-time head coach a school-record $1 million-a-year contract?

•••

How did this Wolf Pack season become so desperate? Well, it all started with that 58-year-old first-time head coach last December. And he then hired his buddies and tossed them into jobs, for the most part, that they have never done at this level before. So they were as new at their jobs as the bulk of the roster. If you didn’t see this coming, well, you (and I) were drinking the Ken Wilson silver and blue Kool-Aid. A rookie head coach and a new inexperienced staff combined with a roster that had to be almost entirely rebuilt was not a recipe for a Mountain West championship.

And not much has gone right after Week 2, when the Pack was 2-0 and the world was a wonderful place filled with never-ending possibilities. The offense has disappeared and the defense is running out of fingers to stick in the dike to keep the entire football program from flooding. But, still, the program should not be this desperate this soon. The Pack should have beaten Colorado State. It should have beaten Hawaii. It should have beaten Incarnate Word. The San Diego State game last week on Homecoming weekend should have been much closer than a 16-point blowout. Iowa was also very beatable since it, like the Pack, doesn’t know how to find the end zone. But that game, too, ended in a blowout, as did the Air Force Spaceship Not-So-Close Encounter of the Third Kind.

At the very least, this Pack football team should be 5-2 right now and required to win just one of its last four games to get to a bowl. It should be right in the thick of the West Division race. So, yes, it has underachieved mightily. Don’t let anybody tell you differently. There’s no way this football team, given this schedule, should be 2-6 right now and riding a six-game losing streak. It should have had three wins just three games into the season. You lose at home to Incarnate Word in Week 3 after being up 17-3 in the first quarter? You can’t blame that on Jay Norvell and the transfer portal. On Saturday night, it will be 56 days since the Pack last won a game. And we’re still waiting for win No. 3.

•••

It really doesn’t make sense for the Wolf Pack to give Nate Cox any significant snaps at quarterback the rest of the season. A play or two each game would be fine, you know, when the Pack wants the quarterback to run or when Shane Illingworth needs to shake out the cobwebs after absorbing yet another sack. But that’s about it. Cox, who has been a college quarterback since 2017, had his chance. A long, extended, tedious, seemingly never-ending chance. He was rewarded for his loyal service (standing on the sideline and watching Carson Strong in 2020 and 2021) with starts in five of the first eight games and extended playing time in two others. And the offense, save for a few drives against Incarnate Word when the Pack was getting whipped by a FCS team, looked like the hand of a poor soul sticking out from under quicksand in a 1940s horror movie. And Ken Wilson, for the most part, just stood there on the sideline and watched, mouth opened and frozen seemingly waiting for Chris Ault to call him on his cell and tell him what play to run. “Just give it to Kap,” Ault no doubt would have said.

Well, that call from Saint Chris, as well as Colin Kaepernick, still hasn’t come to save this Pack season so far. So Wilson closed his mouth, snapped out of his helpless stare and finally woke up in the second quarter last week against San Diego State. He made the change that should have been made a month ago. He put in Illingworth and left him alone, like he should have since Week 1. Illingworth, who hadn’t played in 35 days, understandably wasn’t great (21-of-33 for 181 yards and a touchdown) but he was pretty darn good for the most part, especially by 2022 Wolf Pack offense standards. Nobody, after all, saw a hand sticking up from the quicksand all night long last Saturday at Mackay Stadium. We’ve seen the Cox horror movie for a month. And it always ended with the hand sinking below the quicksand.

Let’s hope the change to Illingworth is permanent, at least for the next four games. Cox, no matter how well he might play in the final four games, cannot help the Pack in 2023. Illingworth can help the Pack right now and in 2023 and 2024. For that reason alone, not to mention that his upside (ask Oklahoma State) sits atop Mount Rose while Cox’s upside resides somewhere on the top row of Mackay Stadium’s dark, abandoned bleachers, is why he needs to start and finish the season on the field.

•••

Can the Wolf Pack beat, in order, San Jose State, Boise State, Fresno State and UNLV? Yeah, right. Carson Strong only beat three of those four teams (losing to Fresno State) last year with one of the greatest offenses in school history.  The Wolf Pack almost always beats San Jose State and UNLV in the same year, but Boise and Fresno are different stories. The Pack has played Boise State and Fresno State in the same year 21 times and has beaten them both in the same year just twice (1998 and 2010). And it took a miracle in 2010 by the greatest Pack team in school history. We have yet to witness this Pack team win four drives in a row, let alone four games. So, no, we’re not drinking the Ken Wilson silver and blue Kool-Aid just yet. Beat San Jose State, though, and we’ll take a sip. Beat Boise State and give me a pitcher.

•••

The Wolf Pack game at Las Vegas at the end of the regular season might have more at stake than a replica cannon. We’ve already detailed the Pack’s path to a bowl game that is only less frightening than a midnight walk all alone through the Blair Witch woods. But even if the Pack doesn’t take a three-game winning streak to Las Vegas on Nov. 26, the night could still be filled with silver and blue incentive. UNLV, which opened the year 4-1 and appeared a shoe-in for its first bowl game since 2013, has been destroyed three games in a row by Air Force, San Jose State and Notre Dame. The Rebels still need to win two of their final four games to get to a bowl. UNLV has to play San Diego State, Fresno State and Hawaii the next three weeks before the Fremont Cannon is wheeled out onto the Allegiant Stadium turf at the end of November. There’s a very real chance the Rebels will have to beat Nevada to go to a bowl. A replica cannon and the knowledge UNLV will go bowl-less once again might save this Pack season, after all.