Santoro: Football 101 means having a quarterback

Sports Fodder:

The Nevada Wolf Pack football season all boils down to the quarterback. Chris Ault kept telling us that for three decades but Pack head coach Ken Wilson, who spent almost two decades attached to the hip of Ault as an assistant, obviously didn’t listen. Last season, which ended in a 10-game losing streak and a 2-10 record in Wilson’s first year, was obliterated by inconsistent production out of the quarterback position. Nate Cox was 133-of-251 for 1,464 yards, five touchdowns and five interceptions and Shane Illingworth was 84-of-145 for 761 yards, two touchdowns and three interceptions. Seven touchdowns and eight interceptions in 12 college football games in an era where hardly anyone plays defense would have made Ault’s head explode. Don’t blame it all on Cox and Illingworth. This was a total breakdown of the entire passing offense, from the quarterbacks, wide receivers and tight ends to the coaches (Wilson, coordinator Derek Sage and quarterbacks coach Nate Costa). Everybody was learning on the job and, well, it produced one of the worst passing offenses in school history. To paraphrase Dean Wormer’s message to Flounder in Animal House, “Mediocre quarterbacking, coaching and receivers is no way to go through a college football season, son.”

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Cox’s eligibility finally ran out after last season but Illingworth is back, as are backups A.J. Bianco, Jake Barlage and Baylor Horning. The Pack also added recruits Jax Leatherwood out of the San Diego area, as well as Colorado Buffaloes transfer Brendon Lewis. The job seemingly will go to either Illingworth or Lewis, but you never know with this coaching staff. Why go get a guy like Lewis if you are not going to play him? Well, they went out and got Illingworth last year and barely played him. The 6-foot-2 Lewis played three seasons at Colorado and passed for 1,730 yards, 10 touchdowns and three interceptions. He also ran for 204 yards and two touchdowns on 119 carries. Didn’t Carson Strong used to do that by halftime of the second game of the season? Most of Lewis’ stats came in 2021, when he threw for 1,540 yards and 10 scores. The 6-foot-6 Illingworth has passed for 1,700 yards, nine touchdowns and five interceptions in parts of three seasons, the first two at Oklahoma State. Is there a genuine Division I quarterback that can consistently produce 28-plus points a game on the roster? If not, well, when does basketball season start?

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Wilson and his inexperienced staff basically split the quarterback position up last year between Cox and Illingworth. Cox got more playing time in the end because he could run away from the constant pressure, but the offense clearly didn’t have a true leader or focus all season long. That, too, is more the fault of Wilson and his inexperienced staff than it is Illingworth or Cox. If the coaches don’t know who the leader of the offense is, then how are the players supposed to know? If Wilson and his staff treat the position the same way this year — as if it is a timeshare arrangement like an apartment near Lake Tahoe — the results will likely be the same as last year. It might not be as ugly as 2-10 (you really have to try to go 2-10) but you can be sure there won’t be any parades down Virginia Street after the season.

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The Wolf Pack did get away with using two quarterbacks roughly three decades ago with Fred Gatlin and Chris Vargas. But their roles were clearly defined and the team basically won every week so nobody complained publicly. Gatlin was the starter and Vargas was always warming up in the bullpen ready to go bail him out. It was a wonderful system because Gatlin didn’t sulk or quit on his team and Vargas would inspire his teammates and could make the offense do things that even the coaches didn’t see coming. The Illingworth-Cox system was a bungled mess. Neither one seemed to know how to make the offense work and appeared to play with one arm tied behind their back. The coaches also never seemed to have a clue how to help their quarterbacks, other than to simply throw short passes or tell them to run away from pressure. Nobody was inspiring anyone. The goal, it seemed, was simply to get out of each game alive.

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The Wolf Pack baseball team, except for one magical 2015 season (41-15 but no NCAA Regional invite), has simply been a mediocre program trying to keep its head above water since head coach Gary Powers retired after the 2013 season. Jay Johnson went 72-42 in two seasons (thanks to a 41-15 record in 2015) but he was gone before the ink on Powers’ resignation papers fully dried. Johnson took those 41 wins in 2015 and left immediately after he choked in the Mountain West tournament at Peccole Park. He escaped for Arizona where he went to two College World Series. He’s now LSU’s head coach and currently has a 26-5 record. T.J. Bruce took over the program for the next seven years and was a flat 171-168, though he did win two regular-season titles in the new watered down Mountain West and went to one regional (2021) in the one year there was no postseason conference tournament. He’s now an assistant at TCU. Jake McKinley has taken over the Wolf Pack this season and is 13-18, having lost eight of his last 10. The Pack is in last place in the water-stained Mountain West at 4-10.

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Despite the current struggles, there’s no reason to give up on this Pack baseball season just yet. McKinley, whose head coaching experience came at Menlo College and William Jessup, is learning his craft as well as his new team. Things should improve as the season progresses and the weather warms. Nobody in the seven-team Mountain West is all that good this year (San Jose State has the best overall record at 15-11) so the Pack is not out of anything yet. A regional at-large invite is probably already out of the picture but the Pack can come together and be ready to win the Mountain West tournament in late May at Fresno State.  

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This has not been a good off-season for many former Wolf Pack basketball coaches. Ex-Pack head coaches Mark Fox (California) and Trent Johnson (Cal State Northridge) were removed as head coaches, though Johnson officially resigned after going 14-48 in two years. That’s what you do when the coach leaving the building is 66 years old. He resigns and doesn’t get fired. Ex-Pack assistant Zac Claus was let go after compiling a 28-88 record in four years at Idaho. Johnson has likely spent his last days as a coach and will likely retire. He was 104-181 in his last six years as a head coach at TCU and Northridge. Fox is just 54 and still could be a productive head coach but after putting together at 38-87 record in four years at Cal, well, the offers might be slow to arrive. Claus, a former Pack assistant, is just 48 and will likely resurface as an assistant.

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Not all former Pack basketball coaches are in a current career crisis. Former Pack basketball head coach David Carter is at Loyola Marymount in his hometown Los Angeles and has settled in comfortably as an assistant since getting booted out of Nevada in the spring of 2015. Eric Musselman, who replaced the booted Carter at Nevada, is thriving at Arkansas and currently has ex-Pack assistants Anthony Ruta and Gus Argenal on his staff. Former Nevada assistant Jermaine Kimbrough is on Bobby Hurley’s staff at Arizona State while ex-Pack assistant Josh Newman is an assistant at Pacific. Dennis Gates, a Pack assistant under Carter, had a tremendous year in his first season as Missouri’s head coach. The Tigers went 25-10 and won a game in the NCAA Tournament, beating Utah State, 76-65. Gates also split two games with Musselman and Arkansas in the SEC regular season.