LAS VEGAS—All eyes were on the UNLV Rebels, who came out the other side of conference realignment in a position of menace for a College Football Playoff spot.
With the Mountain West no longer loaded with the traditional boogeymen for the Rebels such as Boise State, UNLV has an opportunity to make a statement of their own. With another high-profile transfer at quarterback in Jackson Arnold and a defense hoping for improvement in defensive coordinator Paul Guenther’s second year, the Rebels clearly have such designs in mind for themselves.
However, to be the best in the new Group of Six with the addition of the revived Pac-12, the Rebels will need to beat the best the other conferences have to offer, and they got a tremendous opportunity to do exactly that against the Memphis Tigers.
On Saturday, however, all of those hopes suffered a massive dent with a 27-21 loss at Allegiant Stadium.
“Losing sucks, I’ll tell you that,” said UNLV head coach Dan Mullen during the postgame press conference. “Some critical errors, some areas we got to be better at.”
Arnold did not get out to the fastest start, engineering a couple of drives that did little in terms of progress during a scoreless first quarter for both teams.
However, Arnold came alive in the second, growing more confident with his deep passing and eventually finding redshirt freshman Tavian McNair to kickstart the scoring. From there, Arnold was not afraid to make plays with both his arm and his legs. By the time the first half was over, Arnold had already gone 17-for-21 for 203 yards, as well as leading the Rebels with 40 rushing yards.
By the end of the game, Arnold dazzled by going 25-for-37 in the air for 291 passing yards and two touchdowns, while also adding 54 rushing yards and a touchdown on the ground.
Arnold’s performance would mean a quieter day than usual for senior running back Jai’Den Thomas on the ground (44 yards on 12 carries). However, he showed his versatility by leading the Rebels with six receptions and 54 receiving yards.
However, Mullen was critical of the team’s struggles in the red zone, where they only managed to convert once on three attempts.
“It was a tough game,” said Arnold, who repeated some of his coach’s concerns. “Memphis came out and they played good ball and we have to tip our hats off to them.”
Unfortunately, just as the Rebels were convinced by Arnold’s performance, they also got to see some glaring problems emerge.
The third quarter would see the defense once again be challenged, as Marcus Stokes and the Tigers offense came to life. Untimely penalties against the likes of Kenji Scanlan and Avery Helm would put the Rebels in disadvantageous positions, while they would also get gashed on long touchdowns from Stonka Burnside and Jaylin Carter. Defense has been something of a sticking point dating back to last year, and it had to be a concern to see the explosive plays against the unit return.
“It doesn’t matter how much I do unless we get the win,” lamented safety Jake Pope, who led the Rebels with 12 tackles. “There’s 11 guys on defense and, like Coach said, we let up some explosives. That really is what it came down to on the defensive side and we got to get to work on Monday.”
While the defense would manage to find ways to stop the bleeding in the fourth quarter, the Rebels were not able to capitalize due to the offensive line struggling to protect Arnold.
The Tigers would secure six sacks against the UNLV quarterback, with the majority of them coming in the second half. Defensive lineman Elijah Kinsler would secure two and a half to lead the team, and the negative yardage would result in UNLV only getting 25 yards of total offense in the fourth quarter.
“I think they did a good job getting pressure more in the second half,” noted Mullen on Memphis’ pass rush.
“I don’t know that they changed a lot. They have some really good defensive linemen. We had some plans, chipped them and chunked them a couple different times, but there are some times I think they did a good job getting after us.”
The issues in protection were further compounded by the loss of starting center Austin Boyd, who went down with a leg injury in the fourth quarter and did not return.
“When you got a leader on the line, a guy that’s been in the program for all those years, obviously, that’s tough when he goes down,” said Mullen about Boyd. “That’s…honestly, probably, the leader of the offense.”
With the season already taking a turn, UNLV has to get back quickly with a three-game road trip coming up, and what looked like a potential matchup for the Mountain West conference championship against Hawai’i next Saturday will instead decide which team has to crawl out of an 0-2 hole.
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