Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Rebesl Football:

Take 5: UNLV’s defense enters Michigan looking for similar start, better numbers

Jim Harbaugh

Rick Bowmer / AP

Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh leads his team on the field before the start of their NCAA football game against Utah on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015, in Salt Lake City.

The Rebel Room

Less Than a Full Deck(er)

Las Vegas Sun sports editor Ray Brewer and writers Case Keefer and Taylor Bern discuss UNLV's situation at quarterback after Blake Decker went down in the Rebels' loss to UCLA.

In a practical sense, UNLV’s season really starts next week at home against Idaho State. This weekend’s game at Michigan, which kicks off at 9:01 a.m. Las Vegas time on Big Ten Network, wraps up the preseason, a three-game stretch that has the Rebels at about 90-point underdogs overall.

UNLV traveled to Northern Illinois and hosted UCLA, and there were positives within both but they ended the way everyone expected, with Rebels losses. Now UNLV (0-2) traverses three time zones with an uncertain quarterback situation to face Michigan (1-1) in an historic stadium.

Here are some things to watch for in Saturday’s game:

Large Home

Michigan Stadium, better known as The Big House, is one of the biggest and best college football venues in the country. Michigan lists the stadium’s capacity at 107,601 but the home debut last week against Oregon State drew an announced crowd of 109,651.

If that’s matched this weekend it would be the largest attendance to ever see a UNLV football game, breaking the record set in 2004 at Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium (108,625). The team will walk around at the stadium Friday afternoon after doing their regular walk through at a nearby high school.

“It’s a great historic opportunity for these guys to play in but we don’t want these guys thinking about that on game day,” UNLV coach Tony Sanchez said. “We’ll let the guys walk around, take the pictures and enjoy the moment so on game day they’re just ready to play.”

For some, like senior tight end Jake Phillips, it won’t be hard to move past the size of place and focus on the game.

“If you’re focused on the stadium you’re focused on the wrong thing,” Phillips said.

Defense Mechanism

UNLV’s defense ranks in the bottom 15 nationally in total defense and scoring defense. UNLV’s defense has played well.

These sound like conflicting statements, and to a degree they are, but anyone familiar with UNLV’s defense over the past 5-10 years who watched the last two games could understand how they coexist. In both contests their back eventually broke, their legs eventually gave out and the points and yards eventually piled up, but until then there were great starts, some solid plays in the middle and reasons to believe that when the Mountain West and it’s fourth-tier quarterbacks come calling things can be OK.

Senior free safety Blake Richmond is off to a great start with an interception, two pass breakups, 1.5 tackles for loss and he ranks second in total tackles behind senior strong safety Peni Vea who has 17 tackles, a sack and a pass breakup.

For the last six quarters UNLV’s offense has been almost nonexistent and the result is a field-position and fatigue battle that has put UNLV’s defense increasingly difficult situations. The numbers will probably get ugly again this weekend but the more important thing to monitor is the play-by-play performance of a unit trying to shake off a history of struggle to help the turnaround.

Michigan Men

If UCLA’s main advantage was speed, Michigan’s is size. And it’s not just along the lines; the Wolverines are huge everywhere.

All six receivers on the depth chart are listed at 6-foot or taller, the secondary has more size than UNLV’s receivers and both the offensive and defensive lines are massive. Michigan’s starting offensive line averages 307.6 pounds (45 pounds more than UNLV’s defensive line) and the starting defensive line averages 290.5 pounds (11.5 pounds more than UNLV’s offensive line).

There are just some things that UNLV won’t be able to overcome, and one is this built-in size disadvantage.

PalanDeckNeed

Three quarterbacks will travel, three quarterbacks will dress and it’s only slightly more likely than just one of them plays than all three. So, what is UNLV going to end up doing at the position against Michigan?

The most likely answer is that sophomore Kurt Palandech gets the start, he plays better than last week’s ugly relief effort and UNLV takes what it can get. Anything involving either senior Blake Decker or true freshman Dalton Sneed probably occupies Plans B through H.

While UNLV genuinely would prefer Sneed stay out of the game and keep his redshirt, the one caveat to the likely plan is that football coaches are notorious for keeping injury information in house. No one should be shocked if Sanchez has been playing opossum with Decker’s status and the senior is 100 percent cleared, though that would still seem like a risk for an injury-plagued quarterback with so many better chances to win coming up.

Meet in the Middle

On this weekend last season, Sanchez was preparing for a home win against Santa Margarita High and Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh’s San Francisco 49ers were about to lose at the Arizona Cardinals. A year later they will occupy competing sidelines on the same level.

Last weekend featured another former NFL coach, but UCLA’s Jim Mora last coached the Atlanta Falcons in 2006 and his one-year tenure with the Seattle Seahawks feels like it never happened. It feels different when Harbaugh was still technically an NFL coach almost a month after Sanchez accepted the UNLV job.

This is one of those storylines that’s fun to talk about but probably means little on game day. One way it could show up is that Sanchez knows he has nothing to lose and the team has already pulled out a fake field goal so don’t be surprised to see some more trickeration (onside kick?) on Saturday.

Taylor Bern can be reached at 948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Taylor on Twitter at twitter.com/taylorbern.

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