I was very harsh on Dan Mullen's premiere performance as UNLV's head coach, in which UNLV barely eked by with a 1-touchdown win over an FCS opponent. I even went so far as to say that I suspect he would be fired sooner rather than later. Much to my surprise, UNLV has since beaten Sam Houston and UCLA to start the season 3-0. In fact, UNLV was absolutely dominating UCLA in the first half, going up 23-3 by halftime.
The defense, in particular, looked dramatically improved in the first half against UCLA. They were playing much more disciplined. They were gap-sound, weren't giving up the huge cutback lanes that had been their Achilles heel in the first 2 weeks, and pass coverage looked tight. They even got a couple sacks! It was a dramatic turn-around.
Is the team much better than that week 0 performance against Idaho State made them look? And do I owe Dan Mullen and his staff an apology for being so harsh?
The answer is: probably.
But there are some caveats. The biggest caveat, of course, is that UNLV did not look nearly as good in the second half. They almost blew the game, giving up 20 2nd-half points, while only scoring 7 of their own, in order to win the game by a single TD. UNLV's defense couldn't get UCLA off the field. In fact, UNLV ran a whopping total of 4 offensive plays and a punt in the entire 3rd quarter, because UCLA possessed the ball for the entire rest of that quarter.
PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Marcus, Las Vegas Sun via AP
Anthony Colandrea was forced to play "hero ball" too often for comfort.
Moreso, I still have big concerns with the offense -- the line in particular. Even though UNLV's offense appeared to be rolling while they put up 23 first-half points, the offensive performance was a bit rough. Most of that production came on improvisation on broken plays. Quarterback Anthony Colandrea was frequently forced to scramble, and was lucky that his receivers were consistently able to come back towards him and catch passes on the perimeter. And when there weren't receivers open at all, Colandrea was usually able to find a soft spot in the defense and scramble for first downs.
Put simply, UNLV's offense looked completely incapable of running their offensive plays as they were designed to be run. Being forced to play "hero ball" all game long almost bit Colandrea in the butt in the 4th quarter, and almost cost UNLV the game. He was forced to scramble to avoid a sack, but the pressure caught up to him and brought him down. As he was going down, he tried to throw the ball away, only to toss it directly to a UCLA defensive lineman who walked it into the endzone for a touchdown. Fortunately for UNLV, a review determined that Colandrea's knee was down before he threw the ball, and the ruling was overruled to be called a sack on the field.
This kind of improv play is simply not sustainable, and UNLV's offense can only get lucky so many times before misfortune catches up to them.
Oh, and this was just a very ugly game from start to finish. Penalties and clock stoppages dragged out the game to about 4 hours. I was starting to dread that the game would go into overtime and need 5 hours to resolve.
UCLA and Boise State appeared to be the 2 hardest games on UNLV's schedule for this year. With the UCLA game being a win, a projected win total of 8 1/2 wins is looking very doable right now. Do I still think that Mullen is on the hot seat? No, I guess not. The team has shown noticeable improvement these last couple weeks, even though it is still very inconsistent. Perhaps Mullen can still get more consistency out of this squad.