UNLV will break in the Raiders' new stadium with a new head coach

Freshman Kenyon Oblad seemed to improve
considerably over the course of the season

I had given up on Tony Sanchez as UNLV's head coach early in the 2019 season. After failing to recognize that Armani Rogers just wasn't working out at QB, Sanchez waited until conference play had started before benching Rogers in favor of Kenyon Oblad. Oblad had an up and down season, but in my opinion, he showed early on that he was the better passer than Rogers. As I said in previously on this blog: UNLV doesn't need another runner; they need a quarterback.

UNLV ended up with a four-win season. I don't know if UNLV would have won another early game or two if they had played Oblad sooner. But I will say that I think Oblad got better over the course of the season, leading the team to two nail-biting (but ultimately meaningless) victories to close out the season. With another 2 or 3 games of experience early in the season, maybe he would have been playing better in the middle and late season, and maybe UNLV would actually have been able to pull out another win or two in conference play. We'll never know because Sanchez stubbornly kept Rogers in until after it was too late to salvage the season.

Tony Sanchez won't even get a single full season with the
Fertitta Football Training Complex that he helped build.

That being said, I do kind of feel bad for Sanchez. Despite his failings on the field, he was actually very successful off the field. His legacy with UNLV will be that he managed to drum up financial support for the team from friends and family, and he is the reason that UNLV now has its fancy, top of the line Fertitta Football Complex training facility. Unfortunately for Sanchez, that facility did not open until October of this year. Despite being the single biggest reason that training facility exists, Sanchez did not even have a single season in which to train his players there.

He's also missing out on the opportunity to coach the team in the Raiders new Las Vegas stadium. A part of me does feel like Sanchez maybe deserved one more year to be able to coach the team for a full season with these shiny new facilities and see what he could do with access to those resources. He worked hard to make them a reality for UNLV football, but he won't ever get a chance to reap their rewards.

UNLV hired Oregon's former offensive coordinator, Marcus Arroyo to a 5-year contract.

Instead, the honor of training UNLV's football team in the Fertitta Complex and coaching games in the Raiders' stadium will go to new UNLV head coach Marcus Arroyo. Arroyo is the former offensive coordinator at Oregon, and he will be coaching the Oregon Ducks in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day before he moves down to Vegas.