The dream of crashing the inaugural College Football Playoff is over for UNLV. They lost the Mountain West Championship to Boise State for the second year in a row. Boise will be the automatic Group of 5 representative in the playoff. What's more, 3rd-ranked (in the CFP rankings) SMU lost its championship game to Clemson, which demoted them to the "at large" 11th seed, and leapfrogged Boise State to the 3rd seed in the playoffs. Boise will have a first-round bye in the playoff, and will host the winner of Penn State and SMU.

The loss pushed UNLV back to #24 in the playoff rankings, and they are expected to be invited to the L.A. Bowl.

Boise State beat UNLV in the Mountain West Championship and will be the 3rd seed in the inaugural playoff.

This loss was rough. I really thought that UNLV had a good chance to beat Boise State. UNLV lost by only 5 points when they first played in Vegas in the middle of the season. UNLV was one of the few teams to actually make Heisman candidate Ashton Jeanty look almost pedestrian -- though he still ran for well over a hundred yards and multiple TDs.

My dad and I drove out to Boise to watch the game on the blue turf, only to see UNLV play, by far, its worst game of the season. I'm not sure if it was the cold (the temperature was 27 degrees at kickoff), or if they finally succumbed to the pressure, or maybe there were other distractions (which I'll talk about later). UNLV's offense looked inept, and the defense failed to make any big plays to swing momentum.

Missed opportunities

Usually-reliable kicker Caden Chittenden missed a field goal in the first half that doinked off the crossbar. UNLV failed to convert a 1st and goal at the 5 yard line into points following a 90-yard run by Kylin James. A penalty backed them up, and they failed to convert the ensuing 4th down. The back-breaker, however, was the defense blowing gap containment and letting Ashton Jeanty run for an 80-yard touchdown just before halftime.

Those 3 mistakes accounted for a swing of 17 points, in a game that ended up being decided by 14. And those weren't the extent of UNLV's opportunities to swing the game. Defenders dropped at least 2 opportunities for easy interceptions, and quarterback Hajj-Malik Williams missed several receivers downfield.

My dad and I drove out to Boise's blue turf to watch the championship game.

Largely though, Boise's coaches did a great job in gameplanning. They seemed absolutely committed to preventing Hajj-Malik from running the ball with the option. They played edge containment and kept spies on both Hajj-Malik and any potential pitch backs, completely killing UNLV's option running game and forcing UNLV to have to call traditional handoffs and pocket passes. UNLV is certainly built to run the ball, but the offensive line looked lethargic and just couldn't open up holes for any of the running backs, with only a few exceptions. Greg Burrell scored the team's only touchdown in the second half.

There was a lot of drama for the UNLV Rebels football team last week. After a surprising and gutsy upset win over Kansas a couple weeks ago, in which transfer QB Matt Sluka accounted for almost all of the team's production on the game-winning drive, UNLV found itself in the Top-25 coaches' poll for the first time in team history. After decades of 2 or 4-win seasons, it seemed like the sky was finally the limit for the lowly UNLV Rebels. But then, after a bye week before going into conference play, that same QB, Matt Sluka, suddenly announced that he would be redshirting the rest of the season, with the intent of transferring in the offseason. The next day, reports surfaced that transfer running back Michael Allen was also redshirting with the intent to transfer. With just a few days before opening conference play against a fellow championship contender Fresno State, it suddenly looked like UNLV might be imploding.

It's still not entirely clear what happened between Matt Sluka and UNLV. There's a lot of "he said" / "they said", and neither party seems to have anything in writing that proves or corroborates their account of the situation. As best as I can tell from the myriad official statements, articles, and social media posts that I've read, it seems that the best explanation for what happened is that Matt Sluka (and his family and agent) got the impression from primary recruiter (and offensive coordinator) Brennan Marion that UNLV (or its boosters) would be paying Sluka over $100,000 in NIL ("Name, Image, and Likeness") payments. Whether Marion actuall promised that is not publicly known, and only the parties involved actually know what was said.

Matt Sluka is sitting out the rest of the season,
and transferring out of UNLV.

In any case, after a few weeks of winning games, Sluka apparently went to head coach Barry Odom to ask when that money would be paid. Odom apparently said that there would be no money, and Sluka said he wanted off the team.

UNLV and coach Odom insist that Sluka's demands violate the NCAA's rules regarding NIL payments (and state law), and that if Marion had made such a promise, then he did not have the authority to make such a promise.

As for Michael Allen, he insists that his transfer request has nothing to do with money, and that he simply isn't satisfied with his role on the team. Presumably, he expected to be the starting, workhorse running back, and is not happy in his role as a rotational back behind Jai'Den Thomas.

I was very nervous going into that Fresno State game. But at the same time, I was paradoxically relieved and excited. I hadn't been loving Matt Sluka's play, and I felt like UNLV's offense might be better off with a quarterback who can actually complete a pass downfield, which Sluka had struggled to do. Honestly, I was more concerned about Michael Allen leaving, because UNLV's Go-Go offense is contingent on having a deep bench of rotational running backs, and losing a productive running back seems like a more devastating loss than losing a mediocre running quarterback.

But I still couldn't help but wonder: had UNLV's coaches lied to Sluka and Allen in order to get them to transfer? Had they lied to or mislead other players and recruits? Was the entire team on the verge of mutiny? Would any future recruits be willing to sign with UNLV knowing that Odom and his staff might not be entirely honest when recruiting? Was UNLV's turn-around to success over before it had really begun?

Apparently not.

The latest college football rankings were released on Sunday, following week 3 of the regular season. For the first time in school history, UNLV's football team was ranked in the Top 15 of the coaches' poll. This is something that I never thought would actually happen -- let alone that I would see it. My idea of a dream UNLV football season would be something along the lines of a 7 or 8-win season, bowl-eligibility, and maybe qualifying for the Mountain West Conference Championship game.

Even in my wildest dream, I didn't think I would ever see the team be Top-25 ranked.

For my entire life, this team has been a basement-dweller. 2 or 4-win seasons were the norm, and the occasional 5-win season would create false hope that maybe the team was on the verge of turning things around. The 2 bowl games that I had seen prior to the 2023 season represented what I thought would be the absolute height of what this team could possibly accomplish.

UNLV is ranked 25th in the nation after week 3.

I've been anxiously awaiting the start of UNLV's 2024 football season. Last year's unprecedented success caught me off-guard, and I was afraid that it would be a fluke Cinderella story that would not repeat. Especially after standout QB Jaydan Maiava transferred to USC, I was afraid that UNLV would not be able to replicate last year's success.

Well, they certainly got 2024 off to a good start with a blow-out (almost shut-out) victory over Big 12 Houston Cougars. UNLV appeared dominant in all phases of the game. In fact, they were actually more dominant than the final score makes it appear, since they had multiple score-less trips the redzone after failing to convert a fourth down and having a field goal blocked. This could easily have been a 37-0 shut-out.

But at the same time, I'm not sure if the victory was as much a dominating performance by UNLV, or just an abysmal performance by Houston. Watching the game on Saturday afternoon, it looked to me like Houston's offense (and starting quarterback Donovan Smith, in particular) were just not prepared to play football Saturday night. Donovan Smith was off-target, took sacks, made a lot of bad decisions, and just generally looked like a deer caught in headlights. When backup QB Ui Ale came in late in the 4th quarter, he and Houston's offense carved through UNLV's defense like butter and scored a seemingly effortless touchdown. Maybe UNLV had all its backups in on defense at that point. It's hard to tell on broadcast cameras.

I really do not think that UNLV's defense is quite as good as it looked against Houston. I think it was mostly just a bad game by Houston's offense, and by Donovan Smith especially. If that backup QB had been playing earlier in the game, Houston surely would have scored more than 7 points. If he had started the game, who knows? Maybe Houston would have won.

That being said, the defense does look a lot better than it has been in the past. Defense has always been an Achilles' heel for UNLV's football team. They have a long-standing history of letting opposing offenses get away with mistakes, and of giving up big plays down the field in critical situations. Last year, the defense played better than usual, helping to take UNLV to the Mountain West Championship game and a bowl. In this case, however, Houston played poorly and made a lot of mistakes, and UNLV's defense punished Houston for almost every mistake they made. This defense did not let Houston get away bad play. That is an improvement, and it is worth celebrating!

Photo credit: UNLV Athletics.

UNLV's defense punished Houston's offense for every mistake it made, including this pick-6 on a screen pass.

I felt like College Football 25 would be a real make-or-break title for EA Sports. Madden has been getting criticized for its focus on Ultimate Team, lack of attention to Franchise Mode, and myriad legacy issues that EA just refuse to address. The market has been jonesing for a licensed college football game -- in fact, it's been jonesing for any alternative to Madden. This is EA's chance to really put out a quality product that can earn it a lot of good faith to help carry it through the coming years of renewed football video game competition. I honestly expected that College Football 25 would hit a home run with its Dynasty Mode and feature set in order to earn back that trust and good faith -- especially after it was delayed a whole year from its original expected release.

Instead, I keep feeling disappointed and frustrated with College Football 25 at almost every turn. It feels, to me, like a pale shadow of its NCAA Football forebears. It's a mess of missing features, confounding control and interface issues, bad A.I. (especially on defense), and rosters that are muddled and obfuscated by the legal tightrope of name-and-likeness rights. It checks off almost all of the "must have" feature boxes (like adding the playoff and transfer portal), but this game seems to aggressively refuse to go above and beyond in any capacity.

Strap in and get comfortable. This is going to be a long review...

No-huddle gameplan

The launch version of College Football 25 is really friggin' hard! I started 0 for 7 against the CPU (on the All-American difficulty, with default sliders). I had to play a Boise State home match against lowly cupcake New Mexico in order to get my first victory. Since then, I've been doing a lot better, but victories do not typically come easily.

I have my share of responsibility in this. I don't know the playbooks yet, and I threw some facepalm-inducing interceptions. Linebackers seem to play a lot deeper in College Football 25 compared to Madden, and my QBs weren't putting enough touch on passes over the middle of the field. So Post and Dig routes that would be wide open in Madden were repeatedly being picked by lurking linebackers.

Lurking linebackers make a lot of interceptions between the hashes.

Despite my own mistakes, the designers of the game seem to have gone out of their way to make sure that the barrier to entry would be as high as it could possibly be. The game doesn't seem to want to teach its new features, mechanics, or controls, and it insists on changing things just for the sake of change -- screw my decade (or longer) of muscle memory! Many problems that have long frustrated me in Madden reared their ugly heads to conspire against me as well. I often felt like I could call out exactly how an upcoming play would unfold before the snap, because I've seen all of this so many times in Madden.

Sacks and interceptions tended to come in pairs or triplets.

My star receivers refused to catch open downfield passes, while the CPU receivers all had hands of glue.

Force defenders refused to do their job, and my defense in general refused to contain the edge or take viable pursuit angles. Even if I expected an outside run and spread my line or linebackers, they'd still all crash inside and get smothered by down-blocks.

CPU receivers would repeatedly beat my DBs on in-breaking routes and break free for huge gains or scores, even though I explicitly set inside shade before the snap.

Outside shade was basically an invitation for the CPU to score on a post or quick slant, even if I had a single-high safety or robber to supposedly stop those specific routes.

My blockers would absolutely refuse to block the single most important assignment on the play whenever I needed a run play to be successful, even with elite running teams (such as Michigan).

My own big plays would consistently be called back by penalties.

The CPU teams would go into un-beatable "turbo mode" as soon as the 2-minute warning hit.

And so on, and so on. You've heard or read all of this before if you've looked at any review of Madden in the past decade or so.

CPU-controlled defenders take horrible containment and pursuit angles.

There was even a patch, released a couple days before this review was published, which was supposed to have improved pursuit angles. But in my limited play since the patch, it seems to have actually made pursuit even worse, somehow! Not only do players continue to take horrible containment angles, but any defender that happens to be in the open field on the perimeter, and in a position to stop an outside run, now has an infuriating habit of just bouncing off the ball-carrier. So perimeter tackles that were being made a week ago, are now being missed after the patch, giving up even more big runs and scores to the outside.

I cannot understate how much these poor pursuit and containment angles are ruining my enjoyment of this game! So many of my losses can be directly traced to my defense just completely shitting the bed and giving up big run after big run because they are completely unwilling to defend the perimeter. And there is little-to-nothing that I can do about this, because I can only control a single player on the defense at a time.