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.

UNLV's decision to fire Marcus Arroyo and replace him with Barry Odom as the football head coach has certainly proven to be a good decision. I was afraid that the unexpected firing would result in UNLV having to reset its year-to-year improvements under Arroyo and start over as a bottom-dweller in the conference. That hasn't been the case. UNLV has continued its upwards climb and has exceeded all possible expectations in 2023, culminating with a 25-23 comeback win against Colorado State yesterday. That win gave UNLV its 6th win of the season, which makes them bowl-eligible -- and it's only halfway through the season!

I fully expect UNLV's kicker Jose Pizano to receive Mountain West special teams Player of the Week honors this week. The senior transfer set a school record by hitting on all 6 field goal attempts, including the game-winner. He has been fantastic all year. I thought it would be hard to fill the shoes of Daniel Gutierrez, who graduated last year, but Pizano has done the job admirably.

UNLV has impressed me with its hard play for the past 2 or 3 years under Arroyo, but the team is playing with a greater intensity under Odom. What has truly impressed me is that the defense is actually halfway decent. For many years, UNLV has been hiring offensive-minded head coaches, with the goal of having exciting, high-scoring offenses. The problem has been that even when UNLV has had offenses that score 30 or more points per game, they've had defenses that give up 40 or 50.

Photo credit: Madeline Carter (Las Vegas Review Journal).

Jose Pizano deserve Mountain West Player of the Week honors
after setting a school record and hitting a game-winning field goal.

The biggest weakness has been UNLV's deep pass coverage. Teams routinely torch UNLV for deep passes and scores. That, unfortunately is still mostly true. If UNLV is going to get beat, it's with the deep ball. Honestly, I don't know why opposing teams even bother running any plays other than deep passes. I feel a team could run 4 or 5 verts every play, and would hit enough of them that it wouldn't matter how many end up incomplete. But overall, the defense being competent has actually been the biggest surprise of the year, to me. But UNLV's run defense has been more than adequate, and they've managed to get pressure with 4-man rushes that have helped defenses contain opponents' short and intermediate pass games.