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Friday, Dec. 5, 2025 | 2 a.m.
Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.
Dan Mullen marvels at how far his team has come in his first year at the helm of UNLV football.
One of the best seasons in school history reaches its likely peak in the Mountain West Championship Game at 5 p.m. today at Boise State, broadcasted by Fox, locally on KVVU-TV, Channel 5.
Playing for the conference title was always the expectation after UNLV set that standard in the past two years under previous coach Barry Odom. Quarterback Anthony Colandrea shared earlier this week that Mullen first outlined the goal 300 days ago, which would have been on National Signing Day and shortly after the closing of the transfer-portal window to solidify his first Rebels roster.
But that doesn’t mean getting this far always felt imminent. Mullen rewound back a couple months shorter than Colandrea during his news conference this week to one of his first times taking the field at Rebel Park for spring practice.
His charges, he recalled, were so new and unfamiliar that he remembered just trying “to find out what guys can even do,” and it was easy to get discouraged.
“I looked at one practice, I joked with our guys, looked at our wideouts and quarterbacks, and said, ‘If we drop passes tomorrow, I’m putting in the wishbone,’” Mullen said.
If the veteran coach felt that way about one of the most talent-rich offenses not only in the Mountain West but in all of the Group of Five conferences, imagine the reactions UNLV’s defense must have stirred in him.
For most of the year, defense has looked like the Scarlet and Gray’s fatal flaw, the shortcoming that would push back their long-running pursuit of a title another year.
That was fair for the first two-thirds of the season with UNLV exclusively ranking outside of the nation’s top 100 by any reliable defensive efficiency metric.
It might not be as reasonable anymore.
While UNLV’s seasonlong standing by measures like yards per play allowed (115th at 6.1) and defensive success rate (110th at 44.2%) are still poor, they’ve made a big jump over the last month.
The Rebels have allowed only 4.8 yards per play and given up just 24 second-half points during a four-game winning streak that lifted them into a rematch with the Broncos.
If the improvement is real and not merely a product of variance and/or beneficial matchups, then UNLV is about to finally snap its near 50-year run of futility against Boise State.
The Rebels will be Mountain West champions if they can just stop the Broncos a few times.
That might sound easier said than done after a Week 8 matchup on the blue turf of Albertsons Stadium where Boise State racked up 558 yards in a 56-31 win over UNLV.
Colandrea, who was named the Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year this week, and his cohorts kept up for a while and trailed only 28-24 at halftime. But that didn't last after Boise State scored 28 consecutive points in the second half to run away from UNLV.
“They made some great plays, they had a good scheme,” Mullen said of the first game in Boise. “Those guys made things happen too, but there were a couple of explosive plays where we had guys lined up on the wrong side of the field, so all of a sudden, they toss a ball and there’s supposed to be a guy there to tackle him and he’s on the other side of the field. That’s bad ball. What we want to do, me as a football coach to put it into the simplest terms, is I want to see good ball.”
The good ball to bad ball ratio has flipped defensively since a 40-35 home loss to New Mexico in Week 9.
It’s not as if there’s no reason to believe UNLV’s defense should be markedly better late into the year
The Rebels began fall camp behind in learning defensive coordinator Paul Guenther’s scheme after Zach Arnett — Mullen’s original hire — resigned for personal reasons midway through spring practice.
That left UNLV in the rare position of waiting until the summer to finish putting as much as the bones of the defense in place. Guenther, a longtime NFL assistant, is also known for a complex defensive philosophy.
Mullen wouldn’t go as far as to suggest the defense’s complexity required a steeper learning curve, but he did say the whole episode left the unit at a disadvantage to teams with any continuity. Boise State coach Spencer Danielson, for example, has been on the Broncos’ staff for nine seasons, working as a defensive assistant long before ascending to the head role late in the 2023 season.
Linebacker Marsel McDuffie, UNLV's defensive leader and a second-team All-Mountain West selection, said communication and comfort across all three levels of the defense have improved over the past month. The results in that span are no coincidence in his mind.
“Just us communicating, that’s the biggest part,” McDuffie said. “That’s really what we’ve been focusing on, and I’d say it’s been paying off for us.”
Expect to see the senior barking instructions all over the field tonight. This game means too much to him to exit it with any regrets.
McDuffie called this year’s conference championship showdown the biggest game he’s ever played in, one he appreciates more after living through some of UNLV’s lows as a program. The Rebels went 2-10 when he came in as a freshman under former coach Marcus Arroyo.
Falling to Boise State in each of the last two years in the conference title game also adds extra meaning.
“Personally, ever since we lost last year it’s been a goal for me,” McDuffie said. “It’s really a big part of the reason why I came back for this fifth year … to get back to this game with a chance to win, and it just happens we’re playing a team we haven’t beaten yet.”
The Rebels have an outside chance at pushing their season into more of a dream if they beat the Broncos. They’ve got an admittedly narrow path into College Football Playoff consideration.
If Troy knocks off James Madison in the Sun Belt Conference Championship Game and Duke upsets Virginia in the ACC final, UNLV could potentially slide as the recipient of the final of five automatic conference-champion bids to the playoffs.
UNLV going 11-2 on the year might be more attractive to the CFP selection committee than Duke’s 8-5 mark in the scenario.
“I would hope that there would be somebody in room that is like, ‘Hey, real quick, there’s an 11-win team that has a Power Five win,’” Mullen said. “We’ll see. We have no need to worry about it (until after the game).”
The mere notion would have sounded like fantasy at the beginning of the season when UNLV was allowing teams like Football Championship Subdivision opponent Idaho State and MAC foe Miami (Ohio) to march up and down the field against it.
For the defense to go from those performances to limiting high-powered offenses like Utah State and Hawaii in recent weeks changed UNLV’s fortunes this year, legitimate shot at making the playoffs or not.
Whether the Rebels can maintain that success against the Broncos will determine if they hit historic program heights.
“Everyone’s got to be locked in and, first and foremost, keyed on the ball,” McDuffie said.
“I’m going to give it all I can give, and I know my guys are going to do the same.”
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