Ken Wilson (Photo: Nevada Athletics)
Nevada Wolf Pack head football coach Ken Wilson should be proud of what he’s done in his first two months on the job. In roughly 60 days Wilson has hired a young, promising and experienced coaching and administrative staff and added roughly three dozen scholarship and walk-on players to a roster that was gutted by the previous coach’s decision to abandon the school after the 2021 season.
Recruiting web sites such as rivals.com and 247sports.com are convinced Nevada’s class is the second worst in the Mountain West. But ignore all that. Recruiting rankings are about as accurate as trying to predict on a wedding day how long a marriage will last.
The rankings, for example, don’t consider the dozen or so players Wilson has grabbed off the transfer portal from other four-year schools. Wilson is bringing in, among others, four players from Oregon, one from Michigan, one from Arizona and one from Oklahoma State. That’s seven players right there that would make the recruiting web sites excited.
The best thing that Wilson did the past two months, though, is proving he was serious about his commitment to Northern Nevada. Wilson and his new staff went out and found hungry, motivated and overlooked local athletes and made them feel wanted, desired and welcome by their hometown university. A dozen or so Northern Nevada high school players have been invited to be part of this Wolf Pack rebuild.
Wilson certainly knows the value that local walk-ons can have at a mid-major university. Wilson, after all, was the Pack’s linebacker coach that helped develop walk-on linebacker Steve Bryant (Reed High) into a standout college player at Nevada in the early 1990s. If you don’t think walk-on players can help a college football program, well, make sure to tune in to the Super Bowl next Sunday. There will be a former Wolf Pack walk-on player from Northern Nevada (Reed High’s Austin Corbett) starting on the offensive line for the Los Angeles Rams.
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One of the walk-ons Wilson has invited has a familiar name to Wolf Pack fans. Nick Vargas, who graduated from Damonte Ranch High and spent a year at Sierra College in Rocklin, Calif., will be among the Pack walk-ons this spring and summer. Vargas, a wide receiver, is the son of former Wolf Pack quarterback Chris Vargas. Chris Vargas, one of the greatest quarterbacks in school history, by the way, came to the Wolf Pack in 1989 as a walk-on.
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Corbett will join a long list of former Wolf Pack players to play in a Super Bowl next Sunday when the Rams take on the Cincinnati Bengals. Corbett’s presence in the game is even more special for Northern Nevada because he played at Reed High.
McQueen High graduate Kyle Van Noy, don’t forget, played in three Super Bowls with the New England Patriots in recent years.
Almost always forgotten among the list of former Northern Nevadans to participate in a Super Bowl, though, is Lynn Stiles. Stiles was a standout football player at Reno High in the late 1950s, playing for coach Dick Trachok, when nobody had even heard of a Super Bowl. Stiles, who went on to play on the offensive line at the University of Utah with future San Francisco 49ers head coach George Seifert, was an NFL assistant coach for four Super Bowl teams, two with the San Francisco 49ers (1988 and 1989) and one with the St. Louis Rams (1999) and Philadelphia Eagles (1980). Stiles has three Super Bowl rings (two with the 49ers and one with the Rams) while his Eagles lost to the Oakland Raiders.
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The state of Georgia is on the verge of becoming the home of sports champions. The Peach State, in case you haven’t noticed, has had a very successful sports year so far.
The Atlanta Braves won the 2021 World Series and the Georgia Bulldogs won the college football national title last month. Georgia might also add a Super Bowl title of sorts next Sunday.
The Rams starting quarterback is Matt Stafford, who played for the Bulldogs from 2006-08 before becoming the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2009 by the Detroit Lions. The Rams also have former Bulldogs Sony Michel (running back) and Leonard Floyd (linebacker).
Hey, when your home team is the Atlanta Falcons, you have to look elsewhere for Super Bowl titles.
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We are about to have a Matt Stafford-Joe Burrow Super Bowl matchup at quarterback. Excited? Probably not. This game, fans of the San Francisco 49ers and Cincinnati Bengals in 1981 will no doubt recall, has sort of a Ken Anderson vs. Joe Montana feel to it. It’s the veteran quarterback (Anderson) in his first Super Bowl against the upstart youngster (Montana).
Missing from this Super Bowl, though, will be star quarterbacks such as Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, Tom Brady, Justin Herbert, Josh Allen, Dak Prescott and Kyler Murray. Any one of those were likely more favored to take their team to the Super Bowl than either Burrow or Stafford.
How often have we been treated to established star quarterbacks in the Super Bowl lately? Well, no less than 17 of the last 18 Super Bowls have featured either Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Patrick Mahomes or Ben Roethlisberger. The only Super Bowl among the last 18 (starting with the 2003 season) was Joe Flacco of the Baltimore Ravens vs. Colin Kaepernick of the 49ers after the 2012 season, a couple of guys who played college football at Delaware and Nevada. And that (Ravens 34, 49ers 31) turned out to be one of the more exciting Super Bowls ever. So it’s OK to be excited about next week.
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This Super Bowl, though, seems to be handed to the Los Angeles Rams on a silver platter. They get to play the game on their own home turf (SoFi Stadium) and against the Bengals, a team that lost seven games and one nobody outside the state of Ohio (maybe outside Cincinnati) picked to go to the Super Bowl.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers became the first NFL team to play (and win) a Super Bowl at its home stadium last year when they dominated the Kansas City Chiefs, 31-9. We could see more of the same next week with the Rams whipping the Bengals. But the Rams have lost a Super Bowl before when they had a home-state advantage. The Rams, after all, lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers after the 1979 season at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, just a short drive down the freeway from their home at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
The only other team to play a Super Bowl near their home was the 49ers, who whipped the Miami Dolphins, 38-16, after the 1984 season at Stanford Stadium, just down the road from Candlestick Park. That Super Bowl featured a veteran quarterback (Montana) outplaying a brash young star named Dan Marino in his second year (see Joe Burrow).
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Early Super Bowl prediction: Rams 34, Bengals 24. Joe Burrow, who won a national title just two years ago at LSU, likely won’t be afraid of the stage. But he might be afraid of the Rams’ defense, a unit that should be able to devour a porous Bengals offensive line.
The Rams should win this game easily. It’s a home game against a seven-loss team, for goodness sake. The Rams were built for this. The Bengals are in the Super Bowl likely two years before they thought they would get there.
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