Bentlee Sanders (20) of Nevada reaches out to stop Texas State’s Rontavius Groves on Sept. 3, 2022 at Mackay Stadium.
Photo by Steve Ranson.
It hasn’t taken Ken Wilson long to put his stamp on the Nevada Wolf Pack football program. The Wolf Pack’s identity right now is defense. Imagine that. The last time that was the case was, well, long before the invention of television. The Pack, of course, has had very good defenses since then. But hardly anybody noticed because, for the most part, the head coach would obsess about his offense. Well, we’re noticing now. The Wolf Pack defense now takes over games. The Wolf Pack defense now wins games.
The defense, without question, is the biggest reason why the Wolf Pack is 2-0 right now. Wilson, a career defensive coach, has clearly put complete trust and confidence in his defense. You can see that trust and confidence when the Pack offense has the ball. The offense, at times, seemingly doesn’t even try for a first down. It has no urgency. It seems to feel absolutely no pressure to do anything but not lose the game. The reason for this laissez-faire approach to offense is the defense. The defense does all the dirty work for the offense.
Just 16 of the Wolf Pack’s 61 points this season have not come after a turnover forced by the defense. Six of the Pack’s seven touchdowns have come after a turnover forced by the defense. In recent years, the Pack defense’s main responsibility was simply to make sure Carson Strong, Ty Gangi, Cody Fajardo and, yes, even Colin Kaepernick, had enough time for a breather and a drink of water on the sidelines. This year’s defense has the added burden of making things easier for the offense. The defense is no longer a second-class citizen up on north Virginia Street.
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The 26 points allowed by the Pack is the fewest it has allowed after two games since the program moved to Division I-A in 1992. That, of course, is the product of playing New Mexico State and Texas State to open a season instead of, for example, UCLA, Oregon, Notre Dame, Nebraska, BYU and Texas Tech.
But it’s been an impressive and noteworthy first 120 minutes of football for the defense just the same. The defense, led by defensive tackle Dom Peterson and an athletic, confident, aggressive and fearless secondary left over, for the most part, from the Jay Norvell era, has put this program on its back so far. The Pack is allowing just 13 points, 43 rushing yards and 296 total yards a game. That is how you take the pressure off a young, inexperienced, unsure-of-itself offense. Give Wilson credit for realizing that right from the start. An offensive-minded head coach with a playbook the size of the internet might have had a slightly different approach to the first two games. And the Pack would likely be 0-2 right now because of it.
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Expect the Wolf Pack turnover party to continue this week against Incarnate Word, a Division I-AA (Football Championship Subdivision) school with a wide-open, aggressive, confident and bold offense. The Cardinals are led by athletic quarterback Lindsey Scott, who is using this entire season as one big NFL tryout and won’t likely play it safe this weekend against a Division I-A (Football Bowl Subdivision) school. The 24-year-old Scott has been in college since 2016 and has been a part of five programs, including LSU and Missouri. There’s nothing conservative and play-it-safe about him. He’ll give the Pack defense plenty of chances to make plays.
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Peterson, now in his sixth college season, is one of the best college football players on the West Coast. Peterson has always played with a chip on his shoulder, a scowl on his face and a balled-up fist for each hand, and he has planted that type of attitude in the entire defense. Peterson has always treated the line of scrimmage as sort of a line in the sand that the offense has dared him to cross. And all he has ever done is obliterate that line and the ball carriers behind it. And this year he is playing at a level not seen from many Pack defensive tackles in recent history.
He has just five tackles in two games but keep in mind he has to get through two and three blockers on every play. Three of those tackles, though, have been sacks. He has forced one fumble and recovered two. At just under 6-feet tall and close to 300 pounds, Peterson has had to prove himself on every play of every game he has ever played in.
A lot of that imaginary disrespect exists only in Peterson’s head because nobody who has ever seen him play, at either Nevada or Narbonne High in Los Angeles, has ever doubted his ability. Syracuse, a Power Five school on the other side of the country, after all, offered him a scholarship before Nevada. Peterson’s role model, Aaron Donald of the Los Angeles Rams, has also played up the nobody-believed-in-me card throughout his career because he, too, is about 6 feet and 300 pounds. But Donald went to Pitt and was a first-round pick of the Rams. That’s a lot of respect. But ultra-competitors like Peterson and Donald will always find motivation to be great.
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Bentlee Sanders also has earned a great deal of the credit for the Pack’s 2-0 start. The defensive back, who came to Nevada for the 2021 season from South Florida, already has three interceptions this season. He is on pace to shatter the Wolf Pack season record of nine, shared by Greg Grouwinkel (1974) and Tony Shaw (1983).
Sanders’ three interceptions this year are more than he had in his career (two) heading into the season after 31 games at South Florida and 13 at Nevada (both of the Tampa, Fla., native’s career interceptions came at South Florida, in 2019 and 2020). Like Peterson, this is his final year of college football. There’s nothing that motivates a player more than knowing that each game could be the last he ever plays.
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How much of what we’ve seen from this Pack defense so far is real and sustainable and how much is a mirage? It’s likely it is more reality than mirage. The Pack just isn’t going to see all that many great offenses this year. That’s why Wilson’s conservative, vanilla and risk-aversion offense might be the perfect plan of attack this year.
The Pack will play a FCS school this week and then go to Iowa to play the three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust Hawkeyes. Iowa scored just seven points in its season opener, a 7-3 win over FCS school South Dakota State, on a field goal and two safeties. The only thing missing was the leather helmets, high-top cleats and the flying wedges on kickoff returns.
The Pack’s biggest challenges on defense this year will likely come in the Mountain West season. But Hawaii and San Jose State are already struggling on offense and Boise State has a quarterback controversy on its hands as you read this. San Diego State is always offensively challenged and Colorado State is in the embryo stage of its Air Raid. UNLV is, well, UNLV and Air Force is just a test of manhood. Dom Peterson will take that game personally. The biggest challenge for the Pack defense will likely come from Fresno State and quarterback Jake Haener, but that is still nine games into the future. Believe in what you are seeing, Pack fans.
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The start of the Ken Wilson era has been all that the Pack has hoped for on the field. Off the field, though, was a different story last Saturday.
Just 13,260 fans showed up at Mackay Stadium to see the 38-14 win over Texas State. It is the smallest crowd to see the debut of a new Pack head coach since Chris Ault’s Pack played before 5,400 at Mackay Stadium to see a 30-13 win over Cal State Hayward. The stadium’s capacity was just 7,500 in 1976, so the crowd this past Saturday might be the most disappointing to see the home debut of a new Pack head coach in school history. But don’t blame the Pack fans.
The game was available on local television. The temperature was 100 degrees, turning Mackay into the world’s largest frying pan. The opponent was Texas State. The Pack was coming off a game (a 23-12 win at New Mexico State) in which it put all of Northern Nevada and all of America to sleep on ESPN2. It’s a wonder more than 5,400 showed up.
