Santoro: Pack goes with only real choice, making Lewis QB

Sports Fodder:

Brendon Lewis makes perfect sense for the Nevada Wolf Pack football team right now. It wasn’t much of surprise this week when Wolf Pack coach Ken Wilson named Lewis as the starting quarterback for Saturday’s game at USC. Lewis, after all, has played in 15 games in the Pac-12 for the Colorado Buffaloes and won’t likely get stage fright at the Los Angeles Coliseum against the Trojans. The 6-foot-2 Lewis was 170-of-291 at Colorado for 1,727 yards, 10 touchdowns and three interceptions. He started 14 games (12 in 2021) before losing the starting job early last year and jumping into the transfer portal during the season. Lewis was simply the safe, logical choice to open the year as the starter. Wilson said this week that Lewis won the job because of his maturity as a leader, his experience and his ability to run away from pressure, three things that will likely come into play right away on Saturday at USC.

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Lewis, make no mistake, isn’t Colin Kaepernick. He ran for just 304 yards and three touchdowns on 119 carries (2.6 a carry) at Colorado. But he’s not a living statue like Carson Strong (or, as we saw last year, Shane Illingworth) and can turn some 10-yard sacks into 4-yard gains. Running away from pressure or simply buying time to throw is a necessity behind a Pack offensive line that seems to be in a never-ending rebuilding phase. Lewis, as Wilson said, “Gives us the best chance to win games right now.” Whether Lewis flashes some Kaepernick or Cody Fajardo explosiveness or is simply another Tyler Stewart (437 yards rushing and six touchdowns on 158 carries at Nevada from 2013-16) remains to be seen. But the Pack right now simply needs a leader at quarterback and Lewis fits the bill.

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Illingworth, who played in six games last season, and redshirt freshman A.J. Bianco will be behind Lewis. The biggest surprise was that Wilson named Bianco, who stands 6-4, 215 pounds, to be the No. 2 quarterback even though he has yet to throw a pass in college. Illingworth, who threw for 761 yards and two scores last year, played two seasons at Oklahoma State, passing for 939 yards and seven touchdowns over seven games. He started the only two games the Pack won last year. He couldn’t beat out a freshman for the No. 2 role at the start of his fourth season? Wilson, though, spoke very highly of Bianco this week and seems to have some long-range goals in mind for the Honolulu native. Bianco, after all, was one of Wilson’s first recruits (he stole him from Bianco’s hometown Hawaii Rainbow Warriors) after he took the job at Nevada. “He has the swagger of a senior,” Wilson said.

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The last thing Wilson needs to do is have a merry-go-round, revolving door at quarterback like he did last year. Nate Cox and Illingworth played musical chairs with the position a year ago. The Pack offense as a result was a mess, the worst for a Pack team in two decades. Wilson thoroughly botched the quarterback position last year and, well, that’s how you go 2-10 overall and 0-8 in the Mountain West. Hopefully he’s learned that a team needs to have an unquestioned No. 1 quarterback who is not calling a play in the huddle and looking over his shoulder at the same time. So, how long will Wilson stick with Lewis this year? Well, he should stick with Lewis as long as Lewis is healthy. Illingworth, if he truly wants to play, is likely checking out the transfer portal as we speak, and Bianco is still learning. Lewis, right now, is really Wilson’s only choice. We’ll see if he makes another choice in a few weeks.

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The other choice Wilson announced this week was that former Oregon running back Sean Dollars will start against USC. That, too, is not a surprise since Dollars played 23 games at Oregon, rushing for 316 yards and a touchdown. He, too, won’t be intimidated by the Trojans. Dollars even ran for 52 yards on seven carries against USC in the Pac-12 championship game at the Coliseum on Dec. 18, 2020. Dollars, who battled injuries at Oregon, averaged 6.4 yards a carry for the Ducks. He might be the most talented running back the Pack has had since Vai Taua, who is now his coach at Nevada. And, no, I didn’t forget Toa Taua. One of Dollars’ worst games for the Ducks, oddly enough, was a 12-yard, four-carry effort against the Wolf Pack on Sept. 7, 2019. Dollars, if given the opportunity, might turn out to be the Pack’s biggest and most important weapon on offense this year. He won’t win games all by himself (it’s not 1980, after all, and he’s not Frank Hawkins) but he can make life a whole lot easier for the quarterback.

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Does the Wolf Pack, a 38-point underdog, have a chance against USC? Stop it. That’s not the point. USC looked bored, disinterested and sleepy last Saturday against the San Jose State Spartans and still won 56-28. USC has more talent on offense than most NFL teams and has NIL resources to rival some NFL teams. USC could beat the Pack simply with freshman Zachariah Branch (from Las Vegas) returning punts for touchdowns. He looked like Deion Sanders, Barry Sanders, Reggie Bush and Gale Sayers rolled into one dynamic, unstoppable force last week against San Jose State. The good news for the Pack is that USC’s defense doesn’t really care if it forces all that many punts. Yes, the Trojans have dynamic athletes on defense but many of them don’t seem to have any interest in making tackles. San Jose State had 396 yards on offense and controlled the ball for 30:42. The Trojans couldn’t even cover Nick Nash, a former quarterback. The Pack should be able to score two or three times simply with Lewis running around for his life and Dollars doing all the heavy lifting.

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Wilson has set the bar low for Saturday. “We want to come out of there knowing we’re on the right track,” Wilson said. Yes, of course, he will never admit his Wolf Pack isn’t on the right track. He, after all, insisted his program was on the right track after last season when it won just two games and lost its last 10. The Pack can lose by 60 points on Saturday (heck, they can lose by 75 if USC really wants to make a statement) and Wilson still won’t tell you his team is on the wrong track. But don’t let Wilson tell you which track the Pack is on after the game. When you watch the game on Saturday just keep in mind what San Jose State accomplished a week ago against the Trojans. That is what a Mountain West team looks like when it is on the right track after playing USC. San Jose State scored four touchdowns, it never quit, and it played like it fully intended to win the game. The Spartans stood toe-to-toe with all of those million-dollar Trojan athletes and were still standing at the final bell. Yes, they took a ton of body blows and were knocked down five or six times, but they always got up and weren’t afraid to fight back. Put the Pack on that track and this season could end up at a bowl game.

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Wilson, though, can’t even get his coaching staff in order right now. Camp Chaos is still making coaching changes and we’re less than a week from the season opener. The Pack has changed its special teams coordinator, tight end coach and quarterback coach in just the last month. It’s not a good look. It, in fact, is a horrible look. That’s not a team on the right track. That’s a team with the wheels falling off. It reeks of internal problems, instability and an organization without a real plan. Is Wilson hiring coaches that truly want to be at Nevada? Wilson has built a coaching staff of mainly guys he once coached with or former Pack players (some fit both categories). He did it again just this week when he named ex-Pack tight end Virgil Green as tight ends coach and hired ex-Pack quarterback Carson Strong for, apparently, no real reason other than he is a former Pack quarterback. His roster would be full of Pac-12 rejects if he had his way. Wilson is not building a program from the ground up, like he tells boosters and the media. He is simply going to his contacts list on his phone and sending texts with smiley face emojis.