Nevada quarterback Chubba Purdy (13) is getting his money’s worth out of the transfer portal so far this off-season. Currently, he is back on the Wolf Pack roster.
Tom Smedes | AP
Sports Fodder:
Portal Pack season never fails to inject a little life into every Nevada Wolf Pack football season. It has become the best time of year for Wolf Pack football. While the team on the field has been busy losing 30-of-37 games the last three years, the transfer portal season has been a flurry of interesting activity.
That was the case this past week with the official opening of Portal Pack season. The Pack's top two quarterbacks (Brendon Lewis, Chubba Purdy) jumped headfirst into the portal as if, you know, somebody else would want the quarterback of a 3-10 team. Purdy took his name out of the portal and came back to the Pack when Lewis jumped in because, you know, he was a backup on a 3-10 team.
The quarterbacks weren't the only ones to jump off the rat-infested sinking Pack ship this week. Offensive linemen Isaiah World, Tyson Ruffins, Josiah Timoteo, and Luke Farr also are testing the treacherous transfer waters. Defensive lineman Ike Nnakenyi and safety K.K. Meier are also now Portal Pack casualties.
The biggest loss for the Pack of all just might be linebacker Drue Watts, a three-year starter.
Watts, who is just 5-foot-11, 218 pounds, had 65 tackles this past season with a sack and an interception in nine games before getting hurt. He had 182 tackles in three years at Nevada and played for three head coaches in his four seasons (redshirt in 2021) at Nevada (Jay Norvell, Ken Wilson, Jeff Choate).
Portal Pack season never disappoints. Players coming and going, coaches putting on their used car salesman hats and going crazy trying to convince teenagers and 20-somethings to come to their program or not to leave. It sure beats what we've had to watch over the last 37 games.
None of it, of course, makes for a winning football program. See the last three Pack seasons if you're still not sure about that. But at least we don't have to buy an overpriced ticket and sit in the stands and freeze as the clock approaches midnight to watch it all.
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The loss of Lewis, on the surface, looks like the Pack is headed toward yet another two or three-win rebuilding season that, in the end, doesn't build a thing except for a dozen or so players to find the courage to jump into the portal. Lewis, after all, had a solid season in 2024, leading the team in rushing (157 carries, 775 yards, eight touchdowns) while completing 211-of-312 passes for 2,290 yards, 16 touchdowns and seven interceptions.
Don't be shocked when Lewis reunites with former Wolf Pack offensive coordinator Matt Lubick, who recently left the Pack for Kansas. It was Lubick, who spent just one year at Nevada, who turned Lewis into a solid Mountain West quarterback this season.
Pack fans, though, shouldn't shed any tears over the loss of Lewis, the guy who ran the offense of back-to-back 2-10 and 3-10 seasons. Lewis proved good enough to keep the Pack in games at times, but he never showed he could win games.
But the Pack should be fine in 2025 with Purdy and backup A.J. Bianco. The Pack never really figured out what to do with Purdy this past season, lining him up at wide receiver, in the slot, in the backfield, as well as at quarterback for a few plays in a handful of games (seven). He ended up completing 18-of-25 passes for 239 yards and a touchdown, rushing for 60 yards on 13 carries and even catching two passes for 10 yards.
He basically was given about one game's worth of plays this year. Stretch his numbers over a normal 12-game season and you are looking at a quarterback who could complete 216-of-300 passes for 2,868 yards and a dozen touchdowns to go along with 720 rushing yards.
Those numbers, though, are probably on the conservative side they are based on coming off the bench at random times this season while not being the focus of the offense. The right offensive coordinator shouldn't have any problem turning Purdy into a 3,000-yard passer and 1,000-yard rusher with about 25 or so passing and running touchdowns combined.
I told you I get excited during Portal Pack season.
Purdy, if given the keys to the offense next fall, will likely prove to be a much more explosive and productive quarterback than Lewis. Lewis' game seemed to have just one speed. It was consistent, dependable and reliable to a point. But he never got to the point all that often of putting his teammates on his back and carrying them to victory.
Purdy, who looks and plays like former Pack quarterback Cody Fajardo, could be dynamic if he stays healthy and sheds the rust of never throwing more than 57 passes in any of his five college seasons.
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The Mountain West has announced its 2025 football conference schedule. The Pack will play UNLV, Boise State, San Diego State and San Jose State at home and Fresno State, New Mexico, Utah State and Wyoming on the road. So, yes, if you want to see the Pack actually win a game in 2025, you might have a better chance on the road.
The Wolf Pack will not play Air Force, Hawaii and Colorado State next season. Colorado State will go to the Pac-12 (along with Boise State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State) in 2026, so we might never see those five teams grace Mackay Stadium's plastic grass ever again.
It is ridiculous to try to predict a Wolf Pack football record for a season roughly eight months before it starts. It's tough enough to do it week-to-week during the season. The preseason will see the Pack go to Penn State (to help pay the coaching salaries) and Western Kentucky and host Sacramento State and Middle Tennessee State.
It shouldn't be asking much for Choate the Throat to somehow squeeze out six or seven wins with that forgiving schedule in his second season.
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The Mountain West also announced this week that it is adding UC Davis as its 10th full-time member. That giant yawn you just heard came from the seven leftover football schools the Pac-12 didn't want (Nevada, UNLV, San Jose State, Wyoming, New Mexico, Hawaii and Air Force).
The Mountain West has now replaced Boise State, Fresno State, Colorado State, San Diego State and Utah State with two schools (Grand Canyon, Davis) that won't even play football in the Mountain West, along with UTEP and adding Hawaii as a full-time member. Grand Canyon doesn't even have a football team and Davis' football team is staying in the Big Sky which, as we speak, is a better football conference than the Mountain West.
Why add schools that don't offer you a football program? Why would a financially strapped conference like the Mountain West want to subject all of its athletic programs with having to travel to Hawaii?
Which Mountain West football market starting in 2026 will excite the cable and streaming networks? The answer to that question is “none of them.”
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The good news for Wolf Pack football fans this week came out of Las Vegas and West Lafayette, Ind. UNLV head coach Barry Odom, the guy who sent the Rebels to the Mountain West title game the last two years (only to lose to Boise State twice), is leaving Las Vegas to become the Purdue Boilermakers' head coach.
That's all you need to know about the future of Mountain West football. It's a future that looks an awful lot like the past. A football head coach, even after just two years at a Mountain West school where he could have run for mayor and win, will jump at the chance to go get his brains beat out in the unforgiving Big Ten.
Does Odom really think he can compete for championships in the Big Ten at Purdue? That doesn't matter. He left UNLV, which has a chance to become the signature program in the Mountain West starting in 2026, the first chance he got. It was time to get the heck out of the wilting Mountain West before it turns into the WNBA without Caitlin Clark.
Don't blame Odom. If Jeff Choate won nine games this year at Nevada, just like Odom did in each of his two years at UNLV, he also would be just another eight or nine-win season away from going to get his brains beat out at, say, a Virginia, Wake Forest, Utah or Central Florida.
It's what coaches do. These are the guys who invented the transfer portal once television money flooded the sport starting in the 1980s, don't forget.
Can Mountain West football programs keep successful head coaches anymore? Well, they never could. But starting in 2026, with yawn-inducing UTEP, New Mexico, Wyoming and San Jose State games staring them in the face, it will be almost impossible.
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Bronco Mendenhall pulled a Jay Norvell recently when he left one Mountain West school (New Mexico) for another (Utah State).
Mendenhall, whose revived his head coaching career by going 5-7 this year with the Lobos, spent just one season in Albuquerque. He didn't even get a bowl invite. He never at any point had a winning record this year.
All he did was lose his first four games (the first to Montana State of the Big Sky Conference) and then beat struggling New Mexico State, Air Force, Utah State and San Diego State before finally getting a legitimate signature win (Washington State). He then topped it off with a 38-30 loss to a seven-loss Hawaii team.
He should have been looking for recruits at the end of the year instead of a new job. But coaches had their loyalty gene surgically removed decades ago when schools started putting six, seven and eight numbers after the dollar sign on their contracts.
Mendenhall, of course, is a legend in the state of Utah after coaching BYU from 2005-15. He's a quality coach despite his 36-38 record in six years (2016-21) at Virginia. New Mexico was lucky to have him. But Mendenhall was lucky to have the Lobos. We found out how lucky last week.
Mendenhall's move after just one 5-7 season is also another sneak peek into the future of Mountain West football. Utah State is a lame duck Mountain West school ready to join the Pac-12 in 2026. Yes, it will be a fake Pac-12 school, to be sure. But most everything in college football is fake now. And, most of all, Mendenhall will leave the wilting Mountain West soon.
Mendenhall might have made the move to Utah State even if the Aggies were never leaving the Mountain West because of his Utah ties. But does he do it after just one year, abandoning the only school that wanted him after Virginia fired him in 2021? Does Utah State steal him from New Mexico with four years left on his Lobos' contract if Utah State was planning on being a Mountain West partner with the Lobos?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Norvell left one Mountain West school for another at a time (2021) when it looked like a lateral move in every way except for his bank account. He looked greedy, disloyal and not trustworthy. But now he, too, is headed to the fake Pac-12 after just one more Mountain West year.
That's why loyalty in conferences like the Mountain West is a thing of the past.
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Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty, it seems, will lose the Heisman Trophy this Saturday to Colorado's Travis Hunter. Jeanty had a marvelous year and if he ends up pulling off a miracle and leading Boise State to the College Football Playoff championship, the Heisman voters will be embarrassed.
But, as things stand now, Hunter is the obvious choice. The 6-foot-1, 185-pound Hunter was a standout on both offense and defense this season for Deion Sanders' Buffaloes. He caught 92 passes for 1,152 yards and 14 touchdowns as a wide receiver and also had 32 tackles with four interceptions and 11 passes defensed.
Jeanty, who might end up being a better NFL player than Hunter, was also phenomenal with an NCAA-best 2,497 yards and 29 touchdowns on the ground. He also caught 20 passes for 116 yards and a score. The Broncos would not be in the College Football Playoff right now without Jeanty. They might not have won eight games. Jeanty carried a grueling 344 times this year when everybody in the stadium knew he was getting the ball and he still averaged 7.3 yards a carry.
But Hunter had a freak season. He played for Deion in the Big 12. There was no way the Heisman voters, most of whom never saw a Mountain West game in their lives, were going to vote for Jeanty over Hunter. Stick Jeanty in the Big 12 and stick his Big 12 team in the College Football Playoff and Jeanty wins the Heisman.