Bronco Nation News is counting down the 25 most important players to the Boise State football team in 2025. Next up in our series is a kicker-punter transfer combo, No. 23 Colton Boomer and No. 22 Oscar Doyle.
Boise State’s problem on special teams were the lowlight of the 2024 season. Kick return and punt return touchdowns plus a missed field goal against Oregon ended the Broncos’ chance at an upset bid, and two missed field goals against Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl prevented Boise State from staying in a run-first game script.
At kicker, Jona Dalmas leaves the program after five years as the starter and Mountain West (and Boise State) record holder in field goals, points and field goal percentage. Arguably the best kicker in program history, the Broncos turn to a new direction. Enter: Colton Boomer.
Boomer comes to the Broncos from UCF, he was a three-year starter for the Knights and joins Boise State with plenty of experience. As a freshman, Boomer was nearly perfect, going 14/15 on field goals and 42/43 on extra points. Things went downhill in his sophomore season, going 13/21 on field goals and 48/50 on extra points, and things bottomed out in his junior year. Last year, Boomer started the year 3/6 on field goals, including missing three straight against TCU and Colorado, before electing to enter the transfer portal and use his redshirt season.
The shoes of Jonah Dalmas will be large to fill, but the best version of Boomer is capable of doing it. Bronco Nation saw Boomer hit one of the clutches kicks in Albertsons Stadium history when he hit through a 40-yard field goal to give UCF an 18-16 win over the Broncos in 2023. It was one of his four field goals that day. However, Boomer has struggled to find that form since that game. Some of it may have to do with the situation in Orlando the past two years. Boomer was one of many Knights players that entered the portal midyear last season, which finished with head coach Gus Malzahn resigning to take the offensive coordinator position at Florida State.
Boomer also has pivotal experience as a kickoff specialist. The Broncos struggled to get touchbacks out of their kickoff teams, and Boomer showed consistency in doing just that at UCF. Last season, 20 of Boomer’s 23 kickoffs ended in a touchback. The coaching staff has made it clear they need to find somebody who can put the ball into the end zone on kickoff and there’s confidence that Boomer can do that for the Broncos this season.
Could Boomer’s struggles have been a product of a soured locker room? Or was the 2022 season the abnormality for Boomer? The best performance of his career was that game on the Blue in 2023, maybe he finds his form again on the Blue this season.
As for the punting situation, fan favorite James Ferguson-Reynolds has been the Broncos starting punter the past three season, with a career year in 2023 where he was the nation’s leading punter in terms of YPA at 49.5. JFR opted to punt for Oregon for his senior year after some schematic differences with the coaching staff. Now, the Broncos will turn to a new direction.
There are multiple punters on the roster who will be competing for the job, but Boise State added Weber State transfer Oscar Doyle in the transfer portal, and he is the presumptive favorite for the job. Doyle spent one year at Weber State, where he won the starting job and was one of the FCS’s best punters, finishing as one of 10 semifinalists for FCS Punter of the Year.
Doyle offers a statistical improvement to the Broncos’ punting game this season. Doyle outpaced Ferguson-Reynolds in terms of yards per attempt (44.2 vs 43.5), but excelled in the precision game. Doyle’s NET of 42.0 yards was top-5 in the FCS last season, in large part because only two of his punts were touchbacks. This improves on Ferguson-Reynolds NET of 38.3 and 3 touchbacks last season. Doyle consistently put his coverage team in positions to succeed with accurate punts with ample hangtime, his 3.79 seconds of average hangtime outpaces Ferguson-Reynolds’ 3.33 average (although part of JFR’s being lower is due to his unorthodox low-ball kicking style he would utilize from time to time).
Possible most important to Bronco Nation? Doyle keeps the Australian punter pipeline alive. Doyle is a native of Brisbane, Australia and grew up playing Aussie rules football. He even played for the Brisbane Lions academy team, whose senior teams are reigning AFL champions and currently first place in this season’s standings. If you see Doyle, be sure to congratulate him.
Kicking and punting will look different for the first time in a long time for the Broncos. Bronco Nation should feel some level of confidence knowing the likely starters are proven commodity, but there is still uncertainty to what level Boomer and Doyle can bring this season. Can Boomer get back to his 2022 form this year? Can Doyle maintain his efficiency moving up from the Big Sky to the Mountain West? If not for special teams errors, the Broncos would have finished the regular season 13-0 last year, and possibly been a 1-seed or 2-seed in the playoff. The impact Doyle and Boomer have this year makes them two of the most important Broncos players this Fall.
Boise State’s 25 Most Important Players in 2025
Nathan Carroll is a part-time contributor for Bronco Nation News and host of the TBA Basketball Podcast. Nathan works for Pro Football Focus as part of their data collection team, specializing in charting player data at the FBS level. Previously, he graduated from Boise State’s Honors College with a degree in Quantitative Economics and worked 5 years in Boise State’s athletic department. Follow him on X at Nathan_26_
