Quote from Ezekiel Loseke on December 19, 2023, 3:52 pm

Obligations to my family and job prevented me from watching the bowl game until today. I'm hopeful after watching the bowl game because if Mad-Dog comes back, then I think that running game will lead to a potent offense with a seasoned and competent passer. However, starting a quarterback who--despite performing well considering the circumstances--had never played in a game got me thinking about the days of old and how Boise State had avoided this situation in the past. The key was the almost universal blow-out victories against conference opponents.

Before the decline, Boise State beat almost all its conference opponents by three scores. Occasionally, Fresno or Nevada would make for a game-long competition, but these were the exceptions to the established rule. Regularly, Boise would have a three-score lead going into the half. Religiously, Coach Pete would pull the starters and have his backups finish all or most of the second half. With this system, if Boise State played eight conference games, the backups would play for a total of four games, and the experience and game-tape allowed Boise State to develop good backups and solid starters. This experience produced a solid safety net of depth at the University. When injury or drug abuse created the need to start a backup, the backup player had plenty of game experience, and the coaches had plenty of tape on their new starter. The development of players, in this way, was the result of dominant teams.

The hidden cost of losing to New Mexico on the Blue, losing to CSU, and playing lower conference teams tight (even if we win) seems to be that the backups never see the field. This leads to a backup quarterback who has never taken a live snap starting in a bowl game. While this development method cannot be relied upon to replace recruiting, I wonder if it didn't supplement it significantly so that when BSU lost an NFL-caliber player, there was always a suitable, if not good or great, backup to step in line. I wonder if this wasn't a hidden key to Pete's success and a hidden reason for the gradual but steady decline in the quality of football players at BSU despite the rising rank of our recruiting classes.

Now, I do not know coaching intimately. My total coaching experience amounts to a year of coaching the offensive line at the Pee-Wee level. I am a teacher by profession and could be explaining a tried and true method of college football, or I could be mistaken in my observations. If I am, please enlighten me, but I wonder if I haven't observed something real here. I'm curious how much BSU's success in developing players arose from Koetter, Hawk, and Pete's refusal to run up the score to develop their backups and young players, and if the failure to blow teams out by Harsin and Avalos led to under-developed depth.