The great, the good and the ugly from Boise State’s 42-21 win over San Jose State

The Boise State football team struggled early, fell behind by 14 points – and nearly was down bigger – before mounting a comeback to win 42-21 at San Jose State on Saturday night.

Was it a dominant, impressive win from start to finish? Of course not. But there are no bad wins when you’re trying to make the playoffs, especially one by 21 points over a good conference opponent.

Let’s sort through some of the narratives and discuss what went well on Saturday and where the Broncos fell short.

The Great: Boise State’s offense

Want to know how Boise State keeps pulling off wins like Saturday? Look at this offense. Boise State opened the game with a three and out and then finished the game with 458 yards on seven drives. To put that in context, after their first drive, the Broncos gained 92.6% of possible yards the rest of the game. That sort of efficiency isn’t normal, even for the best offenses in the nation. Saturday’s performance helped elevate Boise State’s offense to 9^th in SP+ (An advanced metric that adjusts for tempo and opponent); it is the highest Boise State has ranked in Offensive SP+ since Kellen Moore was on campus.

Individually, Ashton Jeanty did typical Ashton Jeanty things, finishing with 164 total yards and 3 touchdowns. Maddux Madsen bounced back after a poor performance against Nevada and went 22 for 30 for 286 yards and 2 touchdowns (one by air, one by land). Cameron Camper and Latrell Caples each had 6 catches for 167 combined yards. The offensive line had some issues early, but wore down the San Jose State front seven, ultimately closing out the game with a 12 play, 89-yard touchdown drive that included 8 runs. Despite being down two starting offensive linemen and multiple backups in the interior (including Tyler Keinath who went down during Saturday’s game and did not return), the Broncos continue to move the ball and put up points. Good news is on the horizon as well, with reports that starting right guard Roger Carreon practiced this week and may be back for an offensive line unit that desperately needs it.

Diving deeper into the numbers, Boise State finished with an EPA/Play of 0.33 (93^rd percentile) and a success rate of 55% (96^th percentile). The passing game was efficient, with a 0.65 EPA/Dropback (96^th Percentile) and the team consistently converted on 3^rd downs, going 8/13. San Jose State’s defense isn’t a great unit, but Boise State did what great teams are supposed to do against subpar defenses, they moved the ball with ruthless efficiency.

The Good: Boise State’s run defense

We’ll talk about Boise State’s pass defense in a second (spoiler), but we should give credit to Boise State’s run defense. Boise State played a lot of dime defense on Saturday, which means the Broncos would play with one linebacker (usually Marco Notarainni, who filled in for an injured Andrew Simpson) in a five man box to defend the run. Despite a numbers advantage, the Spartans never got going on the ground. The Broncos held San Jose State to 50 yards rushing (adjusting for sacks) on 21 carries. Marco Notarainni and Seyi Oladipo led the way with a combined 18 tackles and 11 stops (A stop is a PFF stat described as a tackle that leads to an offensive failure or more simply, plays that make you go “Oh, that’s a great tackle”). Oladipo also chipped in with 2 tackles for loss. It was a massive day for Oladipo who stepped into Alexander Teubner’s role as Strong Safety and played really well. DT Braxton Fely also deserves a shoutout, Fely finished with a team-high run defense grade of 80.2. Fely only finished with one tackle, but did the dirty work to maintain gap integrity and help Notarainni and Oladipo make tackles.

It’s not much, but San Jose State’s inability to run the ball had a huge influence on the outcome of the game. Think back to San Jose State’s fourth-and-3 play in the second quarter. The Spartans decided to go with a throwback screen to their Left Guard. I believe that playcall was in direct response to Boise State’s dominance in run defense. This continues a season-long trend of Boise State holding up well in the run game.

The Ugly: Boise State’s coverage

I’m sure this comes as a shock to most of you reading this, but Boise State struggled in pass coverage on Saturday. I know it was only 446 passing yards, but it was a rough day for our secondary. Jokes aside, Boise State has had issues in pass coverage all season long, but Saturday was a different (and worse) kind of bad. Throughout the season, its largely been Boise’s safeties giving up space over the middle of the field for big plays. Boise State’s safeties have had subpar coverage grades and the cornerbacks have actually graded out fairly well. On Saturday, San Jose State got almost all of their explosives on the outside on Boise State’s cornerbacks. On passes 20+ yards down the field the Spartans were 5/12 for 168 yards. No one in the CB room was exempt. Davon Banks gave up 9 catches for 131 yards and a touchdown. A’Marion McCoy gave up 7 catches for 105 yards. Jeremiah Earby gave up 6 catches for 100 yards.

So what’s the issue? Is it talent? Scheme? Coaching? The right answer is a mixture of all three, but I think the biggest issue right now is technique. Plenty of San Jose State’s big plays weren’t guys running wide open because the Broncos had inferior talent (as was the case against Washington last season), there weren’t schematic issues which led to wide open receivers either. Typically, the Broncos had a man in position to make a play on the ball… And couldn’t. San Jose State finished with 8 catches on 11 contested targets. Typically you would expect teams to catch about 40% of their contested targets, San Jose State caught 73% of them. Credit to San Jose State’s receivers. Nick Nash and Justin Lockhart are NFL receivers and showed why on Saturday, but Boise State’s cornerbacks don’t play the ball when it comes their way and its been a recurring theme this season. We regularly saw Lockhart or Nash making a catch where Boise State’s cornerback wasn’t even looking for the ball. When a Bronco actually did turn their head to play the ball, they rarely gave an inspired effort to break it up. That comes down to coaching. I’m sure Boise State’s defensive coaches are emphasizing turning your head to make a play in practice, but something isn’t translating to game days.

I don’t think Banks, Earby and McCoy are bad players. We saw Banks and Earby have success at the Pac-12 level before transferring to Boise. McCoy has been solid most of this season. Something isn’t working right now though, and something needs to change if Boise State is going to have a shot of making noise in the postseason.

Projecting Tuesday’s CFP Rankings

Boise State’s win meant the Broncos dodged a chaotic Saturday for ranked teams. Louisville, LSU, Kansas State and Washington State all lost to unranked opponents. 23^rd ranked Missouri and 7^th ranked Tennessee also fell to ranked opponents. The Broncos secure a playoff bid if they are one of the five highest ranked conference champions. If the Broncos can be one of the four highest ranked conference champions, they would get a bye into the quarterfinals and likely play in the Fiesta Bowl. However, even if the Broncos don’t get a bye, they can earn a home game in the first round by finishing in the top-8. Here is what I think the committee will do on Tuesday when the updated rankings are released:

1. Oregon
2. Ohio State
3. Texas
4. Penn State
5. Indiana
6. Notre Dame
7. Georgia
8. Miami
9. Alabama
10. Ole Miss
11. Tennessee
12. BYU
13. Boise State
14. SMU
15. Texas A&M
16. Colorado
17. Clemson
18. South Carolina
19. Arizona State
20. Army
21. Kansas State
22. Tulane
23. Iowa State
24. Illinois
25. Washington State

Washington State’s loss hurts the Broncos’ resume, but at-present, there’s no Group of 5 team who challenges Boise’s resume. I do think the committee keeps BYU and Tennessee ahead of the Broncos which would mean the Broncos don’t move up in the rankings despite the 21-point win. If Washington State were to drop out, don’t be shocked to see UNLV get ranked. In my opinion, there will be four spots available that go to Kansas State, Iowa State, Illinois, Washington State and UNLV. It is very unlikely that both UNLV and Wazzu are unranked. We’ll see what the committee does, but Boise State fans should be rooting against the Big 12 going forwards.

Nathan Carroll is a writer for Bronco Nation News who focuses on numbers, analytics and analysis for the Boise State football and men’s basketball teams. He also works for Pro Football Focus, and previously wrote for 247Sports. Follow him on X at: @Nathan_26_