[msqueri]

6. The offensive line, in PFF's view, had a solid performance from Prongos and not by anyone else. That's a sobering result against a Group of Five team and presumably there are some really ugly games ahead. The pass blocking grade has gotten worse every week of the season. It's just an ugly situation to have two true freshmen starting and I continue to be apoplectic that year after year we get in this situation of playing cubs up front when real college football programs stock up with full-grown bears. On the season, fourth year guys Anderson and Prongos have been serviceable and the rest from the younger guys has been pretty ugly. Not much matters going into 2026 if we don't retain the older guys and beef up in the transfer portal. I have given Gulbranson a lot of leeway given this state of affairs with the supporting cast. One part of my narrative is looking somewhat misplaced: these wide receivers aren't nothing. We still haven't really seen JonAnthony Hall (10 unhealthy snaps) but we have seen Farrell, Williams, and High contributing, hence the long ball numbers. As @TexCard in CA noted, most of the room will be shattering their prior career production, which can be viewed both as an indication of how little they've accomplished previously but also the breakouts. I don't want to overdraw the point as somebody needs to get production and it's bound to happen when you become pass-heavy, plus we've seen both good and bad receiver games this year. But guys are making plays (second week in a row with two hundred yard receivers) and it's great to see. I was especially floored yesterday to see Williams move the chains eight times, our most by a receiver since Mosley against Louisville. [Moving the chains (first down) leaderboard: Williams (8), High (4, also drew a pass interference), Ford (3), Tabb (3), Roush (2), Farrell, Libman, Irvin, Onovughe] One can make a solid case the WR room is a contender for the best room on the roster right now, with Williams, Farrell, and High all boasting 68+ PFF grades on the season. That is shocking to me.

7. The defense did not have much to write home about but there were bright spots. Only six guys showed up multiple times positively in the box score (Green, Johnson, Tafiti, Edwards, Eckhardt, Morris). The one who really stood out to me was Green, who had double the big plays of anybody else. He had a really good sequence where he made a third down tackle before the sticks and then a pass breakup on fourth down to get the turnover on downs, had a red zone tackle for loss, and of course had the game-saving pass breakup. Three pass breakups in one game is a very loud stat. Will take a two tackle for loss game from Tafiti anytime. If we're not going to get pass rush at least making some plays is something. There were several players who I did not think had the best game but had individual plays here or there that were instrumental to us hanging on - Rowell getting a red zone third down tackle to force a field goal that ended up missing, Edwards also getting a red zone third down stop to force a field goal (that one made it through the uprights, but maybe that stop saved us four points), Morris had a pass breakup and QB hurry (to go with the two pass interference penalties on the negative side of the ledger), Johnson had a quiet game but stepped up after Rose was ejected and gave us a fourth quarter red zone run stuff and a crunch time hurry to force a punt, Nicholson had a red zone pass breakup to force a field goal, Eckhardt had a pass breakup and QB hurry. To a man, I thought those guys had bad moments and were generally part of the problem yesterday, but a whole bunch of individual plays helped us eke out the one point victory. One curious thing from PFF is that they had Patterson as the top performer in the game for either team on either side of the ball, yet he only showed up in the box score with one hurry. I think it's possible he was getting disruption that is hard for the casual eye to catch but I also think it's possible the grader saw one of the highest graded guys in the country heading into the game and succumbed to some confirmation bias in grading charitably.

8. Special teams were one of the big reasons we won, not because of anything we did but because San Jose State's kicking game has been a disaster this year and was again yesterday. It's a reminder that sometimes competence gets the job done and can give you an edge when your opponent is incompetent. We were competent yesterday. Flintoft had net punts of 43 to the 34 (solid), 31 to the 30 (really bad), 43 to the 37 before the penalty but illegal formation put it at the 42 (inclusive of the penalty definitely not ideal, especially considering the end of half situation), 21 to the 20 after a touchback (never love touchbacks but situationally that's a great result to ensure it's not worth the opponent's while to try any plays to steal pre-half points), and 40 to the 39 (ok thanks to Neely's coverage tackle). Kenney made a 36 yard field goal. Thorpe called fair catch on a punt at the 20. Kick returns, as usual, gave up yards compared to a fair catch (six yards on one High return and two yards on another) but also had one with good field position due to Hampton getting us 9 extra yards on a 17 yard return on a short kick. Darrius Davis' tackle in kick coverage cost the Spartans 9 yards of field position compared to a fair catch. I don't recall doing this before but, rather than giving Flintoft the game ball when he could get it almost any week even with mediocre performance just due to the volume of his usage and small sample size to judge other guys, I will take PFF's word that Mattingly played well in relatively heavy usage despite not showing up in the stat sheet.

9. Game balls: Ben Gulbranson, Jay Green, Sam Mattingly, Tyler Osborne

10. It feels nice to win heading into a bye. We had that with the Cal Poly win last year but this means more to beat an FBS team, even one as bad as San Jose State. We haven't done that before a bye since 2019. Hopefully this goes better than that season when we lost the last four games to end the year. In the immediate term, hopefully we can put the bye to good use in terms of healing up, preparing for a tough road game against SMU, putting in good recruiting work, and all of the truly important behind-the-scenes fundraising and coach search stuff Luck is doing. The Mustangs seem beatable to me, especially coming off a bye, but I am also clear-eyed that we have been bad in every game this season except the Boston College game. It is a realistic expectation any given week that we will be bad. Fingers crossed the bye sends us into Dallas ready to be better.

[msqueri]

6. The offensive line, in PFF's view, had a solid performance from Prongos and not by anyone else. That's a sobering result against a Group of Five team and presumably there are some really ugly games ahead. The pass blocking grade has gotten worse every week of the season. It's just an ugly situation to have two true freshmen starting and I continue to be apoplectic that year after year we get in this situation of playing cubs up front when real college football programs stock up with full-grown bears. On the season, fourth year guys Anderson and Prongos have been serviceable and the rest from the younger guys has been pretty ugly. Not much matters going into 2026 if we don't retain the older guys and beef up in the transfer portal. I have given Gulbranson a lot of leeway given this state of affairs with the supporting cast. One part of my narrative is looking somewhat misplaced: these wide receivers aren't nothing. We still haven't really seen JonAnthony Hall (10 unhealthy snaps) but we have seen Farrell, Williams, and High contributing, hence the long ball numbers. As @TexCard in CA noted, most of the room will be shattering their prior career production, which can be viewed both as an indication of how little they've accomplished previously but also the breakouts. I don't want to overdraw the point as somebody needs to get production and it's bound to happen when you become pass-heavy, plus we've seen both good and bad receiver games this year. But guys are making plays (second week in a row with two hundred yard receivers) and it's great to see. I was especially floored yesterday to see Williams move the chains eight times, our most by a receiver since Mosley against Louisville. [Moving the chains (first down) leaderboard: Williams (8), High (4, also drew a pass interference), Ford (3), Tabb (3), Roush (2), Farrell, Libman, Irvin, Onovughe] One can make a solid case the WR room is a contender for the best room on the roster right now, with Williams, Farrell, and High all boasting 68+ PFF grades on the season. That is shocking to me.

7. The defense did not have much to write home about but there were bright spots. Only six guys showed up multiple times positively in the box score (Green, Johnson, Tafiti, Edwards, Eckhardt, Morris). The one who really stood out to me was Green, who had double the big plays of anybody else. He had a really good sequence where he made a third down tackle before the sticks and then a pass breakup on fourth down to get the turnover on downs, had a red zone tackle for loss, and of course had the game-saving pass breakup. Three pass breakups in one game is a very loud stat. Will take a two tackle for loss game from Tafiti anytime. If we're not going to get pass rush at least making some plays is something. There were several players who I did not think had the best game but had individual plays here or there that were instrumental to us hanging on - Rowell getting a red zone third down tackle to force a field goal that ended up missing, Edwards also getting a red zone third down stop to force a field goal (that one made it through the uprights, but maybe that stop saved us four points), Morris had a pass breakup and QB hurry (to go with the two pass interference penalties on the negative side of the ledger), Johnson had a quiet game but stepped up after Rose was ejected and gave us a fourth quarter red zone run stuff and a crunch time hurry to force a punt, Nicholson had a red zone pass breakup to force a field goal, Eckhardt had a pass breakup and QB hurry. To a man, I thought those guys had bad moments and were generally part of the problem yesterday, but a whole bunch of individual plays helped us eke out the one point victory. One curious thing from PFF is that they had Patterson as the top performer in the game for either team on either side of the ball, yet he only showed up in the box score with one hurry. I think it's possible he was getting disruption that is hard for the casual eye to catch but I also think it's possible the grader saw one of the highest graded guys in the country heading into the game and succumbed to some confirmation bias in grading charitably.

8. Special teams were one of the big reasons we won, not because of anything we did but because San Jose State's kicking game has been a disaster this year and was again yesterday. It's a reminder that sometimes competence gets the job done and can give you an edge when your opponent is incompetent. We were competent yesterday. Flintoft had net punts of 43 to the 34 (solid), 31 to the 30 (really bad), 43 to the 37 before the penalty but illegal formation put it at the 42 (inclusive of the penalty definitely not ideal, especially considering the end of half situation), 21 to the 20 after a touchback (never love touchbacks but situationally that's a great result to ensure it's not worth the opponent's while to try any plays to steal pre-half points), and 40 to the 39 (ok thanks to Neely's coverage tackle). Kenney made a 36 yard field goal. Thorpe called fair catch on a punt at the 20. Kick returns, as usual, gave up yards compared to a fair catch (six yards on one High return and two yards on another) but also had one with good field position due to Hampton getting us 9 extra yards on a 17 yard return on a short kick. Darrius Davis' tackle in kick coverage cost the Spartans 9 yards of field position compared to a fair catch. I don't recall doing this before but, rather than giving Flintoft the game ball when he could get it almost any week even with mediocre performance just due to the volume of his usage and small sample size to judge other guys, I will take PFF's word that Mattingly played well in relatively heavy usage despite not showing up in the stat sheet.

9. Game balls: Ben Gulbranson, Jay Green, Sam Mattingly, Tyler Osborne

10. It feels nice to win heading into a bye. We had that with the Cal Poly win last year but this means more to beat an FBS team, even one as bad as San Jose State. We haven't done that before a bye since 2019. Hopefully this goes better than that season when we lost the last four games to end the year. In the immediate term, hopefully we can put the bye to good use in terms of healing up, preparing for a tough road game against SMU, putting in good recruiting work, and all of the truly important behind-the-scenes fundraising and coach search stuff Luck is doing. The Mustangs seem beatable to me, especially coming off a bye, but I am also clear-eyed that we have been bad in every game this season except the Boston College game. It is a realistic expectation any given week that we will be bad. Fingers crossed the bye sends us into Dallas ready to be better.