5 takeaways for UNLV football heading into offseason

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Sam Morris/Las Vegas News Bureau

UNLV head coach Tony Sanchez waits with his players to take to the filed before their Mountain West Conference football game against University of Nevada Reno Saturday, Nov. 26, 2016, at Sam Boyd Stadium. UNR won the intrastate rivalry 45-10. CREDIT: Sam Morris/Las Vegas News Bureau

Tue, Nov 29, 2016 (2 a.m.)

The second year of Tony Sanchez’s rebuilding effort is now in the books, and though Saturday’s season-ending 45-10 loss to UNR still casts a dark shadow heading into the offseason, Sanchez took a long-term view when assessing the state of the football program in a wide-ranging news conference on Monday.

The five most important takeaways from the media session:

Sanchez believes the rebuild is on track

Sanchez has a wide range of responsibilities as the head coach/CEO, and he’s taking everything into account when he assesses the state of the program. While the win-loss record has only improved incrementally in his first two seasons, he believes the program has made much more impactful and consistent progress in areas like fundraising, academics and recruiting.

Objectively, he’s right on all counts. New facilities are being built with money he is largely responsible for bringing in, the school’s APR score appears to be healthy for the third year in a row, and last year’s recruiting class may have been the best in school history. With that foundation in place, Sanchez believes it’s only a matter of time (and hard work) before the results show on the field.

“We have won a few more games,” Sanchez said. “That’s what’s exciting. We’re winning more. In Vegas, people live here, and I get it, there’s initial frustration because there hasn’t been a lot of success … but if you go outside, the high school coaches and the kids are like, ‘Wow, you’re getting better every year.’

“They see the positives. They know the history. They know we’re not winning two games a year anymore. We’re going into Week 11 with an opportunity to go to a bowl game. That hasn’t happened in a lot of Week 11s for a long time in this program. Kids see that.”

He’s satisfied with the coaching staff

Offensive coordinator Barney Cotton and defensive coordinator Kent Baer have experienced differing levels of success so far at UNLV, but Sanchez thinks both are the right men for the jobs. He doesn’t expect any shakeups to the top of the coaching staff during the offseason, though there may be some minor turnover among the lower ranks.

“There will be no changes in coordinators,” Sanchez said. “We believe in what we’re doing and the guys we’re doing it with … I think [Cotton and Baer] did a tremendous job.”

The offense will be explosive next year

Injuries hit the Rebels hard on the offensive side of the ball in 2016, and even with those issues, they still scored 31.6 points per game. With a healthy Devonte Boyd, Kendal Keys, Brandon Presley and Darren Woods back to catch passes next year, plus four returning starters on the offensive line, plus a stable of productive running backs, the potential is there for UNLV to field one of the best offenses in the Mountain West. And if redshirt freshman quarterback Armani Rogers lives up to his four-star hype, this could very well be the highest-scoring team in the league.

Sanchez said Presley is already back practicing, Keys and Boyd should be available for spring practice and Woods should return sometime over the summer.

The secondary needs major help

UNLV’s biggest weakness was defending the pass (243.2 passing yards allowed per game), and though a lot of that blame can be placed on the lack of pass-rush pressure, the main culprits were the cornerbacks. The Rebels were consistently burned on deep patterns down the sideline, and their defensive backs were unable to make plays on the ball even when they maintained good coverage. Allowing deep bombs cost UNLV more than one game in 2016, so Sanchez has identified it as a major need heading into next year.

“The biggest thing to me this year is, we’ve got to get better in the secondary,” he said. “Our corner play was not very good this year. Early in the year we struggled with our safety play a little bit, but it got better throughout the course of the year. We never got much better on the edge. When you really watched our games, that’s where we got hurt. How many times did we get to third and long, and we could not get our butts off the field? Our third-down defense struggled this year, and it was because of the way we played on the edge. I know those guys are going to get better, we’re going to recruit to it, we’ve got to do a better job of teaching it over there at that corner spot, but the bottom line is we have not played well there.”

The next athletic director is a massively important hire

Sanchez will have a new boss in July, when current athletic director Tina Kunzer-Murphy steps aside. And like most employees, Sanchez would prefer a positive working relationship with his superior, especially since the next AD could be overseeing the football team’s move to a new stadium and, hopefully, a Power 5 conference.

Still, Sanchez said he doesn’t expect to have a say in the hiring process, though he also wouldn’t be offended if UNLV President Len Jessup asked his opinion.

“It would be arrogant for me to say I want a say, or that I should have a say,” Sanchez said. “Len has been really great and really open and I’m sure he’ll have a conversation with me and some of the coaches about it. Obviously, you’d love to have a great relationship with whoever you’re going to work for coming on in. It’s a big part of being successful, everybody being on the same page and working together on that. I’ve talked to Len quite a bit, and I’m confident he’s going to bring in someone who can take all the good stuff Tina has done and build off that and move us forward.”

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