At the end of the UNLV football program’s spring showcase on April 23, quarterbacks Harrison Bailey and Doug Brumfield took center stage. With 1:46 on the clock, in front of a crowd of about 1,000 spectators at Allegiant Stadium, they were each given the ball in a live 11-on-11 scrimmage and asked to drive the offense the length of the field.
Bailey went first and moved the ball to the 22-yard line, but on a 1st-and-10 attempt, he threw a slant that was picked off by linebacker Austin Ajiake.
Brumfield went next and got the team to the 26-yard line, but a second-down pass was batted down and nearly intercepted. On third down Brumfield was forced to scramble out of the pocket short of the line to gain.
Both drives came up empty.
It might have been a downer ending in the context of the quarterback competition, which has instilled the program with optimism going into next season. There’s a lot of buzz around Bailey, a University of Tennessee transfer, and Brumfield, who impressed in spurts last season and recently removed himself from the transfer portal to stay at UNLV.
Bailey and Brumfield both showed enough through a month of spring practice to reasonably expect the UNLV offense to be formidable in coach Marcus Arroyo’s upcoming third season. The defense is more of a question, which is why there might have been no better way to close the team’s only open-to-the-public spring practice than with the quarterbacks sputtering.
Ajiake beamed as he stood on the field after collecting his interception. The senior has played with a cast on his wrist for the whole spring session after undergoing surgery to repair a broken bone in January, but that didn’t stop him. The way he got into the passing lane and read the quarterback’s eyes was something that wasn’t seen much during UNLV’s 2021 season.
“I feel like we’ve put a lot of work in this the past month,” Ajiake said. “I’m glad it’s starting to show. We’ve still got a lot of work to do.”
There’s new excitement all around, perhaps more than expected coming off a 2-10 campaign that saw UNLV lose its first eight games. But the team rallied to split its last four and seems to have carried that momentum forward.
It’s up to the defense to keep things moving in the right direction. It was one of the least effective units in the nation last year.
The Scarlet and Gray allowed opponents to complete 69.1 percent of their passes, the third-worst rate in the country, and UNLV allowed opposing quarterbacks to compile a passer rating of 157.9, the nation’s 14th-worst mark.
But at the open scrimmage, the defense looked like a unit capable of making plays. In addition to Ajiake’s impressive pick, senior safety Bryce Jackson intercepted Brumfield and returned it for a touchdown.
All told, in 11-on-11 play Bailey and Brumfield combined to complete 32-of-46 passes for 298 yards, with two touchdowns and two interceptions. For the defense, that’s a win.
Arroyo and new defensive coordinator Keith Heyward have tried to gear the defense toward creating turnovers and sounded happy that paid off during the open scrimmage.
“They’ve had more takeaways this spring than we’ve had collectively since we’ve been here, which is really good,” Arroyo said. “Bryce had a nice one there, and [Ajiake] did a nice job during that 2-minute drive of sneaking under the slant. Getting the ball away is a big priority for us on defense.”
Ajiake, who was second on the team last year with 74 tackles, said the defense has gotten faster and has been more competitive in the spring, with more players rallying to the ball and making plays.
“We’re trying to look a certain way,” Ajiake said. “We’re trying to get 11 hats to the ball. I like to say party at the ball, because we’re all trying get there. We’re all competing.”
One somewhat subpar day for the quarterbacks shouldn’t be cause for concern, not after their potential has been celebrated all offseason. It was the defense’s turn to be in the spotlight for one day, and if it’s as competent as it showed, UNLV might finally have a real shot at a breakthrough.
This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.