How did Fresno State go from 1-4 start to championship? ‘The belief kept growing’

Fresno State coach Jeff Tedford pulled off a mind-bending magic trick in his first go-round at his alma mater, taking a football team that went 1-11 before his hire and immediately turning it into a 10-game winner. But that did not compare, he said, to this season and managing a high-talent, high-expectation team through an injury-riddled gut-punch of a 1-4 start and then winning a Mountain West Conference championship.

The Bulldogs pulled that off on Saturday with their eighth win in a row, a 28-16 victory over Boise State at a well-chilled Albertsons Stadium with a stellar defensive effort that included two interceptions by cornerback Cameron Lockridge, a punt return touchdown by Nikko Remigio and two rushing touchdowns from Jordan Mims.

“Really proud of our kids, obviously, and our coaching staff, who have done a great job all year long,” Tedford said. “We’ve come a long way since the first part of the year where a lot of people probably didn’t believe in us, but the kids in the locker room did, the staff did, and nothing more fitting than to end it like we did tonight.

“I’m just really proud of all these guys. I mean, the work that they put in, the commitment that they make on a daily basis, the belief that they have, the perseverance that they’ve shown over the year. It’s so rewarding to see them so happy. They’re still going in the locker room. It has a lot of staying power in there right now. It’s really nice to see them happy.”

Lockridge summed it up more succinctly on the post-championship podium on the field, surrounded by the Bulldogs fans who made the trip to Boise. “They wrote us off, but we didn’t write back,” he said, borrowing a line from Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith.

It definitely will make a lasting impression on the Bulldogs, who won a second Mountain West title in four seasons under Tedford and a fourth since joining the conference in 2012.

“It was honestly just a rush of emotions in that moment, seeing how happy everybody was after just dealing with adversity and fighting through it,” said safety Evan Williams, who like quarterback Jake Haener missed four games due to injury. “It hit me like a train, I’m not going to lie. Right after the game, I was kind of just in awe of the moment. It was something special and I know it was something special for a lot of our guys, too.”

“That was awesome,” said Haener, as he made his way off the field with the trophy for offensive player of the game. “Just an unbelievable night.”

AN UNPRECEDENTED FEAT AFTER STARTING 1-4

In the championship game era in the Mountain West, which started in 2013, there have been 15 teams that started a season 1-4 and before the Bulldogs this season not one had finished with a winning record.

The average number of wins, just 3.1.

But Fresno State, which clinched a spot in the Dec. 17 Jimmy Kimmel L.A. Bowl against a yet to be determined opponent from the Pac-12, got there by thoroughly dismantling a Boise State offense that had chewed them up with its run game in a 40-20 loss back in October.

The Broncos, who won the Mountain Division with a perfect 8-0 record, generated just 321 yards of offense, their fewest since changing offensive coordinators after four games and going with redshirt freshman Taylen Green at quarterback. Boise State, in decisions that probably will irk its fan base for some time, attempted a season-high 38 passes with Green hitting only 17 while rushing the ball only 30 times. That is nine fewer per game than they averaged during the regular season, and they were averaging a solid 4.9 yards per rush.

But the Bulldogs took away the quarterback run game and made enough plays against the Boise State running backs that they just didn’t have much to go to. The Broncos rushed for 146 yards, but had 55 of it on four plays and averaged just 3.5 yards on their other rushing plays.

“Coming in, we anticipated they were going to run the ball and try to state the fact that they’re better than us in the run game, but we had a plan to stop that,” nickel Morice Norris said. “They had a couple of plays that they ran, but for the most part our defense shut them down.”

DEFENSIVE GAME PLAN, EXECUTION PLAYS LARGE FOR BULLDOGS

How did they do that? Norris just smiled. “All I can say is (defensive coordinator Kevin Coyle) is a wonderful man.”

The Bulldogs defense set up two of their three touchdowns scored by the offense, and there was the 70-yard punt return by Remigio that was their first points coming with 3:54 remaining before halftime.

Haener and the offense, which generated only 245 total yards, scored after both of the interceptions by Lockridge. The first was a 17-yard drive, capped by a 2-yard touchdown run by Mims. The second was a 34-yard drive, with Mims scoring from 3 yards out.

Haener threw a 22-yard touchdown pass to Zane Pope in between those scores, extending a streak of games with at least one touchdown pass to 28, a Mountain West Conference record.

That was a 13-play, 87-yard drive, helped along by a roughing the punter personal foul on the Broncos’ Jaylen Clark.

But the defensive plan, and its execution, played large for the Bulldogs, who have a chance now to win 10 games in a season for the fourth time in five seasons not impacted by COVID-19.

“Jake has led our offense, they’ve been so excellent all year and rightfully so, they deserve the attention and stuff,” Williams said. “We understand just our role, to back up one of the best offenses in the country, and when we come into big matchups like these we know the spotlight is going to be on us at some point in the game and we’re going to have to make a play to change the game.

“It’s a testament to our preparation, how hard we work throughout the week. Our defense has stepped up in some big ways this season and stepped up in a big way today.”

And, from 1-4, the Bulldogs are champions, dealing with the outside noise, the disappointment, the injuries.

“I think it’s a little more special because of the way we started,” Tedford said. “While we were disappointed in the beginning, we weren’t discouraged. It’s hard when you go into the fourth quarters of games and you work so hard and you don’t come out with a reward to keep coming back the next day or to still have the same attitude or the same belief, but these kids did.

“Thankfully, we were able to get on a roll here and the belief kept growing. We knew we had a good football team, but we ran into some adversity. It’s not just football. I think one of our jobs as football coaches and as educators is to teach life lessons and I think the adversity that they overcame earlier this year is a life lesson that they can take well into their own lives.”