Fresno State rebounds with bowl blowout. But what’s next for Tedford and the Bulldogs?

Fresno State won its bowl game in a blowout, bouncing back from a rocky end to the college football regular season and thoroughly dominating New Mexico State in a 37-10 victory Saturday in the New Mexico Bowl.

With coach Jeff Tedford out of bowl prep and the game due to a health issue, the Bulldogs rolled up 500 yards of offense. Quarterback Mikey Keene hit 31 of 39 passes for 380 yards and three touchdowns and a defense that had struggled through a three-game losing streak limited the Aggies to a season-low 200 yards.

Assistant head coach and linebackers coach Tim Skipper, who has served as acting head coach since Tedford stepped away Dec. 1, said in the post-game news conference they would be bringing the game ball back to the Bulldogs’ head coach.

“We talked about that in the first meeting,” he said, holding up the football. “This is the actual ball from the last snap. This thing is going to Fresno, going to coach Tedford. We’re going to bring it home to him.”

But now what?

The NCAA transfer portal is open. The early national letter of intent signing period starts Dec. 20. Hiring season for assistant coaches has started. And, there is not yet clarity with Tedford and his future with a program that he revitalized after inheriting a 1-11 team in 2017, winning 45 games and two Mountain West Conference championships in his five seasons including a 9-4 mark this year.

The Bulldogs’ coach, athletics director Terry Tumey said, is undergoing tests.

But, as the past two weeks and the Bulldogs’ bowl win showed, Fresno State has a staff that creates a luxury many programs don’t have and that would be time.

“First and foremost we always wish the best for the health of coach Tedford,” Tumey said in a telephone interview while waiting for the Bulldogs’ charter to take off and head back to the San Joaquin Valley. “That’s the most important thing for us. He’s such an important piece of not only Fresno State football, but Fresno State as a university and the Fresno community. We want to make sure that he’s OK, before anything else. That’s the imperative for us. That’s the No. 1 thing.

Skipper: “It all started with us looking in the mirror.”

“He has some evaluation procedures that he’s doing right now. Coach is our coach, and of course coach Skipper did an outstanding job as an acting head coach and we’re going to lean on that and continue to lean on that.”

Skipper and the Bulldogs’ staff navigated some testing times the past two weeks, which included bowl prep and a critical weekend of official visits with recruits. But they did a job, getting the Bulldogs past regular-season ending losses at San Jose State, to New Mexico and at San Diego State and prepared for a bowl game against a New Mexico State team that seemingly had more to play for.

“It all started with us looking in the mirror,” Skipper said at a bowl news conference. “We had to see that reflection and see if we liked what we were looking at, and obviously we didn’t, so we had to get back to work. You can talk about it all you want, but the hard work is how you change things.”

The Aggies (10-5) had a chance to win an 11th game for the first time since 1960 and had never lost in a bowl game, going 4-0-1. The Bulldogs (9-4) had lost a shot at returning to the Mountain West Conference championship game and at winning 10 games during their three-game slide.

But the New Mexico Bowl was all Fresno State, its fifth bowl victory in a row and 19th win in 20 games in a series against the Aggies that started in 1972.

Keene shatters school bowl record

New Mexico State failed to muster much pressure on Keene, who hit his first 15 passing attempts including touchdowns of 26 yards to Josiah Freeman and 23 to Jaelen Gill.

The Bulldogs’ quarterback had not hit 60% of his throws in the final two regular-season games while dealing with some injury issues, but completed at least three passes to seven different receivers and hit at a 79.5% clip.

He obliterated a school bowl game record for completion percentage set in the 1991 California Raisin Bowl by Mark Barsotti at 69.4%.

The priority now is to fit together some moving pieces as best they can for a 2024 with a much more challenging schedule than the Bulldogs faced this season, with games upcoming at Michigan and at UCLA.

“We have the portal open right now, which is going to be important as players continue to evaluate their opportunities, and we want to make sure they know Fresno State is an amazing opportunity for them,” Tumey said. “We also recognize that this is the traditional time that coaches move around and we hope that we can keep our coaching staff, our leadership, together.

“We feel like we’re on an upward trajectory right now. There’s a lot of momentum in a positive way that we can continue to build on. Trying to keep as many pieces in place right now is vitally important. We all recognize the fact that coach Skipper did an outstanding job and I want to make sure that’s recognized and that we celebrate that, because he did an amazing job with this opportunity.”

By the numbers

3.3: Yards per play allowed by the Bulldogs’ defense, matching a season’s best. Fresno State also allowed 3.3 yards per play in a victory over Nevada.

7: Explosive pass plays of 20 or more yards by the Bulldogs, the longest a 39-yard strike from Keene to Jalen Moss. Fresno State had only four pass plays go for 20 or more yards in its three-game losing streak.

0: New Mexico State plays that went for 20 or more yards.

30.5: By scoring 37 points, Fresno State averaged 30.5 for the season, making it six years in a row that it has averaged 30.0 or more. That is the longest streak in the Mountain West Conference.

5: Sacks this season for Fresno State defensive tackle Jacob Holmes, who had one in the bowl victory. That is the most for a Bulldogs interior defensive lineman since Kevin Atkins had 7.0 in 2021.

3: Years in a row Fresno State has won at least nine games in a season. The only other time that has happened was when it went four years in a row from 2001 to 2004.

15: Completions in a row to start the game by Keene were a career high, but not by much. The Bulldogs’ quarterback started 14 of 14 in a victory at Arizona State.

55.49: Passing efficiency rating for New Mexico State. That is the lowest by a Fresno State opponent since New Mexico posted a 35.70 in 2021, and the lowest by New Mexico State since a 53.76 in a loss at Minnesota last season.