Fresno State football won the MWC West over San Diego State in 2017. Can the Bulldogs follow up with another trip to the conference title game in 2018?
Five years ago, Fresno State was the Cinderella that couldn’t in the world of college football. Thanks to their Derek Carr-led offense, the Bulldogs rolled through their first 10 games of the regular season, racking up win after win. They began with a 52-51 takedown of Rutgers, a power-conference team that went 9-4 the previous season. The opportunity to play Colorado was lost when flash floods forced the cancellation of the game.
But a one-point defeat of Boise State followed later in September, and the Bulldogs were perfect entering the regular-season finale against San Jose State. Then disaster struck. A Spartans team that went 11-2 the year before was 5-6 entering the contest against Fresno State. But San Jose State pulled off a wild 62-52 victory over their rival to reach bowl eligibility. Fresno State still went on to win the Mountain West, but it was a hollow victory devoid of a BCS Buster opportunity.
After that close call ended in disappointment, Fresno State watched its fortunes progressively plummet under Tim DeRuyter. From an 11-win season in 2013, the Bulldogs failed to win that many games over the next three seasons combined. That led to DeRuyter’s ouster and the hiring of Jeff Tedford.
And oh, what a difference decent coaching can make.
DeRuyter lucked into a perfect situation to start his career at Fresno State. A top-shelf quarterback can paper over a multitude of deficiencies. Once Carr left college for NFL stardom three hours northwest in the Bay Area, the Bulldogs collapsed. Weak defenses were no longer propped up by a stellar scoring offense.
Enter Tedford, the former California coach who turned the basically moribund Golden Bears into a respectable Pac-10 contender. When Tedford was hired to take over in Berkeley in 2002, they had been to just one bowl game since 1993 and had not finished with a winning record in nine years. He immediately went 7-5 in his first season, then took Cal to seven bowl games over the next seven years.
A few down seasons ignited the seat under Tedford, and he was booted out of Berkeley. But he did not suddenly lose his coaching ability. He wandered for a few years before Fresno State came calling. And just like at Cal, Tedford instantly turned the Bulldogs into a respectable outfit. They went 9-3 in the regular season and won the MWC West over San Diego State. Though they lost to Boise State in the conference title game, a Hawaii Bowl win over Houston sealed a 10-win season.
The Bulldogs fell just short of their first conference championship since 2013. Can this year’s team return to the Mountain West title game and take the final step toward securing the crown in 2018? Keep reading to learn more about the offense, defense and the schedule before seeing our predictions for the upcoming campaign.