#68 Wyoming Cowboys |
#4 in Mountain West |
Prior to a few years ago, with Josh Allen, the Cowboys’ history of elite football players was pretty small. Even their best teams, the Joe Tiller years, the Bob Devaney teams of the late 50s, didn’t really produce names. Jay Novacek was about it, unless you like Jim Kiick, who played for the pre-merger Dolphins. You had a top 10 pick a couple years ago in Josh Allen, and now Xazavian Valladay, who certainly has the best name in the Group of Five, might be the most exciting player to watch in the group too. Valladay burst onto the Mountain West scene, winning the conference rushing title with 1,265 yards, despite not being “the man” until the second half of the season. He only topped 15 carries once in the Cowboys’ first six games; and then went over 15 in all but one of their final 7, running for over 115 yards in all of those, including a pair of two hundred yard games. He played high school ball in Oak Lawn, Illinois, just 30 miles from Northwestern’s campus. Yet the Wildcats didn’t offer him, neither did any MAC schools. His only offers came from Wyoming and FCS Western Illinois. Quite a find from halfway across the country. This is probably it for him, so if you get the chance, he’s worth the late night watch on CBS Sports Network, or whatever. He’ll have plenty of help up front, from a veteran offensive line that returns all five starters from a year ago, including a pair of all-conference performers. They’ll need that running game to deliver, because the passing game is a disaster. Wyoming cycled through three starting quarterbacks, and all of them were awful. Tyler Vander Waal, the only one of the group who actually completed over 50% of his passes (at an outstanding 51.6%), transferred to Idaho State, so presumably its true sophomore Sean Chambers’ job to lose, since Wyoming was unable to get anyone in yet via the portal. He didn’t have the interception issues that Vander Waal did, and ran for 6.3 ypc on 90 attempts, but only completed 43% of his passes, worst in the nation among quarterbacks with at least 120 passing attempts. I say it’s his job to lose very loosely, because he probably doesn’t have to do much to lose it. True freshman Levi Williams only played in three games, so he preserved his redshirt, but had the highest passer rating of the three (in spite of still completing under 50% of his passes), and Wyoming brought in two quarterbacks in their 2020 class. Much like Georgia Southern yesterday, the Wyoming defense had some pretty harsh splits in favor of the run defense, except even more dramatic. The Cowboys allowed just 2.9 ypc on the ground, 5th best nationally. That accounted for just 29.76% of the yards allowed. Only three schools; Georgia, Penn State and San Diego State, had a larger disparity between yards allowed via the run vs. the pass. The scary thing about that Wyoming run defense, is that they suffered a ton of injuries along the line, a line that ranked top 10 in every run defense metric. Now they return the healthy presumed starters, to go with that group that was a top 10 unit last year, to form what should be an elite defensive line, easily the best of the Group of Five. The problem is behind that line is a mess, particularly linebacker. They could be looking at a true freshman to step in and start at one outside linebacker spot, next to Chad Muma at middle linebacker, who has played in a reserve role, at most, in his first two seasons.
| KEY PLAYERS |
RB | Xazavian Valladay, Junior |
C | Keegan Cryder, Junior |
G | Logan Harris, Senior |
| . |
DE | Solomon Byrd, Sophomore |
DE | Garrett Crall, Senior |
LB | Chad Muma, Junior |