UNLV was in the game, but Boise State’s offense exploded — and had ‘fun’
Boise State has been criticized throughout the first half of the season for trotting out a bit of a vanilla offense.
That’s not to say the offense hasn’t sometimes been clicking — it’s averaged 465.3 yards through the first six games of the year, with huge numbers in its victories — but it didn’t always look exciting while doing so.
That changed Saturday afternoon when the Broncos passed, sprinted and barged their way around and over the previously undefeated UNLV Rebels (6-1, 2-1 Mountain West) at Albertsons Stadium.
Boise State (5-2, 3-0) racked up 558 yards of offense and seven touchdowns en route to a 56-31 victory to claim sole possession of first place in the conference. And the Broncos pulled some tricks out of the bag in the process, allowing for a lot of big plays.
Sophomore wide receiver Cam Bates scored on a 35-yard end-around run in the first quarter, with the misdirection fooling the defense. Redshirt freshman Sire Gaines scored his first receiving touchdown of the season on a two-running back set that featured a fake handoff to Malik Sherrod before redshirt junior quarterback Maddux Madsen rolled right and passed back to the left to Gaines.
The Broncos also were successful on a fake punt in the fourth quarter. With a 49-24 lead, punter Oscar Doyle hit tight end Matt Wagner for an 11-yard gain on fourth-and-7 at midfield.
“I think it’s really fun for our players,” Boise State head coach Spencer Danielson said. “Every week, we’re going to go into a game with a bunch of new stuff in regard to how we can attack a defense. We have some DNA things that we do, but we want to throw defenses off in regards to trick plays, misdirections.”
One of those players who had a lot of fun? Sophomore running back Dylan Riley.
Riley rushed for 201 yards and one touchdown on 15 carries, good for a monster 13.4 yards per carry. It was the first 200-yard game of his career, but also the fourth game this season he’s run for at least 100 yards.
On Saturday night, his one touchdown came from 49 yards out as he burst through a wide-open hole at the line of scrimmage and sprinted into open space, running to the end zone with arms spread wide in celebration.
Riley enjoyed huge plays of 31, 65, 49 and 27 yards, putting the Broncos deep into enemy territory on each occasion.
“Yeah, we were having fun,” Riley said. “We went out there with the best mindset we could. We just went out there and competed, did our thing like it was nothing new. I expected our team to go out there and dominate.”
Including Riley’s four big plays, the Broncos enjoyed eight passes of at least 15 yards and six runs of at least 10 yards — the yardage required for a play to qualify as explosive. But that doesn’t quite tell the story, because all six runs covered at least 25 yards, and seven of the eight pass plays covered at least 20.
Five of those plays resulted in touchdowns: Riley’s 49-yarder and the 35-yard run from Bates; the 20-yard fake handoff play that ended in Gaines’ hands; a 32-yard pass from Madsen to redshirt junior receiver Chris Marshall; and a 21-yard connection from Madsen to Sherrod.
After he scored, Marshall struck a couple of poses straight out of the “Karate Kid” movies — which was quite fitting, considering the Rebels had gotten waxed.
“The simple answer is that we’ve been working on this at practice,” Riley said. “We had our best week of practice, and we were going out there being explosive, just like we normally do, and it just showed out on the field.”
UNLV entered the game with an unblemished record, but it wasn’t because of defensive prowess. The Rebels were allowing 189.9 rushing yards per game and 255 yards passing, both of which rank among the worst in the nation. Boise State piled on the misery with good balance — 264 yards passing and 294 rushing.
Madsen came alive in the second half and finished with 253 passing yards, 23 rushing yards, four touchdowns and a first-half interception. He had a 25-yard run in the third quarter during a scoring drive, perfectly executing a pump fake to get a defender high in the air so he could take off into space.
Other impressive performances were a 96-yard, one-TD receiving night from Marshall and 89 total yards from Bates on just four touches.
“To be able to loosen up a defense when everyone’s trying to stop the run,” Danielson said, “that’s how we can become explosive, and so I’m proud of our protection.”
This story was originally published October 18, 2025 at 8:25 PM.
