Rolling at home, Boise State faces another young QB. Is another blowout coming?
Boise State and Fresno State have engaged in some pretty tight duels through the years.
From the Broncos’ pair of Mountain West championship game victories over the Bulldogs in 2014 and ‘17, to Fresno State’s retort with a pair of wins in the ‘18 and ‘22 title games, you typically can expect some prime-time viewing when the teams meet.
Not to mention plenty of bounce-back. In 2017, Boise State lost the regular season matchup but won the title game; in 2018, Fresno flipped that script, losing in November before winning in December; and in ‘22, FSU lost by 20 points at Albertsons Stadium in the regular season before winning by 12 on the blue turf in the championship.
Fresno State even owns something rare for a Boise State opponent: a two-game winning streak in the series. That most recent victory, in 2023, was another tight, entertaining game, with a 37-30 final score.
But on Saturday afternoon, the college football world expects the Bulldogs’ little streak to come to a crashing end. Coming off last weekend’s 24-3 win over Nevada, Boise State (6-2, 4-0 Mountain West) enters the game as a 17.5-point favorite over Fresno State (5-3, 2-2).
The Broncos will be back in Albertsons Stadium, where they haven’t lost since Sept. 9, 2023 — a 16-game winning streak, tied with Alabama for the longest current home streak in the nation. They have been dominant on The Blue in 2025, scoring 48.75 points per game and sporting an average winning margin of essentially four touchdowns (27.75).
The Bulldogs, meanwhile, have lost two games in a row under first-year head coach Matt Entz and sit right in the middle of the Mountain West standings. Entz came to Fresno having won two FCS national championships (2019, ‘21) as head coach at North Dakota State.
“Great football mind,” Boise State head coach Spencer Danielson said of Entz on Monday. “I know guys that know him, too, and just speak to what type of a coach he is, and more importantly, what type of a leader he is.” Fresno State started the season well under Entz, winning its first two conference games, 23-21 over Hawaii and 20-17 over Nevada, to move to 5-1, with only a loss to the Big 12’s Kansas. But the past two games resulted in big losses to Colorado State (49-21) and San Diego State (23-0).
All of that is partly why the Broncos are so heavily favored. There’s also the fact that the Bulldogs made a switch at starting quarterback recently to sophomore Carson Conklin. He replaced senior E.J. Warner, son of NFL Hall of Fame QB Kurt Warner, who started the season with 10 passing touchdowns and nine interceptions.
Conklin made his first start last week in the loss to the Aztecs and struggled mightily while leading no scoring drives. He was 20-for-42 passing for 182 yards, with two interceptions. But he’s getting the nod again this week.
“It wasn’t really a competition, it was just an evaluation,” Entz said this week. “I had 500 snaps of football of E.J. playing quarterback, so now we were going to try to ramp up, put a little bit of pressure or stress on Carson and see how he responded during the course of it.”
This will be the second straight week that the Boise State defense can try to tee off on a green quarterback. In last weekend’s win at Nevada, the Wolf Pack started freshman Carter Jones for the third time. The Broncos limited him to just 145 passing yards and intercepted him three times.
Senior defensive tackle Braxton Fely’s radar is already up at the chance of facing another inexperienced QB. He said defensive line can often tell when a younger quarterback is in the game — not just because of how the crowd at Albertsons Stadium can rattle the opposition, but because of how they play.
“We look at his drop point, where he throws the ball at, if certain pressures rattle him,” Fely said.
It becomes a little bit harder when there’s so little film to study, Fely said. But he also noted that the DNA of a team doesn’t change much, regardless of who’s under center, which means the Broncos still have a “base” to use.
The typical game plan for the Bulldogs is to be balanced. Their offense has 1,710 yards and 10 touchdowns through the air to go alongside 1,397 yards and 13 TDs on the ground. But they’re averaging only 16 points per game over the past four contests.
“They’re going to be able to pound the rock and then pick their spots to take their shot,” Danielson said. “So we’ve got a lot of things to do to defend them.”
Boise State vs. Fresno State
- When: 1:30 p.m. Saturday
- Where: Albertsons Stadium (32,796, turf)
- TV: Fox Sports 1 (Noah Reed, Robert Smith)
- Radio: KBOI 670 AM / 93.1 FM (Bob Behler, Pete Cavender)
- Records: Boise State is 6-2, 4-0 Mountain West; Fresno State 5-3, 2-2
- Series: Boise State leads the series 17-9
- Betting line: Boise State by 17.5
- Weather: 67 degrees, partly cloudy, 1% chance of rain
