Boise State has a must-win game Saturday. Can it learn from 2023 heroics?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Boise State must win remaining regular-season games to keep 2025 title hopes alive.
- Senior Night offers momentum boost and tribute while older leaders set the tone.
- Colorado State poses turnover threat despite poor record; Broncos must avoid complacency.
It was just two years ago that Boise State’s football team sat at 5-5 overall and 4-2 in Mountain West play, and head coach Andy Avalos was fired a day after a win over New Mexico.
Spencer Danielson, then the defensive coordinator, took the reins for the rest of the season as interim coach. The Broncos won their final two regular season games, qualified for the Mountain West championship game via a tiebreaker — a feat that just weeks prior felt improbable — and then defeated UNLV on the road to claim the title.
That upturn in the Broncos’ fortunes earned Danielson the head coaching gig on a full-time basis, and he’ll need a repeat of those 2023 heroics in the coming weeks if the team is to salvage its 2025 season.
With a home game left vs. Colorado State this weekend, followed by a road trip to Utah State the day after Thanksgiving, Boise State (6-4, 4-2 Mountain West) sits in a five-way tie for second place as it tries to make — and win — a third straight league championship game. As it was in 2023, the team will need to win its final two games and then win a tiebreaker of some sort to get there.
The program itself may be feeling a sense of déjà vu, but many of the players this season were either not on the roster or playing minor roles two years ago. That leaves it to some of the older heads in the room to lean on experience and apply it to these next few weeks.
“I think it starts with the older guys, we set the tone,” redshirt senior center Mason Randolph said on Tuesday. “We set the example for that locker room, not just our position rooms, but for the entire team.”
Boise State head coach Spencer Danielson said he’s not focusing too much on the 2023 season, but if he’s to take something from that experience, it was the “freedom and joy” that saw them finish the season strong, with victories over Utah State and Air Force.
“What I learned through that, where you have a team that everybody on the outside thinks is all going bad, it’s going to hell in a handbasket ... except this team, except the players, except the coaches,” Danielson said. “... There was a freedom and a joy, but an attention to win, and that’s really what we’ve been focused on this week — just focused on this week.”
That means the focus is on one of the conference’s worst teams, Colorado State.
The Rams (2-8, 1-5) come to Albertsons Stadium for a 5 p.m. kickoff on Saturday, and they don’t bring much in the way of momentum. They are in a tie for last place in the conference, with only a 49-21 victory over Fresno State in the league — a game in which the Bulldogs massively outgained Colorado State but had four turnovers.
The Rams’ only nonconference win was a 21-17 victory in September over FCS program Northern Colorado.
So the pieces are in place for Boise State to snap a two-game losing streak. The Broncos are 12-1 in their series with Colorado State, which got its only win in that same 2023 season, a 31-30 victory in Fort Collins on a last-second touchdown.
“We know we’ve got a really good challenge coming to The Blue,” Danielson said.
“I’ve talked to a lot of coaches who have played against Colorado State. A lot of times, when a team is going through some of these struggles, you see them start to quit,” he continued. “That’s not Colorado State. These dudes play extremely hard, and are the best team we’ve seen at punching the football out.”
The Rams rank 19th in the nation for recovered fumbles with seven, but there is not much else statistically for them to hang their hat on. They are almost dead last in the conference offensively, ranking ahead of only Nevada and averaging 322 yards per game. They score only 18 points per game, which is also second-to-last in the Mountain West.
Defensively, Colorado State ranks ahead of four conference teams, but gives up 415 yards and 28 points per game.
Boise State is a 16.5-point favorite even without starting quarterback Maddux Madsen, who remains injured, but there’s also a distraction on Saturday: Senior Night.
Boise State will be honoring 20 players who very likely are suiting up for their final game at Albertsons Stadium. It’s also likely the final home game for a couple of players who could declare for the 2026 NFL Draft: redshirt junior left tackle Kage Casey and junior safety Ty Benefield.
The Broncos have not lost a senior day game since 2015, when they fell to Air Force.
“With all the stuff going on, not playing to our best the past couple weeks, these seniors have given everything to this program. ... And I want to honor them on Saturday night,” Danielson said. “That’s the sole focus of our program, period, end of story, because they deserve it. I don’t care what anybody says about the past couple of weeks; they deserve it.”
Boise State vs. Colorado State
- When: 5 p.m. Mountain time Saturday
- Where: Albertsons Stadium (32,796, turf)
- TV: Fox Sports 1 (Chris Myers, Spencer Tillman)
- Radio: KBOI 670 AM / 93.1 FM (Bob Behler, Pete Cavender)
- Records: Boise State 6-4, 4-2; Colorado State 2-8, 1-5
- Series: Boise State leads the series 12-1
- Betting line: Boise State by 16.5
- Weather: 52 degrees, partly cloudy, 6% chance of rain
