By james art 
Nevada Justification
Of course, the 24-point spread is a big part of any pro-Nevada position this week. Still, there aren’t that many points you can put aside for that alone, as we need some other football-related things to make sense to prevent this from being a complete annihilation. Nevada is coming off a 17-game losing streak to the Rams last week and 21 to the Rainbow Warriors in their previous game before that, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility for the conference-leading Royals to give them a bad beating.
It’s not a very positive path either, but you have to imagine the Broncos aren’t in a super rush for this week. We’ve already seen this season that you’re unlikely to get far with a Boise State team asleep at the wheel. However, this is not a threatening matchup. Maybe late in the game, with the point spread still in the balance, they’ll stop pushing super RB Ashton Jeanty, whose workload has been huge in recent weeks. Maybe they give the starters a breather at some point. But in the Mountain West for Boise and with their upcoming schedule, it’s not like there’s anything to save for or see the urgency diminish from one week to the next. So I’m not sure how comfortable I’ll be with this as someone who wants to root for Nevada this week.
Nevada’s offense got QB Brendon Lewis back last week, and after a really slow start, he started cooking late in a game that was already a little out of reach. Still, with that out of the way and really no tension as this is seen as a no-win situation for the Wolfpack, maybe Lewis can get some things cooking on offense, hooking up with targets like Jaden Smith, Cortez Braham, Jr. and Marcus Bellon while getting help out of the backfield with Savion Redd and Lewis’ quick feet. As good as the Boys have been this season, their defense isn’t really the best. They were pretty porous at times, leading one to think that if the Wolfpack can click a little bit in attack it will put a lot of pressure on a Boise side who are not fired from a cannon this week to cover such a big number.
Good place for Boise?
It’s good to be at home and feel good about the way things are going, especially when you’re up against a team who are probably starting to feel the demoralization of a difficult period in this tough season. Of course, the Wolfpack are used to this and have still surpassed what they’ve been able to accomplish over the past few seasons, but they can’t come into town with too much of a jump this week either. And Boyce is not usually shy or reserved in these places. One would think they’d want to keep Jeanty in spots where the game is in hand, but it’s not clear what they’d even save him for, and maybe getting him to the Heisman is a higher priority since he’s in top four in polls. And let’s face it, this is a game where he could really pad his already massive stats.
You figure if the Boise have any postseason glory, they’ll get a break leading up to it. Still, if the CFP is in the cards, a scenario that’s hard to imagine given the quality of their upcoming opponents and their current No. 12 ranking in the AP poll, they could probably hold something back while having to make a point with some big one-sided wins, so maybe it’s best to forget about all that and just look at it more straight. And in that sense, it’s very easy to see that Boyce puts it on hard and that point is covered with a place to book. You can easily see QB Maddux Madsen making his way through the air, just as you can see Jeanty ripping off big gallops almost effortlessly in this one. It’s not hard to imagine.
While Nevada can show some sporadic movement on the offensive side of the ball and that is something that could affect the point spread, their defense is not a unit that will generate much excitement. The fact that they haven’t even managed to recover a punt this season speaks to their lack of a game-changing presence. Their flurry of misses can disappear from week to week, and this doesn’t look like the no-track week. At some point in this game, that’s a team flaw that will be felt, as some big plays here and there on defense are a necessary part of the recipe for a 24-point dog.