2022 G5 Preview: Maybe A Rebuild Year Is What Wyoming Needs
The Cowboys have gone a bit stale in recent years. A forced youth movement may be the cure.
This is part of the Mountain West Preview, the fourth conference in the Outside Zone’s Group of Five season preview package. Check out the preview landing page for all previous stories. All previews and the entire Outside Zone archive are available for only $5 a month or $50 a year.
Also, in case you missed it, I launched The Aggship, a credentialed Utah State athletics outlet last week. I would greatly appreciate it if you subscribed. Take one month free with this link.
Wyoming probably doesn’t get the billing it deserves as one of college football’s hardest jobs.
Laramie, Wyoming is a beautiful little college town, but it’s two and a half hours in a car from Casper, an hour from Cheyenne, five and half hours from Cody, and six hours from Jackson – some of the larger cities in the state. It’s only an hour from Fort Collins and two from Denver, but Salt Lake City is nearly eight hours away, Boise is 10 hours out and Las Vegas is 12 hours away, as is Oklahoma City. Reno is 13 hours away, Dallas and Phoenix are both 14 hours away and Los Angeles and Portland are nearly 16 hours out. San Francisco is an hour further, Seattle is another hour on top of that.
That’s a lot of geography chat to drive home an important point – one that comes up a lot when talking about the sport’s hardest jobs: Almost all of the recruits Wyoming is interested in are from those towns or suburbs of those towns. Almost all of the recruits out West, writ large, are from those towns or suburbs of them.
In the last four recruiting classes (2019-22, also known as the vast majority of current college football players), the data is not in Wyoming’s favor. It never has been. The state of Wyoming has produced six players with a 247Sports profile in the last four cycles. Two of them were three-star prospects with rankings, the other four were two-stars without a national listing. Wyoming signed four of them, while two in 2022 aren’t listed as having signed anywhere. The Cowboys claim 12 in-state players on their 2022 roster, many of whom were almost completely unheralded as recruits.
Bordering states haven’t offered much more. Colorado, Idaho, and Utah are easily the most prolific of the bunch. Idaho has produced a trio of four-stars and 30 three-star prospects, 13 of whom had composite rankings. Its 13 FBS signees put it in elite company in this bunch of states.
Utah is the star of the show, though. This is a legitimate and consistent producer of FBS talent. That doesn’t mean much for the sake of Wyoming, though, as the Cowboys have signed one Utahan since 2019 and list two on their roster (the other transferred in from Utah).
Colorado is similar. It’s one of the most talent-rich states in the region, but Wyoming has signed only 11 Colorado products since 2019, and seven of them signed in one class (2020). The issue with these three states for Wyoming is that despite its relative proximity, the pecking order is never in its favor. Colorado is wide open nationally, Idaho belongs largely to Boise State and the in-state FCS powers and Boise State, BYU, Oregon, Utah, Utah State, and any P5 stragglers eat first in Utah.
Montana has somehow produced 35 players with profiles in the last two classes and 38 in total for the last four, but only nine claimed three stars, and only three of those had national rankings. None of the 38 signed with Wyoming, and only three went to an FBS school (BYU, Navy, and Washington) while 20 landed with an FCS team (exclusively Montana and Montana State), one went to NAIA Montana Tech and 14 didn’t have a school listed (generally, that means DII, DIII or NAIA).
South Dakota is almost completely without ranked recruits and North Dakota (which doesn’t border but which I’m including anyway) is no different.
Of its regional territory, Wyoming has found as much in Nebraska as it has anywhere. Craig Bohl seems to have some latent connections in the state because Wyoming has pulled 11 prospects out of Nebraska since 2019 – including 2022 signee IOL Jon Woods, the highest-ranked prospect in program history and its second-ever four-star. Colorado has provided 11 signees too. But the in-state quartet is the only other real noise from the region.
Instead, Wyoming is forced to do much of its work in California and Texas. It has had success there, landing 23 Texans and 19 Californians since 2019, but this is no real different than the kind of situation that programs like New Mexico State, UConn, or UMass (deeply hard jobs) face.
Wyoming has the benefit of conference affiliation, but its home state produces fewer FBS caliber players than any other in the Mountain West. And unlike Boise State or New Mexico, both of which have talent deficits in their home states to reckon with as well, Wyoming is nowhere near the centers of power in the West. Boise State has made a living off of traveling into California, Oregon, and Utah – all of which are just a state away and New Mexico has Arizona and Texas to lean on.
Honestly, I’m not sure there’s another college football situation quite like it. Buffalo made be the best parallel – although its state also produces more talent. Wyoming is in a talent barren area, has no real hold in its neighboring states, and is a day’s drive away from its two best recruiting states. The Northeastern schools and UTEP may be the only obvious comparisons, and only Buffalo, Texas State, and UTEP (given their locations in Texas and the competition in the state) of that bunch share conference affiliation status. Three of the hardest jobs in football.
Yet, Wyoming isn’t thought of in the same way. Wyoming wins football games. It’s a good program. The Cowboys have been to 17 bowl games. They’ve had 24 winning seasons in the last 42 years and have won just under 50 percent of their games (244-253-1, 49.1 percent) since Pat Dye’s single year in town in 1980. They’d clear 50 percent if not for Vic Koenning’s terrible 5-29 tenure. It’s a very hard job, but one that several coaches have handled very well – something that we’ve only rarely seen at those comparable programs.
It creates a bizarre dynamic around expectations. Wyoming has settled into a standard of competing for bowl berths over the last 40 years, despite largely lacking the kind of external resources to support that.
It’s developed a bit of a history of producing big-name coaches, too. Fred Akers coached Wyoming for two years before leaving for Texas. Dana Dimel spent three years as a Cowboy before earning the Houston job. Dye parlayed his year as a Cowboy into the Auburn job. Dennis Erickson’s first FBS head coach gig was in Laramie, where he too stayed for only one year before jumping to Washington State (and eventually to Miami). Bill Lewis left Wyoming for ECU and later led Georgia Tech. Paul Roach was twice a coach of the year finalist. Joe Tiller spent 12 years with Purdue after a 10-2 season at Wyoming (his best in six years on the job).
Hell, Bowden Wyatt left Wyoming for Arkansas, and later Tennessee, making him the first of a bonkers three-tenure streak that continued with successor Phil Dickens jumping to Indiana and his successor, Bob Devaney, leaving to turn Nebraska into a national powerhouse.
Wyoming produced nine coaches who would leave for better jobs (and an eighth who could have in Roach) in the span of 13 hires from 1947 to 1997. Four of them would later be inducted into the CFB Hall of Fame. I do not know what to do with this information.
All of that – the coaching history, the expectations of success, and the recruiting territory – have combined to create an entirely unique feeling around Bohl’s tenure.
Hired away from North Dakota State – the perennial title contender he built – after the 2013 season, Bohl’s standing with the Cowboys through eight seasons is an enigma. Moving past a pair of rebuilding years to open his tenure, he’s 39-32 since 2016 with four bowl berths (and three bowl wins, both of which are the most for a coach in program history) and five seasons of at least .500 football.
The lone year below that was the shortened 2020 season, which would have probably yielded a 6-6 season had Wyoming played more than six games (especially given that three of its four losses came by one score).
That’s above the median line here, statistically. He arrived at a time of turmoil, replacing Dave Christensen – who was Wyoming’s third straight coach fired with a tenure record below .500. His job was to stabilize the program in the Mountain West – where it had largely struggled – and he has unquestionably done that.
But there’s at least a little sense of disappointment thus far, too. Perhaps not internally (I don’t know what Wyoming thinks), but from without. Nationally. Bohl was a curiosity when he was hired because the FCS to FBS coaching pipeline has largely dried up and because he was probably the most successful FCS coach to make the jump since… Jim Tressel? Paul Johnson? There was a sense of excitement around it that Wyoming rarely generates. It was a thought experiment, a test to see if the NDSU model would work at the FBS level.
And generally speaking, it has. The majority of Bohl’s Wyoming teams have played tremendous defense. They run the ball extremely well and can grind out tough, close wins.
But he’s yet to piece together a truly great team. The 2016 offense was spectacular, but the defense couldn’t do anything well and the Cowboys went 8-6 with an MWC title game loss. Bohl completely fixed the defense for 2017, which finished ninth in the country in points per game allowed, only for Josh Allen and the offense to completely collapse in an 8-5 campaign. The 2018 Pokes took slight steps back on both sides of the ball and fell to 6-6, while the 2019 rendition rebounded in a huge way on defense but still couldn’t move the ball and again went 8-5.
The 2020 team was just about identical (with a smaller sample size) and last season’s quad briefly hinted at having an offense, only to absolutely collapse in late September and through all of October before rounding right back into relatively strong form to end the season, throttling Colorado State, Kent State, and Utah State and nearly toppling Boise State, while dropping a game against Hawaii to create the strangest back-to-back results of the year to end the regular season.
Wyoming beat two conference champions (crushed one of them), toppled a third runner-up, beat UConn and Montana State by a combined five points, and lost to Hawaii and New Mexico by a combined 35 points. What do you want me to do with this, Craig.
This is a tremendously roundabout way to speak my piece about this program as it enters into 2022. The offseason storylines here have all revolved around the transfer portal. Wyoming lost both of its starting quarterbacks to Montana State and Utah State, leading rusher Xazavian Valladay to Arizona State, leading receiver Isaiah Neyor to Texas, Nos. 2, 3, and 4 defensive ends Solomon Byrd, Victor Jones, and Jaylen Pate to USC, Akron and Northwestern, top three cornerbacks C.J. Coldon, Azizi Hearn and Keyon Blankenbaker to Oklahoma, UCLA and the portal (Blankenbaker has yet to decide on a new school) and top safety Rome Weber to Western Kentucky.
Very few programs have sustained more losses to the portal this offseason, and I can’t imagine any of them did it without also turning over at head coach. Hawaii’s mass exodus is understandable. This one isn’t, and any explanations that we can generate do not reflect especially well on Bohl or his staff.
On top of that, 142-tackle linebacker Chad Muma heard his name called in the NFL draft, slot receiver Ayden Eberhardt graduated, as did excellent center Keegan Cryder, five-year contributing defensive end Garrett Crall and safety duo Esaias Gandy and Braden Smith.
It’s a difficult thing to pull positives from. Wyoming is starting over in a lot of positions it assumed it wouldn’t need to this season.
There are proven contributors returning. Halfback Titus Swen was excellent last year and deserves to be RB1; wideout Joshua Cobbs and tight end Treyton Welch were both valuable pass-catchers; a very good offensive line returns three starters; the defensive tackle pairing of Cole Godbout and Jordan Bertagnole is among the league’s best; linebacker Easton Gibbs isn’t quite Muma yet, but he’s very good all the same, and Isaac White has the experience and talent to lead the secondary.
Wyoming did add its share of portal players too, largely targeting former P5 reserves looking for more playing time, like Ole Miss cornerback JaKorey Hawkins and his new battery mate Deron Harrell from Wisconsin or Alabama defensive end Keelan Cox.
It picked up a new starting quarterback in Utah State’s Andrew Peasley, too. He wasn’t incredible in Logan or anything, but he’s a starting-caliber QB and fits well in an offense that will allow him to throw the ball down the field more with fewer RPO looks. That’s not his game.
But the overriding storyline for this team is pretty apparent. Wyoming’s roster lists 55 true or redshirt freshmen, 38 true or redshirt sophomores, 15 true or redshirt juniors, and four seniors. Four. The COVID year of eligibility has altered many of these figures – a lot of those juniors have been around for four years, many of the underclassmen are a year older than their class, etc. – and some of the transfers (in and out) have yet to be added, but Wyoming has 93 underclassmen and 19 upperclassmen. The final numbers won’t be significantly different from that.
My projected starting lineup here features 10 sophomores, nine juniors, and three seniors, which is almost certainly underselling the freshmen – who are just about impossible to predict if you don’t cover the team full-time – and giving too much credit to the upperclassmen, several of whom have never started. Five of my 22 picks earned starts in at least seven of last season’s games.
Wyoming has winnable games against Hawaii, New Mexico, Northern Colorado and hinge games against San Jose State, and Tulsa. That may be generous. It’s a serious rebuilding year in Laramie and one that the Wyoming staff didn’t have time to prepare for because of the way this roster fell apart. If all of the departing transfers had stayed, another 8-5 campaign would have seemed entirely possible.
But perhaps this is the better outcome. Not for this year, obviously. This year is going to be a mess. But 19 of those 22 projected starters could very well return for another season in 2023. Many of those sophomores stepping into larger roles could benefit greatly from the experience they get this year. Wyoming’s 2022 recruiting class was seventh in the Mountain West, the 2021 bunch was ninth and the 2020 group was eighth, while Bohl’s first six classes in town finished No. 12, 8, 12, 8, 12, and 7.
The Cowboys were able to generate four bowl bids and five .500+ seasons with those classes after a pair of youth movement years in 2014 and 2015 that yielded what were probably Bohl’s two best teams in 2016 and 2017, even with Allen collapsing during the latter. The young talent on the roster now is greater than it was then, and there’s more of it.
Maybe a down year isn’t the worst thing in the world for a program that seemed to have settled into a rut.