DENTON, Texas — UNLV football coach Dan Mullen couldn’t have said it better.
Bad football, man.
Bad football all the way around.
The Rebels came to the north-central part of Texas on Saturday and wilted under the heat.
And the play of North Texas.
This wasn’t close. This was a mismatch in a game UNLV was, as we look back now, inexplicably favored.
But it was the Mean Green posting a final of 44-6 at DATCU Stadium, dropping the Rebels to 1-2 as they enter their first bye week of the season.
“When you have bad football, that’s bad coaching,” Mullen said. “Really poorly coached in all three phases. That’s on us. We have to make it happen.”
It was the first time since September 2021 where UNLV didn’t score a touchdown in a game.
The Rebels saw two streaks snapped — 36 straight games of scoring at least 20 points and 29 straight of having a rushing touchdown.
Here are three takeaways from the loss:
Bouncing back?
There was little good to say about how UNLV performed on Saturday. The Mean Green dominated.
So how does Mullen believe his team will rebound from such a defeat before it plays its next game at Akron on Sept. 26?
“We’ll find out how we respond mentally, I promise you that,” Mullen said. “We’ll see. Maybe we have guys here, maybe we don’t. Maybe guys will be leaving. I don’t know. We’re going to find out how we respond to this.
“There’s one thing to do when you get knocked down. You get right back up and charge ahead. You start fighting and throwing. If you don’t like that, you’re probably not going to fit in here, and you probably need to head home.”
Turnover margin
It wasn’t good. The Rebels turned the ball over four times via three fumbles and an interception. Two of the fumbles were turned into 10 North Texas points.
The Mean Green didn’t turn the ball over.
“We played like trash,” said UNLV quarterback Jackson Arnold, who had one of the team’s three fumbles when under duress from North Texas pressure. “Every time we had a big play, it was negated by a penalty or turnover. We need to execute in those times, and we didn’t today.
“We have to bounce back. Shoot, that’s probably the worst we’re going to look all season. Honestly, there’s nowhere to go but up. We have a bye week now to fix things, go watch some film and correct our mistakes.
“We can’t keep shooting ourselves in the foot. We were better in the red zone last week (in a 21-6 win at Hawaii) but then struggled to get anything going in this one. It’s just the little things.”
Bad football
The turnovers. A dropped touchdown. A penalty that erased a Jai’Den “Jet” Thomas run down to the North Texas 3.
A game in which UNLV only reached the scoreboard on field goals from Ramon Villela via 39 and 37 yards.
“You can’t let a team start the game with three possessions on the plus side of the field,” Mullen said. “You can’t do that. You can’t go minus-four ratio in turnovers on the road. They were (over 50) percent on third down, and we weren’t. Everything hurts.
“So we have a bye week now, and we’ll see where we are. We’re three games in. We have a little bit of an idea from practices and the three games but we’ll get to evaluate where we think we are and where we need to improve, what we can do offensively and defensively and on special teams.”
The game did include the first extensive playing time for quarterback Alex Orji, who entered with over eight minutes remaining.
He would finish 1 of 5 passing for 9 yards and an interception while rushing twice for 32 yards.
Arnold was 18 of 27 for 194 yards.
The score dictated how much UNLV was going to run. Thomas was held to 37 yards on 10 carries.
The Rebels were held to 2.5 yards per rush over 39 carries.
Contact Ed Graney at egraney@reviewjournal.com. Follow @edgraney on X.
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