The UNLV Rebels, As Seen By Other Blogs

We are entering a portion of our schedule where the opposition is either represented in blogs here on SB Nation, or has played teams that have blogs on this network.

With that knowledge in hand, I bring to you snippets of interesting information I gathered from Utah's blog, BlockU, regarding the UNLV Rebels.

From the pregame analysis, we can see that UNLV is capable of pounding the run with their hefty RB, Frank Summers.

As for those Rebels, they enter the [game against Utah] 1-0, defeating Utah State 27-17 Saturday. It was not an extremely impressive victory by UNLV, who struggled at times and only reinforces the fact this is not a very good team. Mike Sanford, who very well could be in his last year as coach, does have some weapons, however. One of those will be very familiar to the Utes.

Frank Summers, who ran all over Utah for 190 yards last season, worked Utah State's line for 87 yards Saturday. He will undoubtedly be the focus of the Rebels' offense again this year, but don't expect him to dominate nearly as much, especially if Utah's line plays like it did against Michigan. The Rebels will also rely on sophomore quarterback Omar Clayton, who threw for 192 yards against the Aggies.

Defensively, the Rebels don't look too impressive. The depleted Aggie offense didn't perform exceptionally well against UNLV, but they still managed 203 yards through the air and finished the night with 314 total yards, meaning they did see some production. It just didn't manifest into many points, as they were held to only 17. That shouldn't be a problem for Utah, who likely will easily carve up

their secondary and dominate on the ground.

Continue reading for the post-game analysis...

The second half was a completely different story. Utah just abused the Rebels, toying with them like any top-25 team should do. On their first offensive series of the game, the Utes worked their way down to the UNLV 32, where Brian Johnson found Freddie Brown for the easy touchdown. That opened the floodgates, as Utah would go on to score two more touchdowns in the third quarter for a total of 21 points. UNLV flopped offensively, failing to reach the end zone at all in that quarter. 

The fourth was much more nominal, as the Utes really didn't need to run up the score and only managed another touchdown before really packing it in. UNLV did have a decent drive that spanned over seven minutes and resulted in the Rebels only second half touchdown. But the game was far over by that point and once Utah got the ball back, they worked the clock, put out a decent drive and ended the game when Darrell Mack rushed for eight yards, allowing the clock to expire. Utah wins 42-21, gets revenge, moves to 2-0 on the season, but most importantly, 1-0 in Mountain West play.

When grading Utah's own defensive work...

Defense: B+ - Utah's run defense looked so much better than it did a year ago, keeping Frank Summers below 100 yards on the day. It wasn't a perfect effort, especially in the first half, but Summers was a threat and the Utes kept him contained. The Rebels didn't have an extremely good night in offensive production, only managing 288 yards and because of that, outside of the first half, they weren't able to put too much of a scare into Utah.

Again, all of this analysis comes from BlockU, an SB Nation Utah Utes blog. Check them out.

Tomorrow, I will come at you with some home-cooked analysis tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of the Sun Devils. Until then... GO DEVILS!