UCLA Football Preview: Dan Mullen Leads New UNLV Coaching Staff
After two successful seasons in Vegas, Barry Odom took off for the greener pastures at Purdue, allowing Dan Mullen to take over and lead the Rebels to a 2-0 start.
The last time UCLA played UNLV was in 2016 at the Rose Bowl. That evening, the Bruins blew out the Rebels, 42-21. In that game, UCLA was still being led by Jim Mora while UNLV was coached by Tony Sanchez.
Since then, each program has had three head coaches since that game nine years ago.
Jedd Fisch was named interim head coach when Mora was fired. Then, of course, the Bruins had Chip Kelly and DeShaun Foster was hired after Kelly left for Ohio State.
Meanwhile, UNLV fired Sanchez after the 2019 season and replaced him with Marcus Arroyo from Oregon. He went just 7-23 over three seasons, leading him to be fired too. The Rebels then hired former Missouri head coach and then-current Arkansas defensive coordinator Barry Odom. While Odom was in Vegas for just two seasons, his winning percentage when he left UNLV last year was the second-highest in school history at .704.
When Odom left, the Rebels hired former Mississippi State and Florida head coach Dan Mullen, whom you may recall was hired at Florida after the Gators lost the battle to hire Chip Kelly. Mullen’s first two Gator teams fared well, winning 10 games in 2018 and 11 games in 2019. They dropped to 8-4 in 2020 and dipped to 5-6 in 2021, ending his tenure there before the final game of the season.
So far, the Mullen-led Rebels have won the first two games of the season. They struggled a little with Idaho State at home and needed to score twice in the last 12 minutes to get past the Bengals. Last weekend, they had an easier time with Sam Houston State. That may be because the Bearkats are in just their third year at the FCS level after moving up from the FCS in 2023 and winning an FCS national championship in 2020. Regardless, a win is a win which is more than we can say for the Bruins at this point.
Initially, Mullen hired former Mississippi State head coach Zach Arnett to serve as UNLV’s defensive coordinator, but Arnett resigned in April, two months before being hired as a defensive analyst at Florida State.
When Arnett resigned, Mullen named Paul Guenther, the former defensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals, the Las Vegas Raiders, and the Minnesota Vikings and UNLV’s associate head coach and safeties coach, as the team’s interim defensive coordinator. Guenther will run a 4-2-5 Nickel defense as the Rebels’ base defense.
The Rebels’ offensive coordinator is Corey Dennis, who is also the team’s quarterbacks coach. Dennis joins UNLV after spending last year as the passing game coordinator and quarterbacks coach for Tulsa. He also spent nine seasons at Ohio State in various roles including three seasons as the Buckeyes’ quarterbacks coach. After two games, Dennis’ offense tends to run a lot more often than they pass. They’ve run the ball 62.1% of the time, and they actually ran the ball more in the Idaho State game which they had to come from behind to win. This could prove problematic for a Bruin defense which was totally unable to stop the Utah running attack last weekend.
Special Teams
Sophomore Ramon Villela won the kicking job this offseason. Through two games, Villela has made two of his four field goal attempt. Both of the ones he made came between 20 and 29 yards in length while the ones he missed were longer tries. He has made all ten of his PAT attempts.
Senior transfer Caden Costa has been UNLV’s kickoff specialist since transferring from Memphis this season. So far, seven of his 14 kickoffs have gone for touchbacks.
Cam Brown is a freshman punter from Australia. So far, three of his six punts have been fair catches and he’s averaging just 43.33 yards per punt. None of his punts have gone for more than 50 yards and none of them have landed inside the 20 either.
Junior transfer Jaylon Glover, who joins the Rebels after three seasons at Utah, has returned all three of UNLV’s kickoff returns this season. He’s averaging 24.33 yards per kickoff return and his longest return was a 30-yarder.
Meanwhile, junior DeAngelo Irvin, Jr. has returned the Rebels’ only punt return this season. On that return, Irvin gained just four yards. So, I wouldn’t put him in the category of the dreaded “dangerous return man” at this point. Let’s hope that the Bruins don’t turn him into one.
Go Bruins!!!
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