Forget the final score for a second. If you watched only the first three quarters of Fresno State's 26-10 win over San José State on Saturday night at CEFCU Stadium, you'd think you were watching a defensive slog headed for overtime. It was 6-3 at halftime and 13-10 with a little over 12 minutes left, a rivalry game hanging by a thread.
Then Luke Weaver threw the game away, and Fresno State's defense made sure he paid for it every single time.
This wasn't a game Fresno State dominated so much as one San José State's quarterback lost. Weaver threw four interceptions, the Bulldogs sacked him five times, and Fresno State ripped off 13 unanswered points in the final seven minutes to turn a nail-biter into a laugher on the scoreboard. Kiontre Harris and Simeon Harris picked him off on back-to-back San José State possessions late, one of those turnovers turned into a Manaki Watanabe field goal, and Bryson Donelson iced it with a 36-yard touchdown run. This was a team beating itself, not one getting steamrolled, and Weaver said as much afterward: "It's just bad decisions by me... Bad football, a couple of careless decisions also, just leaving the ball so other guys can get it. I got to make it so my guys can make plays on the ball and I didn't do that tonight."
Give Fresno State's defense and special teams credit for cashing in. Jordan Malau'ulu's 68-yard punt return set up the touchdown that first cracked the game open in the third quarter, and the secondary spent the fourth quarter taking the ball out of Weaver's hands whenever he tried to force it. That unit, not the offense, is my pick for the real difference in this game.
Fresno State's offense wasn't explosive, either. Jayden Mandal threw for 186 yards and a touchdown on 15-of-29 passing, a fine, mistake-free outing but hardly a 26-point rout on its own. The real offensive story is Watanabe's leg. He missed his first attempt of the night, reportedly the first miss of his Fresno State career, then answered by drilling four straight field goals, including kicks from 52 and 51 yards in the first half and another from 40 in the fourth quarter. He accounted for 14 of Fresno State's 26 points. If there's a hero here, it's the kicker who missed once and made sure it didn't matter.
SJSU wasn't hopeless. Anthony Ivey had a strong night through the air and Jabari Bates ran the ball well, and the Spartans clawed within a field goal in the fourth quarter on a Carson Clark touchdown catch. SJSU competed, but four turnovers against a defense built to punish exactly that undid them.
Step back and this loss says more about where San José State's program is headed than about anything Fresno State proved. This is the third straight year San José State has failed to bring home the Valley Trophy, and head coach Ken Niumatalolo is now 0-3 in the rivalry. His own words after the game: "We have to get this sour taste out of our mouths... We got to look at the film, we see it in real times that we've got to fix." He knows his own team beat itself again, not Fresno State.
Fresno State keeps the trophy and moves to 2-1 heading into Pac-12 play, with a defense that bailed out a middling offensive night. San José State, now 2-2 heading into a bye and Mountain West play against Hawaii, has a much harder question to answer: how many more of these self-inflicted collapses can this program absorb before the rivalry stops being close at all?
