Week one is in the books. We close-watchers of this program felt good about last week, all things considered. Now, you don’t want to get too comfortable feeling good about 16-52 games. Being within a couple of scores at the defending national champion’s house is not too terrible there. But to steal a couple of lines from Curt Cignetti’s press conference this week, “[Indiana] won the first quarter 14-0, the fourth quarter 21-0. The offense scored on 7 of 8 possessions including 6 touchdowns.”
Saturday September 12, 2026 • 2:45 pm • ESPN
So you know, there is only so much to feel good about.
This week the Mean Green host UNLV, coached by Dan Mullen who went 10-4 in his first year in Vegas. Mullen is of course famous for his coordinating a couple of national championships for Urban Meyer’s Florida teams and coached Tim Tebow to a Heisman Trophy. He coached up Dak Prescott and Miss St, and then went on to run Florida for a bit before getting run out of town. Before all that, he was with Meyer in Utah and coached Alex Smith.
The Rebels are 1-1 on the season, losing to Memphis 21-27 at home, and then beating Hawaii 21-6 on the road (at sea?).
This is the 7th meeting all time between the programs, the only one NT has ever won was the Heart of Dallas Bowl in 2014. The last time these programs met, UNLV ran North Texas out of Allegiant Stadium 58-22 with Littrell as the head coach.
UNLV has been a good program since about 2023, under Barry Odom. He left for Purdue, and then Mullen took over and added a 10 win season. Not terrible. This season they added former HS 5-star QB Jackson Arnold. He fell to only a 3-star transfer after leaving Oklahoma and then Auburn. He’s a Denton native and talked up the homecoming this week. Coaches, family, friends will be in attendance at DATCU this Saturday.
UNLV comes into the game as favorites, and were as much as -6.5 point favorites and are now somewhere at around -3.5 or -3 point favorites as of this writing. What do the oddsmakers know? Well the raw numbers from the Indiana game show a team that will break, after bending. They show a North Texas team with some holes in the secondary and a lot of pieces that are still yet to gel .
UNLV is also on week three, and should be a little better. Dan Mullen is a good offensive coach, and he has a good QB with which to work.
Neal Brown will coach his first home game as head coach, and is looking to become the first North Texas head coach since Darrell Dickey to win his home opener. Dickey beat Nevada in his first game. Brown gets a chance to continue the tradition of getting one over on the Silver State.
Attacking The Rebels
We learned about our team last week. We knew Jaheim White was the go-to running back, but we didn’t know how he’d hold up against a good rush defense. He had 61 yards on 14 carries (4.36) and a score. He broke tackles and he fell forward. He also grabbed 7 passes for 36 yards (including a crucial first down). He’s the star guy.
UNLV is playing the 3-3-5 defense. If you watched a lot of North Texas football the last few years you probably shuddered a bit. When it is good, it can be interesting, but the holes are glaring. Memphis was able to get to the second level often, and had major success with pulling lineman finding linebackers.
The main idea behind their defense is being fast, letting linebackers go make plays, and letting their three best defensive lineman play games with stunts and angles while being as sound as possible — mainly by going head-up on the center and the b-gaps. Again it is nice in moments, but has some glaring weaknesses.
Memphis was able to hit big runs when those stunts were wrong. The nose would move outside and well, that was where the play was going. Memphis’s Veer-and-Shoot ran for 195. They started slow, found a rhythm, and came back from down 14-7.
Hawaii runs an updated Run-N-Shoot and had some moments but suffered from truly awful QB play. There were open guys who either dropped passes or were delivered balls at their feet. UNLV didn’t so much
94 Conti is 290lbs, 90 Logo is 310. 44 Togafau is 270. You’ll also see 42 Porter as a DE situationally but usually they just go with 23 Ka’aihue 240lbs as the edge rusher.
Expect to see stunts, simulated pressure (fake blitzes) and all-out stuff from UNLV to try to disrupt the timing. Memphis’ Marcus Stokes did a great job navigating the rush and used his legs to escape. Micah Alejado of Hawaii was very bad, comparatively speaking.1
The main takeaway is that there will be plenty of running space. North Texas struggled withe Indiana’s interior lineman on zone runs, but if they can get a little push on the Rebels’ guys (like Memphis and Hawaii did) there should be some good eating through the middle.
Tayven Jackson completed a high percentage of passes, and his pocket was relatively clean. Neal Brown schemed up a lot of quick, easy throws for him and only later added the play-action big play stuff. He was protecting the team by being risk averse. NT dominated possession and wanted to keep the chains moving. I expect that the Mean Green will not have to grind out so many possessions in this one, and we should see more 10+ yard runs available. Jaheim White was able to hit some big gains, and UNLV has not shown a super stout run game defense so far.
Jackson should be able to get loose for something as well. UNLV’s secondary is basically untested, but Memphis hit them for a deep toss over 1 Bin-Wahad the Nick. He was set up by the endless 5-yard stop routes the Veer-N-Shoot has. He hesitated and it was a blow-by.
We saw some good play-action stuff from North Texas last week, and I expect we should see some more this time. UNLV is heavily relying on their linebacker play — 8 Ka’aihue and 23 Cam Santee are good, experienced backers.
Again, UNLV is looking for splash defensive plays to kill drives. Avoid that and you have a shot.
Defending Against The Rebs
I’ve played enough dynasty games to have had a QB with talent, but absolutely no blocking in front of him. You basically cannot throw any deep routes or play-action because it is like asking to be sacked. I recognized this situation by watching all the offensive plays from UNLV vs Memphis and Hawaii.
The short version is that Jackson Arnold is talented. You can see why he was a 5-star guy. He has good play-recognition, a live arm, and is a tough runner. Neal Brown said he’s great at the RPO game and Mullen is calling plays around his talent. That’s being nice. There is absolutely no offense here that is not Arnold-dependent. He would be the leading rusher barring sacks. He has three of the team’s 4 rushing touchdowns so far.
The Rebel offense looks a bit like those old Tebow Florida offenses, with counters and power, and motions. If the line were say 30% better, this would be an absolute monster of a squad. Arnold can deal the ball, and he can run it, but he has no time, and they can’t get much push in the run game.
We’ll see lots of pin-n-pull, power, counter, some straight zone runs and all the usual stuff. They will run Arnold a ton, setting up the looks early but also just straight QB power plays. He’s scored three and I really think their most effective offense is simply going five-wide and letting him make plays with his legs.
UNLV is only putting up a meager 5.89 yards per play, however, and only scored 21 in both games. What gives? Well, Memphis figured out pretty quickly that they could bully freshman right guard 74 Taase always and forever. They beat him on bullrushes, stunts, wide angles, everything. He’s good in the run game, but not great. 78 Brown and 72 Thomas have gotten beat often on pass rushes also. Hawaii was attacking all night as well.
Against Memphis, UNLV tried putting in senior 64 Metzger to little success.
I mean, you can see in the image above that Memphis was just bringing four and they had the OL looking silly.
The summary of their offense is that the running back-led run game is solid-to-okay, and mixed in with Arnold’s legs can be dangerous. Their pass game is very shaky, because you can get to Arnold often. He keeps his eyes down field, makes good decisions and can run so he can make you pay and get out of jams.
The problem is that kind of game is hard to sustain, and sometimes he gets tired, gets hit as he throws — which accumulates through the game — and guys just make mistakes.
His talent for extending plays is best used as an intensifier —something to make a good offense great. Right now he’s making a meh offense just mediocre. If Hawaii had a C+ level QB performance UNLV would be staring at 0-2. The base offense only managed 14 points (again, two Arnold red zone runs) before breaking out a long run in the 4th quarter only leading 14-6. Hawaii was selling out to get the ball back, missed a gap, and got beat.
Special Teams and Coaching
Dan Mullen is a better, more accomplished coach than Neal Brown. Look at the rings, boys. Mullen has won at MSST while Brown had trouble at WVU. That said, right now Brown has a good offensive line while Mullen has swiss cheese. That should be the game.
That said, Brown probably has the worst special teams (kick offs, punts) we’ve seen in a long while. Indiana started at the NT 20 to begin the season. UNLV’s offensive line will happily take a handicap if we are offering that. Brown said all this week he has been working to improve that aspect of the team. Time will tell.
Stray Thoughts and a Prediction
MGN went through a lot of film this week, all of Indiana and two UNLV games. UNT looks more like Memphis (in size, physicality, talent) than Hawaii and Memphis had their way with UNLV on both sides of the ball. Hawaii doesn’t look very big either, but they bullied the defensive line, and found big rush lanes.
Barring some (more) injuries to the secondary I feel good about UNT’s defense vs Jackson Arnold over the life of the game. UNLV can and will score, but I think their offense is not consistent enough to pose a thread over many drives.
The heat will absolutely be a factor. UNLV is in Vegas, sure, but played their home game in a dome, and then went to Hawaii. NT played a hot game in Bloomington last week.
Prediction → NT runs for 250 yards, wins 37-17. GMG
So he was throwing the ball poorly, just awful accuracy, and he wasn’t reading the defense. When they’d move the ball he would inevitably kill a drive with a terrible pass, a sack, or just not getting the ball out to the right guy.