With key additions so far this offseason, the question is begged to be asked; are the Fresno State Bulldogs a threat to win the Pac-12 championship in their first season?<\/p>\n
An offense that loves to run the football has added more weapons. Tariq Taylor is transferring from Bucknell where he ran for 602 yards and three touchdowns this past season and went for 783 yards and four touchdowns in his freshman season. Taylor joins an already elite backfield with Speedy Luke, and Bryson Donelson set to return.<\/p>\n
At the quarterback position, Carson Conklin hit the transfer portal back to Sacramento State. Enter Khristian Martin, a Maryland transfer, to replace EJ Warner this upcoming season. Martin is a dual threat quarterback that will help the Bulldogs run game and will also keep defenses honest with the pass.<\/p>\n
The defense adds Maverick Noonan from Nebraska and Micah Mosley from Sacramento State to the d-line, and Preston Okafor in the defensive backfield to replace Al\u2019Zillion Hamilton.<\/p>\n
This is a team that clamped down on the Boise State offense this past season, and still return guys like Simeon Harris, who had a big game against the Broncos in 2025, and K\u2019Vion Thunderbird, who will be a pick for comeback player of the year.<\/p>\n
Matt Entz\u2019s group isn\u2019t looking like a rebuild, it\u2019s looking like a reload following a 9-4 first season in the Valley.
Although the schedules will come out later for the Pac-12 conference games, the four non-conference games look winnable outside of the trip to USC.<\/p>\n
Sacramento State, San Jose State, and Rice are on the early docket following the visit to the Trojans. All three of those contests appear to be games that Fresno State will win, giving them plenty of momentum entering the Pac-12 slate.<\/p>\n
The other seven teams in the Pac-12 are rebuilding in key spots, and face bigger uphill climbs than the Bulldogs.<\/p>\n
And even though, as of this writing, some sports books have Boise State and San Diego State as better betting odds to make the CFB Playoff, the Bulldogs will make a sneaky pick, and ten wins isn\u2019t out of the realm of possibilities for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With key additions so far this offseason, the question is begged to be asked; are the Fresno State…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113,115,78602],"class_list":["post-162010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-fresno-state-football","tag-pac-12-discussion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}