{"id":449533,"date":"2026-09-01T03:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T03:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/449533\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T03:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T03:36:09","slug":"jayden-mandal-named-starting-quarterback-for-fresno-state-entering-2026-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/449533\/","title":{"rendered":"Jayden Mandal named starting quarterback for Fresno State entering 2026 season"},"content":{"rendered":"

FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 Clovis-born quarterback Jayden Mandal knew he wanted to play for the Fresno State Bulldogs from a young age – yet it was a matter of which sport.<\/p>\n

The former two-sport star was committed to the Fresno State baseball team before changing course. He accepted the only Division 1 FBS offer he received out of Buchanan High School, from Jeff Tedford and Fresno State.<\/p>\n

Mandal saw several transfers come through Fresno to compete against him, but this offseason, the redshirt junior QB impressed enough to win the starting job.<\/p>\n

“We’ve named a quarterback, and that’s Jayden Mandal,” said head coach Matt Entz at his weekly press conference Monday. “Excited for Jayden. He’s done a tremendous job, had a really good fall camp.”<\/p>\n

Mandal beat out Maryland transfer Khristian Martin, and Entz said he based the decision on data he gathered from practice. Beyond the numbers, Mandel made his case with three key qualities.<\/p>\n

“Timing and accuracy were probably the two biggest things that stood out, and then ball security was another one,” said Entz.<\/p>\n

Mandal has played 33 snaps over his first 3 years at Fresno State, making one start in the 2024 Famous Idaho Potato Bowl before losing the entire 2025 season to a string of arm injuries.<\/p>\n

[RELATED] Jayden Mandal enters QB battle feeling “better than before surgery”<\/a><\/p>\n

“We tried to keep that pretty quiet last year, just because we didn’t want opponents to know that we were only dealing with two quarterbacks that were able to play,” Entz said. “It was probably mid-spring before he was able to push the ball downfield… The evaluation process last year stopped once the elbow issue came up. I mean, there was no evaluation, so really it was a clean slate going into the spring.”<\/p>\n

Mandal is the first quarterback in 9 years to be recruited by Fresno State out of high school and start Week 1 for the Bulldogs. <\/p>\n

Previous Week 1 starters Marcus McMaryion (2018), Jorge Reyna (2019), Jake Haener (2020-22), Mikey Keene (2023-24) and E.J. Warner (2025) all transferred in. <\/p>\n

Derek Carr (2011-13) was the last Fresno State starting QB to be “homegrown” or go directly from a high school in the Central Valley to Fresno State.<\/p>\n

“I really took that out of the decision-making. That would be unfair to everybody else [if] just because he grew up here that he gets a step-up. He had to earn it, and he did,” said Entz.<\/p>\n

“He told me in the spring when he was coming off the injury a little bit, ‘Coach, I want to be the starter and I’m going to do everything I can.'”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 Clovis-born quarterback Jayden Mandal knew he wanted to play for the Fresno State Bulldogs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-449533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449533","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=449533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}