LOS ANGELES, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 The Bulldogs posted their lowest offensive output in 11 years as No. 14 USC coasted to victory Friday night, 39-0, in the first game of the 2026 Fresno State football season.<\/p>\n
Making his second career start at quarterback — and first since the 2024 Famous Idaho Potato Bowl — Buchanan HS grad Jayden Mandal completed 7 of 15 attempts for 77 passing yards. <\/p>\n
Mandal was sacked five times, brought down in the end zone twice for a safety, intercepted and stripped for a fumble. There were certainly “ups and downs” for the fourth-year junior QB, as head coach Matt Entz put it.<\/p>\n
“There were times I felt like he looked really good in there, and then, there were times where he dropped his eyes and started watching the pass rush a little bit,” said Entz.<\/p>\n
“That’s probably a little bit of inexperience, whatever you want to call it. He just hasn’t played a lot of football, and so that’s why we wanted to keep him out there all night long.”<\/p>\n
Backup QB Khristian Martin entered the game briefly to start the second quarter, yet the Maryland transfer only ran the ball twice – including a 4th down conversion called back for a false start.<\/p>\n
The Fresno State offense totaled 116 yards — its lowest output since gaining just 89 total yards in a 2015 loss to San Diego State. Excluding sacks, the Bulldogs mustered 59 rushing yards on 20 carries.<\/p>\n
Whereas Mandal was making his first-ever regular season start Friday, USC quarterback Jayden Maiava was nearly perfect in his 33rd career start.<\/p>\n
Entz referred to Maiava as “a Heisman candidate” postgame, and the fifth-year senior played like it, completing 23 of 25 pass attempts for 349 yards and three touchdowns. <\/p>\n
Fresno State still forced two turnovers from the high-octane USC offense. In the first quarter, Sacramento State transfer Dylan Hampsten punched out the football and Clovis West grad Tytus Khajavi recovered.<\/p>\n
Former USC Trojan Deijon Laffitte also forced a fumble in the third quarter, but on the next play, the Trojan defense swarmed Mandal for their second safety of the night.<\/p>\n
Entz described the Bulldogs’ season opener in two words — “snowball effect.”<\/p>\n
“I know we’re a better football team than this, and this is unacceptable,” said Entz. “The minute we get over the Grapevine, we’re thinking about going 1-0 next week.”<\/p>\n
That will be against Sacramento State in the home opener at Valley Children’s Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 14 at 7:30 p.m. PT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 The Bulldogs posted their lowest offensive output in 11 years as No. 14…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-454277","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\/454277","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=454277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}