The Nevada football team has started three quarterbacks in its first six games this season and enters Saturday’s contest against San Jose State with uncertainty at the position. But the Wolf Pack is not alone. So does San Jose State.<\/p>\n
An arm injury kept Nevada starter Carter Jones out for Saturday’s game at North Dakota State. Backup AJ Bianco injured his ankle in the first quarter against the Bison before limping through the rest of the contest.<\/p>\n
With the status of Jones and Bianco uncertain entering this week’s game preparation, Nevada is playing it by ear on who will available between those two plus third-stringer Luke Duncan. Nevada head coach Jeff Choate said he was en route to see head trainer Alfredo Mosquera before stopping at his Monday press conference.<\/p>\n
“I was actually on my way down to see Alfredo to talk about where he feels we’re at,” Choate said. “We had some diagnostic stuff done with AJ yesterday, so that’s what I was going to go talk to him about, getting the results of that and reading that. I don’t think there will be anything that AJ will do tonight in practice, but Monday’s not a big deal in terms of that anyway. I think it’s important to get Carter to throw a little bit today and see how he’s feeling.”<\/p>\n
Choate said Nevada’s Tuesday and Wednesday practices are the most important of the week. Jones missed both of those sessions last week, which caused him to miss the game. Bianco suffered his ankle injury on a scramble on Nevada’s second series and was noticeably limping thereafter.<\/p>\n
“I think AJ’s injury is maybe not as bad as we thought it was gonna be, which is good news,” Choate said. “But again, I wanna confirm that. Talking to Carter yesterday and talking to Alfredo yesterday, I think he’s feeling better. I think the combination of those two will kind of see where it all stands.”<\/p>\n
In his fourth college start in five seasons at Nevada, Bianco completed 17-of-34 passes for 190 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions against NDSU, which entered the game ranked No. 1 in the nation in pass defense. Bianco also rushed for 23 yards and a touchdown, leading Nevada to 17 points, the second most allowed by the Bison this season. Choate said Bianco’s refusal to exit the game after the ankle sprain was courageous.<\/p>\n
Asked whether Jones is still the starter or if Bianco showed enough to take over that job if both are healthy, Choate said health is really the big factor.<\/p>\n
“I think AJ did a lot of things in that game,” Choate said. “I think this is gonna come down to who is the most healthy and who’s the most ready to go play. I don’t think that’s determined. The reason Carter was the starter going into the year is because of his performance and how he operated in camp, and AJ’s been unbelievable. You talk about earning people’s respect. I don’t think there’s anybody that didn’t walk away from that with a tremendous amount of respect for AJ Bianco and his toughness and his grittiness and his competitiveness, including me.”<\/p>\n
Jones has completed 59.6 percent of his passes for 654 yards with three touchdowns and two interceptions this season, adding 57 rushing yards and a touchdown. Bianco has completed 53.4 percent of his passes for 326 yards with two touchdowns and three interceptions this season, adding 75 rushing yards and two touchdowns. <\/p>\n
“I feel very confident in both of those guys, and I just gotta see who’s gonna be the most ready to go based on what their health is,” Choate said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Nevada’s opponent Saturday also is dealing with uncertainty at quarterback. San Jose State starter Luke Weaver was listed as questionable with an undisclosed upper-body injury last Saturday against UTEP and did not play in the 24-11 win. In his place was true freshman Daniel Rolovich, who completed 12-of-23 passes for 193 yards and a touchdown while adding 39 rushing yards in his first college action.<\/p>\n
Weaver has thrown for 1,529 yards and a Mountain West-best 11 touchdowns this season, adding one rushing score. Choate credited San Jose State offensive coordinator Craig Stutzmann for helping Rolovich through his first college start.<\/p>\n
“I thought Stutzman did a good job of, especially in the openers, of helping Rolovich calm down,” Choate said. “They had some designed quarterback runs. ‘Hey, go get hit. Feel what it feels like. You’re going to survive.’ And then quick throws, easy throws, some pocket movement to help him. I thought he did a good job with that, but really not unlike our game (against UTEP), they found the runs and that’s kind of the MO on UTEP. If you just keep running it, sooner or later they’re going to start popping, and that kind of what happened in that game, too. <\/p>\n
“But I thought the kid did a nice job of getting rid of the ball, making good decisions. He didn’t really put the ball in harm’s way. Threw it away a number of times when the protection broke down. I thought he played with poise, and I thought their offensive coordinator did a good job, especially in the openers, of getting him into the flow of the game.”<\/p>\n
Rolovich is the son of ex-Nevada offensive coordinator Nick Rolovich, the former head coach at Hawaii and Washington State who is now on Cal’s staff. Choate said his path crossed with Rolovich when Rolovich was Nevada’s coordinator from 2012-15. <\/p>\n
“I’ve known Coach Rolovich for a long time,” Choate said. “In fact, when he was here, I was at the University of Washington, and he had the Seattle area as his recruiting area. On Friday nights, I was kind of the local guy. We spent more than one Friday night standing on the sidelines, whether it was watching Lincoln High or Tumwater or whoever and just talking about coaching life and having a dialog. I followed his career to the time he was head coach at Hawaii and then obviously Washington State as well. I respect him a lot. I think he’s a good dude. He’s a free spirit. He is his own man. I think he’s a good football coach, and I know he enjoyed his time here. We’ve talked about his time here in Reno and how much he enjoyed that time here.”<\/p>\n
You can watch Jeff Choate’s full Monday press conference below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nevada football team has started three quarterbacks in its first six games this season and enters Saturday’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":["post-501555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501555","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=501555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}