Rebels’ season could hang on Decker’s injury in 37-3 loss to No. 13 UCLA

By Taylor Bern

Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015 | 1:49 a.m.

Of the many team goals UNLV had for its first three weeks, a stretch that sends the team two and then three time zones away sandwiched around a top-15 opponent at home, the most important one for this season was to get into week four healthy.

That hope ended in the first quarter Saturday night when senior quarterback Blake Decker turned upfield and crumpled to the turf seconds later. No one touched Decker, who is UNLV’s most important player because of both his position and the backups behind him, which makes the remainder of the weekend particularly uneasy for the team and fans until a diagnosis of what happened to his right hamstring is released.

“We’ll see. It’s a high hamstring and we’ll find out,” UNLV coach Tony Sanchez said of Decker’s status. “It’s the nature of football.”

An athlete rarely goes down untouched and emerges unscathed, and seeing sophomore Kurt Palandech flip and fumble his way to 4-of-15 passing for 4 yards (plus 31 rushing yards) inspired not even one of the 31,262 in the announced attendance that UNLV could survive without Decker. His future health is the most important thing to come out of Saturday’s game, and if Decker’s able to return by the next home game against Idaho State, this outcome will feel entirely different than it does in the wake of UNLV’s 37-3 home loss to No. 13 UCLA.

“I’m not going to just forget about it,” said Palandech, who handed the Bruins a touchdown right before halftime and lost a fumble on his first drive after the break. “I’m going to watch the film and learn from it, but there wasn’t much positive there.”

UNLV has limited options if Decker, who dealt with several upper-body injuries last season but played in every game, has to miss an extended amount of time. Obviously Palandech, a junior-college transfer this offseason, needs to improve, and Sanchez said plans for true freshman Dalton Sneed to redshirt would change depending on Decker’s diagnosis, which is expected at some point after he gets X-rays on Sunday.

The only other two quarterbacks in the program are unavailable. Redshirt freshman Kevin Thomson is out for the year after getting Tommy John surgery and walk-on freshman Christian Lopez, a Green Valley High grad, is ineligible because he’s only a partial academic qualifier. If things get drastic, defensive back Troy Hawthorne, who was the trigger man on a first-quarter botched fake field goal attempt, entered the program as a quarterback, but all of those scenarios depend first on finding out the extent of Decker’s injury.

“It’s unfortunate, but next man in and we’ll move on,” Sanchez said.

Anyone who glanced at the board in a sports book knew the final margin wasn’t a surprise. UCLA closed as a 32-point favorite at most places in town and despite a relatively stout defensive effort from UNLV, the Bruins chipped away until the scoreboard reflected expectations.

It took a Nicolai Bornand 32-yard field goal with 3:04 remaining to prevent the first home shutout since 2003, and this one would have been in front of the 12th-largest home crowd in program history. Yet even that provided little solace given that the few Rebel fans who stuck around still couldn’t walk out with a winning ticket.

What should be a big glaring positive was UNLV’s defense, which allowed a touchdown on UCLA’s first drive and then none the rest of the half. This is now back-to-back weeks with solid performances on that side of the ball before halftime, although production dropped off thereafter both times as well.

“We were able to help each other out executing each play,” said defensive end Sonny Sanitoa.

UCLA running back Paul Perkins eventually broke through for a couple of big runs and finished with 151 yards and two touchdowns. Bruins freshman quarterback Josh Rosen followed up his stellar debut with something closer to average but still was solid with 223 yards, a touchdown and an interception on 22-of-42 passing.

“It wasn’t anything they did … I told you to temper expectations,” UCLA coach Jim Mora said. “It ain’t going to be as pretty every week as it was last week.”

If a few — OK, maybe a few plus several — things had broken UNLV’s way, this could have been a game for a while. Even going into halftime down 17-0 could have been viewed positively if it hadn’t come at the expense of the starting quarterback and as a result of the backup on first down blindly flipping the ball into the waiting hands of UCLA linebacker Kenny Young instead of taking a sack.

Instead of those positives, the Rebels left their 2015 home debut with more personal fouls (four), fewer third-down conversions (two) and just as many fumbles as points. There also was that fake field goal attempt that went nowhere when the score was 10-0 and a blocked punt that handed UCLA the ball inside UNLV’s 10-yard line just to top it off.

The particulars, though, vary widely in importance depending on what exactly happened when Decker scrambled to his right, planted his right leg and grabbed his hamstring while falling forward for a first down on the final play of the first quarter. Everything changed for UNLV at that point, and the question is how long the new reality will last.

“I felt ready,” Palandech said, “but we obviously have a lot of improvement to do.”

Taylor Bern can be reached at 948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Taylor on Twitter at twitter.com/taylorbern.