UNLV football putting faith in Brumfield to come through at Cal

By Mike Grimala (contact)

Friday, Sept. 9, 2022 | 2 a.m.

Marcus Arroyo spent the offseason debating which quarterback should be his starter, but after Doug Brumfield’s performance in the season opener, it sounds like the head coach is finally on board behind the 6-foot-6 sophomore.

In his weekly press conference, Arroyo expressed full confidence in Brumfield and said there are no longer any plans to get the team’s other quarterbacks any significant snaps, either in practice or in games.

“Doug will get the start,” Arroyo said, “and he’s obviously done a nice job from everything we’ve seen and obviously in Week 1. So he’s got to go and stack another good game.”

To translate: This is Brumfield’s show.

But that doesn’t mean Arroyo is going to take it easy on him. Now that Brumfield is The Man, UNLV is going to need him to play like it — again — on the road against Cal on Saturday.

Brumfield was surgical against a severely overmatched Idaho State defense in their season opener, completing 21-of-26 passes for 356 yards and four touchdowns, but Cal will present a decidedly more arduous challenge. The Golden Bears held UC Davis to 7.6 yards per pass attempt last week, while racking up two interceptions and two sacks.

Arroyo doesn’t care about the increased competition. The third-year head coach wants to see Brumfield take the next step in his development and deliver Big Man On Campus performances on a regular basis, regardless of the opponent (or the location, or the weather, or any other variable).

“Let’s see him do it again,” Arroyo said. “Challenge accepted. Do it again. Go do it again and again and again and again. That’s it. That’s consistency. Can you stack days? There are days when we all feel like we went and hit a home run. Can you do it again?”

Brumfield, who will be making just his fourth career start, appreciates Arroyo’s hard-driving style. While the plaudits poured in after Brumfield’s dazzling game (including a Mountain West Player of the Week award), Arroyo never stopped coaching him.

Brumfield said he prefers to let acclaim roll off his back.

“When you have the whole world congratulating you on a great performance, you need somebody like coach, who’s going to keep you level and focused on what you need to get better at,” Brumfield said. “Truth be told, you don’t need a thousand people telling you that you did great, you know? That really doesn’t benefit you. Me personally, I want to hear my errors. I want to know what I did wrong, so I can be better next time. Coach does a great job doing that with all of us.”

Arroyo was more than happy to oblige, according to Brumfield.

While most observers saw Brumfield’s near-perfect stat line against Idaho State and graded him accordingly, Arroyo spent the last two weeks pointing out instances where Brumfield could have done better.

“Going over the film, there were definitely a lot of errors,” Brumfield said. “Whether the public sees it or not, there’s things that we see that we want to correct.”

In order for UNLV to have a chance at Cal, it’s probably going to take another superstar showing at the sport’s most important position. With Arroyo pushing and prodding at every step, the Scarlet and Gray are relying on Brumfield to come through. Again.

Mike Grimala can be reached at 702-948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Mike on Twitter at twitter.com/mikegrimala.