San Diego State quarterback Danny O’Neil may be inclined to stand on his tippy toes when he looks to his left across the line of scrimmage.
SDSU’s offensive line includes the team’s two tallest players — 6-foot-8 left tackle Joe Borjon and 6-9 left guard Christian Jones.
Borjon was helped from the field by two assistants after suffering an apparent left knee injury in the final minute of the first half.
In Borjon’s absence, Jones slid over to left tackle and the 6-foot-3, 320-pound Myles Murao came in at left guard.
“It’s always a good thing to have big people, especially up front,” SDSU coach Sean Lewis said as the team prepared for its season opener against Texas A&M-Commerce. “It’s as old as time that big people beat up little people, so you want to acquire as many big people up there as possible.
“The quarterbacks have done a great job navigating and being able to see through those big trees. … I would say it’s more luxury than anything else.”
The prototype at QB may be a 6-4 guy who can throw the wall through a wall.
But there’s certainly plenty of documented success by guys shorter in stature.
Guys like the 6-foot O’Neil, a true freshman from Indiana.
“There’s been quite a few quarterbacks that are really, really special, really, really talented that were 6-foot guys and that’s the way they’ve operated their whole lives,” Lewis said. “They doing a great job finding the throwing lanes and being able to do the things that are necessary to operate back there.”
O’Neil’s challenges early on in his college debut had less to do with seeing over his linemen and more to do with missing his receivers. He overthrew the target on his first four throws Saturday before finding his bearings, finishing strong by completing 11 of 12 passes in the second half for 130 yards and two touchdowns. He was 22 of 33 for the game for 214 yards and two TDs.
Sign here, please
When he was hired Nov. 28, Lewis signed a Memorandum Of Understanding that outlined terms of a contract scheduled to pay him $1,753,100 this season.
Lewis has yet to sign his official contract, however.
“We expect it to be signed shortly,” an SDSU spokesman said.
While it seems unusual, it is not at all unprecedented.
Former SDSU coach Brady Hoke took 10 months to sign his contract when he was first hired in 2009. Hoke took a year to sign when he returned as head coach in 2020.
All of SDSU’s assistant coaches are signed.
The salary pool for the SDSU football staff, including 10 full-time assistants, operations, office and support staff, was listed as $3,73 million on the term sheet. The pool covers 10 full-time assistant coaches, operations/office staff and support staff, including (but not limited to) recruiting staff, offensive and defensive analysts, strength and conditioning coaches and graduate assistants.
Sizing up the crowd
SDSU announced a crowd of 25,180 for the game with a turnstile total of 18,106.
That’s better than last season’s opener against Ohio, which drew 23,867 (16,831 turnstile), but well off the 34,046 announced (26,816 turnstile) for the 2022 opener against Arizona.
Season-ticket sales
Season-ticket sales approached 10,000 within 48 hours of kickoff, totaling 9,852 as of Thursday.
That’s not far off last season’s total of 10,718, which was expected to be substantially less had there not been a coaching change.
Season-ticket sales reached 15,974 two years ago during Snapdragon’s debut.
Say what?
One longtime Aztecs fan sitting in the stands reported that after penalty flags were thrown on two of Saturday’s first four plays, fans around him “asked for Brady Hoke to return like a bunch of times. … Kinda hilarious.”
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