Malachi Nelson and Ashton Jeanty spearhead a Boise State Broncos offense in 2024.
I think we’ll make quite the team. The pheasants won’t know what hit them.
– Oswald Mosely, The Peaky Blinders
There were two surprising events that involved Boise State football in 2023. The first is that they fired former head coach Andy Avalos, despite having a season that saw them win the Mountain West Conference (MWC). The second is that they acquired Malachi Nelson via the transfer portal from the USC Trojans.
Those of you who play in Campus2Canton (C2C) or College Fantasy Football (CFF) leagues will be familiar with the name. Nelson was one of the most coveted recruits in the 2023 cycle. As a five star prospect out of Los Alamitos, CA, Nelson was ranked as the QB5 in his class (it was a top-heavy year for the position). He was the number 12 overall prospect according to the 247 Sports Composite.
As a recap for those who might have missed it: Nelson sat on the bench this year as a True Freshman behind Caleb Williams. At the end of the season, Nelson hit the transfer portal, with many of us expecting him to land in another P5 program. Around the same time, USC’s back-up, Miller Moss, made his debut as a starter in the bowl game and absolutely torched Louisville’s secondary.
As it happens, Boise State was also dealing with a little bit of transfer portal friction themselves. Star WR Eric McAllister bailed on the team in November, and All-World RB Ashton Jeanty was in the portal flirting with high-end programs like Texas, UGA and Ohio State. Lucky for the Broncos faithful, something ($$) persuaded Jeanty to come back to Idaho for his last season of CFB.
Additionally, my sources over at VolumePigs tell me that Jeanty took on an active role in recruiting Malachi Nelson to Boise. Leaked text messages obtained by the VP interns show Jeanty reassuring Nelson before his transfer: “I think we’ll make quite the team. The G5 peasants won’t know what hit them”.
Evidently, this pitch proved convincing to Nelson (yes, I just that made that up), who in all likelihood is simply looking to get on the field in 2024, and then bounce back to the P5 (or I guess, P4 now—that still looks weird) in 2025.
I think that’s an important consideration to keep in mind for anyone out there who is currently a shareholder of Nelson in a C2C or Dynasty CFF league. While he might not be quite as good as promised coming out of high school, the book isn’t written on him yet; and in this era of the transfer portal, I’d expect this isn’t his last move. Who knows—maybe he even ends up back at USC in 2026 or beyond?
As far as the immediate future, to answer the question of: how productive can this duo be in 2024, the first place I’d start is by looking at the coaching staff.
Coaching & System
Anybody who’s read one of my articles before knows that I generally like to follow a similar pattern for these types of profiles. When talking about CFF, who calls the plays and what their track record is at the position of interest is just as — if not more — important than how good the player actually is at football. There are all kinds of scrubs who dominate the CFB stat sheet every year because they play in the right system. Call it being in the right place at the right time.
As mentioned, the Broncos fired head coach Andy Avalos midway through the season. The man who replaced him— Spencer Danielson, has been with Boise State in various capacities since 2017. He began as a grad assistant, and slowly moved up the ranks taking positions as co-DC (2019), DL (2019), LB (2021), and eventually DC in 2021.
Given his defensive background, I don’t there’s much utility we can glean, though I don’t doubt that he’ll have a hand in shaping the offensive identity. At least from the RB perspective, that’s good news, because the Broncos have been a very successful running team for several years now. Of the years that Danielson has been with the program, only two seasons (2020-2021) saw BSU fail to produce a 1000-yard rusher. Technically, that’s only one, as the COVID year doesn’t really count. Furthermore, the RB1 in CFF this past season was BSU’s Ashton Jeanty. So there’s a pretty good breadcrumb trail here for RB production.
The QB position, on the other hand, is more of a question mark. Brett Rypien’s 2018 season is probably the best from a statistical standpoint since Danielson’s been with the program. Given that Danielson was a mere pup on the coaching staff at the time, I wouldn’t put too much stock into this pattern.
Indeed, for QB we need to dig a bit deeper. Taking a look at who will most likely be calling plays on offense, we find ourselves looking at the history of a man named Bush Hamden.
Hamden joined the program in the 2023 offseason, taking over as OC and QBs coach. Prior to making the move out West, he spent one year as the QBs coach at Missouri (2022), and two as the WRs/QBs coach (2020-2021). Prior to that he spent time as the OC of Washington (2018-2019). He took a brief break from CFB to coach QBs for the Atlanta Falcons in 2017, following multiple seasons serving in various on-field positions at UW (WR/PGC, 2015-2016), Davidson (OC, 2014), Arkansas State (co-OC, 2013) and Florida (WRs,2012).
Unfortunately, there are not a lot of years in there where Hamden was calling plays for his respective team. For that, we are restricted to this past season, the two years at UW (2018-2019), Davidson (2014) and Arkansas State (2013) for a survey of his history in this capacity.
This past year was sort of a disaster for the QB position for BSU; maybe the offense just wasn’t suited to Taylor Green’s skillset. Green finished the year passing for less than 1800 yards, and was eventually replaced by Maddux Madsen in October.
His years at UW were probably his most successful as a play caller. The 2019 season saw former five star QB Jacob Eason pass for 3000 yards, and score 23 TDs.
The previous season (2018), it was Jake Browning who led the Huskies in passing. Browning was more of a runner than Eason. Browning scored four times on the ground, while passing for 16, with over 3100 yards.
Davidson’s numbers are harder to find since they’re an FCS program, but I tracked them down anyways for your convenience (see the sacrifices I make for you ungrateful bastards?).
The lead passer from that season— J.P. Douglas, only played in seven games. Douglas completed 172 of his 261 pass attempts, accumulating 1715 yards in the process. He scored 11 times via the air, and four times on the ground. He actually rushed for an additional 258 yards on 66 carries. So if there’s one thing we can take away from this exercise, it’s that Hamden is not afraid to rush his QB if he’s got an able runner. I’m not saying that’ll be the case with Nelson; I actually don’t know what his running ability is. The 247 guys seem to suggest that he’s capable when given room, but this is a question mark headed in 2024.
Here’s an excerpt from 247 Sports on Nelson as a prospect:
Tall, lean, and long-armed with slender natural build but frame to add some mass. Fluid mover in general, including arm motion and lower-body mechanics. Range of motion in movement patterns fosters excellent off-platform passing ability and general playmaking acumen. Alters arm angles and delivers with accuracy. Vertical arm strength, intermediate velocity, and touch to all fields speak to elite arm talent. Perhaps the most natural thrower in an excellent 2023 QB group. Flashes the functional athleticism to extend plays outside the pocket, where finding a receiver is almost always the priority over tucking and running. Still, athletic enough to hurt defenses with legs on occasion. Sees the field well and processes naturally. Production has risen each of first three years in high school. INT rate is on the higher end of the spectrum for Top247 quarterbacks — one every 30.6 throws as a junior, one every 29.9 in freshman through junior seasons. Adding mass and strength will help withstand physical demands of high-major ball. Very likely one of the nation’s top quarterbacks — and overall prospects regardless of position — in the 2023 class. Projects as an impact starter at the high-major level with long-term early-round NFL Draft potential.
Closing
Those who have played CFF in the past will know that there are generally only two types of QBs who finish with elite seasons statistically: those that are dual threats, and those that play in high frequency air raid systems. I say high frequency to emphasize the point. Simply playing in an offense that refers to itself as ‘air raid’ is not enough.
Why do I bring this up now? Well, when assessing the outlook for Malachi Nelson in 2024, we basically need to go through a set of questions to arrive at a logical conclusion for what to expect: 1) who calls the plays and what’s his track record, and 2) does his profile match either of the two groups that typically perform well in CFF?
The answer to number one has been half-answer already. We know who the OC is. His track record is not very impressive, at least, so far. On the second, I’m going to go with ‘no’ as my answer. While I’d expect Nelson to move around a bit, I’m not expecting massive output along the ground. It’ll be the RBs (who am I kidding—RB with no ‘s’), who scores a lot of the TDs.
And yet, there’s something about Nelson’s profile that intrigues me. It’s rare to find a former five star recruit, one year removed from that rating, make his way down to the G5 level. Nelson was seen by some as the QB1 of his class (yes, even over Nico and Arch) not so long ago. He might not be an elite CFF asset, but I think he could still be pretty good. The range of 25 PPG doesn’t feel so far out of the question.
As far as Ashton Jeanty is concerned, I mean… yea, he’s in for a monster season. Acquire him at all costs in CFF. What might be a more interesting question is what is his long term outlook? Boise State have sent a number of RBs into the league over the last 15 years, and many of them have had success. However, the G5 level of competition is always going to be seen as a negative in the evaluation process, and that’ll ding his draft capital. For those who are unaware, the 2025 class is also shaping up to be a pretty strong one for RBs. Even still, judging by the offer sheet he racked up in his one week in the portal (the aforementioned Texas and UGAs of the world), maybe Jeanty’s a special case. Either way, if you have him in a C2C format, you will not regret having him on your college side. We’ll cross the NFL bridge when we get there.
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