Photos by Roe Borunda / The Collegian
Last Saturday, Fresno State convincingly won its home opener against Weber State at Bulldog Stadium.
With the final score ending in a crushing 37-10 victory for the Bulldogs, head coach Tim DeRuyter started off his era with success.
“I’m extremely proud of everything that happened tonight. To go out there and the Red Wave — I thought that the crowd was great,” DeRuyter said. “I was proud of the effort of our team.”
Early in the game the ’Dogs forced Weber State to punt, and their new-look offense came out aggressively with a passing play from their own three-yard line. Junior quarterback Derek Carr hooked up with redshirt freshman Devante Adams on a play that resulted in a big gain getting the Bulldogs off to a fast start.
“He’s a great player. It shows how great our depth is at receiver,” Carr said. “I’m just proud of our receiving corps as a whole!”
DeRuyter has let it be known that the style of offense he wants to run will be aggressive. As on Saturday, there were a multitude of long passing plays called from the offensive playbook.
“We wanted to be aggressive,” DeRuyter said. “We don’t want to be conservative, but we want to take our shots where we think we have them. That’s going to be our style.”
Senior running back Robbie Rouse continued to inch closer to the Fresno State football rushing record held by legend Ron Rivers. Now tied with Ryan Mathews for second at 3,280 yards, Rouse needs 198 yards to break the record. He’ll look to continue his success next Saturday against Oregon.
“He’s the kind of guy that if you’re in a phone both with him, you wouldn’t be able to catch him. He’s going to make people miss,” DeRuyter said. “I like him in our scheme. He’s dynamic. He’s electric.”
Being Rouse’s first game back in live action since last season at San Diego State, he didn’t miss a beat amassing 123 yards on 22 carries and scoring two touchdowns. With Carr hitting the majority of his passes to multiple targets and Rouse running through holes in opposing defense, the ’Dogs offense was clicking on all cylinders.
“This was my first time going live since San Diego State. So it felt good to be back out there and help my team out,” Rouse said. “There’s a lot of draws in there (the playbook), and that’s great for me because it leaves me in one-on-one situations and my line making blocks.”
Defensively, the Bulldogs were strong from start to finish. However, in the third quarter, Fresno State allowed the Wildcats to gain momentum as they scored a touchdown about a quarter into the second half.
“I think, overall, we approached playing with a fanaticism that we wanted to play with. We did a really good job against the run,” DeRuyter said. “We gave them reason in the third quarter to be encouraged because we didn’t play very well. We didn’t play very inspired.”
The Bulldogs travel to Oregon Saturday to face the Ducks in their stadium. This will be Fresno State’s first game against a Top 25 team this season. Coach DeRuyter knows that in order to have a chance to pull off an upset, the team will have to be more disciplined.
“We’ve got a heck of a lot of work to do to get more discipline. We had way too many penalties,” he said.
Overall, DeRuyter was really pleased with his team’s performance and his coaching staff. He was especially pleased that his staff was able to smoothly transition his new schemes into the offense and defense, which happened during last spring and in the summer.
“I think they did a tremendous job starting back in January until now installing our schemes on both sides,” DeRuyter said. “We’ve got some things to clean up, but I like where we’re at after this first game.”