Saturday, Oct. 31, 2009

Martin comes off the bench to lead the Broncos in rushing with 63 yards and a touchdown

By BY NICK JEZIERNY

Boise State certainly wasn't pleased with how it ran the ball for much of Saturday's 45-7 victory over San Jose State.

The Broncos wound up with a respectable 140 yards, a deceiving number because 74 of those yards came on two runs and 67 of them came in the final quarter when the outcome long had been determined.

"They did kind of what we thought they were going to do and loaded up the box with safeties," Boise State coach Chris Petersen said. "They have physical defensive linemen. I just think they played more physical than us early on."

In the first half, Boise State had seven rushing attempts that went for no gain or lost yardage.

"Do we want to have negative runs in the first half? No," said assistant coach Chris Strausser, who is the run-game coordinator. "At the same time, we're trying to solve the puzzle in the first half and then finish the game."

San Jose State entered Saturday's game ranked last in the WAC in rushing defense at 259.8 games per game.

"We stopped the run, followed through on our assignments and did what we were supposed to do," SJSU safety Duke Ihenacho said of the first half when the Broncos had eight net yards rushing.

You'll get no argument from BSU running back Jeremy Avery, who finished with 50 yards - with 38 of them coming on one second-half carry.

"They were real physical," he said. "They were hungry to ball and they sent all 11 to the ball."

After Boise State built a 38-7 lead, the Broncos turned to Doug Martin in the fourth quarter. Martin, who hasn't played or had much practice time in a few weeks because of an injury, got six carries in the final 8 minutes. He had a 36-yard touchdown run in the closing seconds.

"We needed to find out where he was because he really hasn't done anything for two weeks," Strausser said. "He's not really the guy you'd like to bring in in the fourth quarter, but we had to find out if he was ready to go."

Martin broke several tackles on his scoring run and reinforced Boise State's philosophy on the run game.

"That's always how we view the run game," Strausser said. "We want to see where we are in the fourth quarter and not the first quarter. Everything we do, particularly in the run game, is we're always looking to see how we finish as opposed to how we start."