San Diego, CA – On Saturday evening, San Diego State welcomed the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors to Snapdragon Stadium for a Mountain West conference matchup. This game came on the heels of a loss to Boise St. where starting quarterback Braxton Burmeister left the game with a concussion. He practiced this week but wasn’t cleared for the game, so that left safety Jalen
Mayden to take the helm. Luckily, Jalen has a strong history at the quarterback position. Coming out of high school he was a four star recruit at quarterback, but switched to safety after transferring from Mississippi St.
The first half of this game was a defensive battle where both offenses struggled to gain any type of momentum for the most part. There was a small glimmer of light towards the end of the half, the Aztecs were able sustain a nice drive and get into field goal range to put them up 3-0. In the
second half we saw the offense start to catch their groove behind the arm of Mayden. He threw for 159 yards in the fourth quarter and 322 for the game with a touchdown. With 1:19 left in the game, down one, Mayden was able to march down the field completing all five of his passes for 50 yards to set up a game winning field goal by Jake Browning. Aztecs won 16-14, and Jalen
went on to talk about his position change postgame.
“Me and coach had an agreement that whatever I need to do for the team and he feels he can see me there, I’ll be able to do it. Once he told me the team rallied around me and it just got itself done.”
Head Coach Brady Hoke went on to praise the adaptability of Jalen after the game.
“[On Jalen Mayden] He is an intelligent guy so he can pick up things really well… just like Jalen said, I asked him if he was interested and he said ‘if it helps the team I’ll do it’… that’s pretty cool you don’t see that in this day and age.”
After a performance like that, the question is do you roll with the hot quarterback or go back to Braxton. Coach Hoke said that there will be a competition so we’ll find out after the bye week who the starting quarterback will be.
