Memphis (6-6) of the American Athletic Conference and Utah State (6-6) of the Mountain West Conference will meet in the First Responder Bowl on Tuesday at Gerald J. Ford Stadium on the SMU campus in Dallas.
After having its bowl game canceled last season, Memphis is just hoping there will not be another last-minute cancellation.
“I’m still going to hold my breath,” head coach Ryan Silverfield told reporters at a press conference on Monday afternoon. “It was 23-and-a-half hours before kickoff last year.”
Silverfield did add that he does not expect any issues, and his players will be excited about another opportunity.
“We feel comfortable that this bowl game’s going to get played, and I think guys are excited.”
The First Responder Bowl began in 2011 as the TicketCity Bowl before becoming the Heart of Dallas Bowl in 2013. It was originally played at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas but was moved to SMU’s campus in 2019.
The game has been known as the First Responder Bowl since 2014 and has featured 74 eventual NFL players.
This year both teams will be making their first appearances in the bowl, which means this will be the 12th consecutive time that the First Responder Bowl features a team that has never played in it. Memphis is also the first American Athletic Conference (AAC) team to play in this bowl game.
Memphis leads the all-time series 4-3 over Utah State, with wins in three of the last four meetings. Utah State last won in 1971.
Four of Memphis’s losses this season came to ranked teams — Mississippi State, Houston, UCF, and Tulane — and four were by seven points or less.
Memphis snapped a four-game skid with a win over Tulsa on November 10 that put the Tigers within one game of bowl eligibility, which they got the following week by beating North Alabama. Memphis (6-6) is bowl eligible for the ninth consecutive season.
Sophomore quarterback Seth Henigan leads the Memphis offense, which averages 35.1 points per game.
Henigan’s main targets will be tight end Caden Prieskorn and wide receivers Javon Ivory and Eddie Lewis. All three have over 500 receiving yards on the year and at least four touchdowns.
The Memphis offense also features running backs Asa Martin and Jevyon Ducker, who both average around 5 yards per carry and have combined for 12 touchdowns this season.
“They start with the run game, and they’ll make you commit guys to the box,” Utah State head coach Blake Anderson told reporters last week. “But he (Henigan) can make all the throws. He always seems to make plays when it’s critical.”
The Memphis defense is led by senior linebacker Zay Cullens, who has over 100 tackles on the season. Overall, the unit has five players with at least 56 tackles and ranks 75th in points allowed with 27.3 per game.
Utah State (6-6) is making its tenth bowl appearance in the last 12 years and is looking for back-to-back bowl wins for the second time in program history.
After defeating UConn in its season opener, Utah State, similarly to Memphis, went on a four-game losing streak that included losses to Alabama, Weber State, UNLV, and BYU, only to snap the skid with a win against a quality Air Force team.
That was Utah State’s best win of the season, followed by a win over San Jose State to become bowl eligible in the season’s penultimate week.
“To be able to go from 1-4 to 6-6, that’s not our standard, but it says a lot about these guys, and they’re excited to play,” Anderson said.
Utah State had many important players suffer injuries this season, including senior quarterback Logan Bonner, who suffered a season-ending foot injury in September.
Junior quarterback Cooper Legas took Bonner’s place, and the passing offense has struggled, with the team averaging 200.4 pass yards per game, 104th fewest of 131 teams in the country.
Senior running back Calvin Tyler Jr. has been the bright spot on the Utah State offense.
Tyler has 1,043 rushing yards and seven touchdowns on the year and became just the 11th Utah State player ever to amass 2,000 rushing yards in his career.
Defensively, Utah State has two All-conference performers at defensive back in Ike Larsen and Hunter Reynolds. The pair have combined for seven interceptions this season.
Also, watch out for defensive end Daniel Grzesiak (6.5 sacks) and middle linebacker AJ Vongphachanh (92 tackles) on the Utah State defense.
The 2022 First Responder Bowl will kick off at 2:15 p.m. CST on December 27.
