Some people say to give the customers what they want, but that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do.
– Steve Jobs, Former Tech Icon
If I had a dollar for every time a VP intern asked me “why are we spending time on this player, nobody’s talking about him” I’d be a (multi) millionaire. “Our job is not to write about who they want, but to write about who they’re going to want before they know they do” is my reply.
Young people these days have short memories (I think it’s all the TikToking), and it’s for that reason that the Steve Jobs quote above is hung in every meeting room of the VP offices, which are located across North America and Europe. We’re still working on getting something concrete in Tokyo.
So, who is this player in question that the headline is referring to? That is New Mexico State’s (NMS) WR Trent Hudson. Hudson flirted briefly with the transfer portal this cycle, but desired to return to the Aggies (no not Texas A&M, the real Aggies—hello!) for one more season.
Trent Hudson — 6’3″, 200 lbs.
Hudson is a former three-star JuCo product from Trinity Valley CC in the C/O 2023. In his one season with TVCC, he caught 50 passes for 778 yards and eight scores in ten games. He was originally an unranked prospect from Killeen, TX, which is famous as the birthplace of YouTube sensation and one-time Alabama Football commit Kendell Jones. Had Jones actually made it into that Alabama signing class, I think that would have been the pound-for-pound biggest recruiting class in history when considering the other names in that group.
Anyways, I’m getting side tracked here. Hudson, NMS WR, had a fairly productive year in his first season of FBS ball. He caught 35 passes on 58 targets for 565 yards and ten scores in 14 games (~11 PPG). He had season highs of 21, 27, and 30 points vs. UMass, SMHU, and Liberty, respectively.
He briefly flirted with the transfer portal in December and received offers from Washington State, UConn, and UTSA. Hudson decided to stick it out in New Mexico (maybe he started watching the show Breaking Bad and figured NM is more interesting than he originally thought, I don’t know… that’s my leading theory, at least).
He was a field stretcher for the Aggies in 2023, with season highs of 78 and 42 yards for his longest receptions. Those passes most likely came off the arm of Diego Pavia, who is no longer with the program (transferred to Vanderbilt to follow his old coach). It remains to be seen who will secure the QB1 role going forward, but at the very least, it could be an upgrade from Pavia in the sense that Diego ran the football a lot. The proclivity to run and the ability to execute said proclivity is great for the CFF value of that QB, but it can be a drag on the WRs. To that end, maybe the next guy is more pass-oriented.
New Mexico State also (to my knowledge) didn’t add any big names in the WR room, so that’s also a plus here. It should be Hudson’s room. A big fish, little pond type of situation.
New Staff
I was unreasonably happy to find out this was — indeed — the Tony Sanchez who’s brother, Kenny Sanchez, coached at Bishop Gorman (BG) High School in Las Vegas when former star QB Tate Martell and the TV show, QB1—Beyond The Lights, were on campus.
For those who may be unaware, BG is a powerhouse high school in Nevada, and have won multiple nationwide high school football championships. Some notable recent alumni include former UW WR Rome Odunze and former UCLA QB Dorian Thompson Robinson. DTR, if you can imagine it, actually had to play WR while Tate was at BG.
You can find the season of that show somewhere out there in the ether if you’re so inclined. I recommend it, it’s a good show—not as good as Netflix’ Last Chance U, mind you, but a good show nonetheless.
Now, on to today’s business. Tony Sanchez was formerly the WRs coach at New Mexico State (2022-23) before being promoted internally to become the head coach. Prior to coaching at NMS, he was the head coach of UNLV (2015-2019). Prior to UNLV, he was, of course, the head coach of BG (2009-14). He won multiple national championships during his time in high school but has been somewhat of a disaster as a head coach. He did have three straight 1,000-yard rushers at UNLV though, which as you can imagine, might be quite tricky since the team was probably losing in most of its games.
It was Lexington Thomas who did it in back-to-back seasons in 2017 (1336) and 2018 (1067), and then Charles Williams did it in 2019 (1257). The most carries in any of those seasons was 215, so not exactly heroic volume concentration, but it’s better than nothing, and should be noted ahead of the 2024 season. So consider this your notice.
Closing
So, what’s the vision for a player like this? It’s hard to justify drafting him in any round other than the last of a regular CFF format. I like him much more in Bestball formats since you won’t have to worry about the ups and downs that come with players at a program like New Mexico State.
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