South Dakota’s season opener wasn’t perfect.

It was, however, 59-20.

The Coyotes sputtered on their first offensive possession, watched Central Connecticut march 64 yards for the game’s opening touchdown and gave the Blue Devils a short field later in the first half with a muffed punt.

Then South Dakota basically spent the rest of the afternoon reminding everyone which team was supposed to win this game.

The Coyotes piled up 594 yards, averaged 8.1 yards per carry, threw six touchdown passes and led 42-10 before the band could get on the field for halftime.

There are things to clean up.

There are also a lot of good grades to hand out.

Let’s get to the first Inside the Pack Report Card of 2026.

QUARTERBACK — A+

Yeah. Obviously.

Austyn Modrzewski’s first possession as QB1 went three plays, backwards and a quick punt.

His response?

How about seven touchdowns.

Modrzewski settled in almost immediately, dropping a 42-yard dime to Keyondray Jones-Logan on the next possession before finding Brayden White for the touchdown on fourth down.

Then he decided throwing the football wasn’t enough.

Coach Vitzthum told us on the Inside the Pack Podcast that Modrzewski had the fastest recorded speed on the team. We got our first exhibit late in the first quarter when he kept it, hit the edge and went 68 yards untouched.

Turns out Coach wasn’t kidding.

Modrzewski finished 16-of-20 for 304 yards, six passing touchdowns and zero interceptions. He added 81 yards and another score on the ground.

There was one miss he’ll want back. White got completely loose downfield late in the second quarter and Modrzewski simply missed him.

That’s about as mean as we can be.

The best part of his afternoon wasn’t even an explosive plays.

USD got the ball at its own 35 with 1:54 left before halftime, already leading 35-10. Plenty of teams take that score to the locker room.

South Dakota went hunting.

Twelve plays. Sixty-five yards. Touchdown with seven seconds left and absolutely demoralized an already worn down defense.

Modrzewski made throws, used his legs, managed the clock and finished it by finding Jesse Miller from two yards out.

Six touchdown passes. Seven total touchdowns. No turnovers.

First career start.

A+. Don’t overthink it.

RUNNING BACKS — B

This is one of those grades where the box score lies to you a little bit.

South Dakota finished with 267 rushing yards and 8.1 yards per carry.

Sounds like an A.

Watching the game? It didn’t always feel like one.

The Coyotes had very little going between the tackles early. Charles Pierre Jr. was hit for losses on two of his first three carries, and USD spent much of the first half searching for something consistent in the traditional run game.

Eventually, they found it.

Pierre started getting outside and finished with 77 yards on 10 carries, including runs of 18 and 12 yards. Carson Fletcher provided the group’s biggest moment when he went virtually untouched for a 24-yard touchdown in the second quarter.

That was the formula that seemed to work: get the backs moving horizontally, attack outside the tackle box and make CCSU defend sideline to sideline.

And then there’s KJL.

Keyondray Jones-Logan only carried it twice, but he absolutely wrecked the game as a receiver out of the backfield. Two catches. 103 yards. Gains of 42 and 61.

The explosive plays were there. The traditional inside run game just wasn’t nearly as dominant as the final rushing total suggests.

WIDE RECEIVERS / TIGHT ENDS — A

Pick a guy.

Seriously.

Brayden White? Five catches, 82 yards, two touchdowns.

Chris Herrin? Two catches, 29 yards and a touchdown.

Tennel Bryant? One catch.

It went 49 yards for a touchdown.

Jesse Miller? Three catches and the score that capped the two-minute drill before halftime.

Tysen Boze quietly chipped in three more catches.

The best thing about this group wasn’t necessarily one player going nuclear. It was that CCSU couldn’t take anything away.

Modrzewski threw six touchdowns to five different players.

That’s a nightmare for a defense.

White looked every bit like a legitimate No. 1 option, but South Dakota doesn’t appear interested in making this a one-man receiving corps.

OFFENSIVE LINE — B+

Pass protection?

Excellent.

Run blocking?

Work to do.

The most encouraging thing was how comfortable Modrzewski looked in the pocket. This was a redshirt freshman making his first collegiate start, and CCSU rarely made him look like one.

He wasn’t running for his life. He wasn’t constantly having to reset. He wasn’t getting blasted every other dropback. He had time.

And when you give a quarterback who was playing like that time, you get 304 yards and six touchdowns.

The run game was more frustrating.

South Dakota struggled to consistently create movement inside during the first half. The Coyotes eventually piled up 267 rushing yards, but 81 came from Modrzewski, including the 68-yard touchdown, and much of the running-back success came once USD started getting the ball toward the perimeter.

The other thing that gets circled on film: two false starts.

Both came at home.

Boise won’t be quieter.

That’s nitpicking in a game where the offense scored 59, but these grades aren’t supposed to be participation trophies.

Great day protecting the quarterback. Still some work to do moving people off the ball.

DEFENSIVE LINE — A-

The opening drive was ugly.

There’s no need to dress it up.

CCSU went 64 yards in 10 plays and spent most of the possession running the football directly at — and occasionally around — South Dakota.

Quarterback Brett Griffis was particularly annoying. He repeatedly escaped the pocket, including a 22-yard scramble that put CCSU at the three-yard line.

Early on, South Dakota didn’t look entirely sure how it wanted to handle the mobile quarterback. Then the front settled in. And this is where some context matters.

USD wasn’t sending the house. For much of the afternoon, the Coyotes were trying to generate pressure with four.

That’s difficult against a quarterback looking to escape, because once you lose rush-lane integrity, he’s gone.

South Dakota didn’t pile up sacks — Asher Tomaszewski recorded the lone sack — but the pressure started showing up. John Starman, Wade Abrams, Isaiah Wray and others forced throws before CCSU wanted to make them.

The result?

Central Connecticut threw 31 times for 115 yards.

That’s 3.7 yards per attempt.

You can live with one sack when the opposing passing attack produces basically nothing.

The first drive keeps this from an A.

Everything after it gets pretty close.

LINEBACKERS — A-

I’m still not entirely sure what was happening on CCSU’s first drive.

Were the linebackers not getting into position to effectively spy the quarterback?

Were they in position and simply not finishing plays?

Probably a little of both.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t great.

Then Wade Abrams started appearing on seemingly every tackle.

Abrams finished with a team-high nine stops, and his name was called constantly once USD settled into the game. Gabriel Hardman wasn’t far behind with eight tackles and became more noticeable as the afternoon went along.

Hardman and Abrams also started making plays behind the line of scrimmage, and the quarterback-run problem that was glaring on drive one became much less significant.

There’s enough on that opening possession to keep the grade down.

There’s enough from the next three quarters to feel pretty good about this room.

DEFENSIVE BACKS — A-

Twenty points looks worse than the secondary actually played.

Especially when you remember when some of those points came. CCSU’s starting offense had almost nothing available vertically.

The Blue Devils finished 16-of-31 for 115 passing yards and didn’t complete a pass longer than 14 yards all afternoon.

Fourteen!

That’s absurd.

The starting defensive backs were particularly solid. CCSU’s opening touchdown was built almost entirely on the ground, and its lone passing touchdown didn’t come until there was 1:28 left in the third quarter.

The score at that point? 56-10….so, context matters.

Overall though, it was an extremely quiet game, giving up 20 points while not forcing a turnover, that’s what I’m going to be looking for moving forwards.

SPECIAL TEAMS — C+

KJL gets his flowers elsewhere.

Here? He’s getting docked.

South Dakota was up 21-7 when Jones-Logan muffed a punt at the USD 36 and CCSU recovered at the 34.

There isn’t much analysis needed.

You simply cannot do that.

CCSU turned the gift into a 37-yard field goal, and what should have been another empty possession became three free points.

That can get you beat against other teams.

Everything else was actually pretty good.

USD was awake when CCSU tried a surprise onside kick in the second quarter and immediately turned the short field into a touchdown.

Newcomer Bohdie Ing also had a clean debut, hitting his only field goal from 30 yards and going 8-for-8 on extra points.

And there wasn’t much opportunity to evaluate punting because, well, South Dakota didn’t punt very often.

Brook Honore Jr. punted twice, including a 50-yarder and one downed inside the 20.

Without the muff, this grade is probably somewhere around an A-.

COACHING — A-

There really wasn’t much traditional “game management” to evaluate.

Turns out you don’t have to make many fourth-quarter chess moves when you’re ahead by five touchdowns.

But there was one legitimate situation.

USD got the football with 1:54 left in the first half, leading 35-10. You’ll hear me talk about the middle 8 so many times throughout the year and how important it is to take points and control that portion of that game.

Vitzthum could have shut it down with a Freshman QB and go into the half…

Instead? South Dakota attacked immediately and ran 12 plays in 1:47, moving 65 yards and scoring with seven seconds remaining.

That drive was masterful.

The Coyotes used the sideline, ran when CCSU gave them space, took the available underneath throws, got Modrzewski involved as a runner and managed the clock beautifully.

Going from 35-10 to 42-10 before halftime buried the game.

Enjoy this one, get home from the Dome safely…… and get ready for Northern Colorado.

The only real criticism comes defensively.

USD looked out of sorts on Central Connecticut’s opening possession. The Blue Devils marched 64 yards, ran it repeatedly and seemed to catch the Coyotes without a great answer for Griffis’ legs.

Then the adjustment came.

CCSU’s next two possessions gained a combined six yards.

That’s what you want to see.

The opponent wasn’t great. There will be significantly more difficult afternoons ahead.

But in Matt Vitzthum’s first game as head coach, South Dakota put up 594 yards, 59 points and had the competitive portion of the game finished before halftime.

That’s a pretty good first day at the office.

OVERALL — A-

Let’s not turn a 39-point win into a therapy session.

Was it perfect?

No.

The interior run game needs work.

The defense cannot spend an opening drive figuring out how it wants to defend a mobile quarterback.

Two false starts at home are worth noting before a trip to Boise.

And the muffed punt was the ugliest play of the afternoon.

There. Complaints filed.

Now the other side:

594 total yards.

327 through the air.

267 on the ground.

Eight offensive touchdowns.

And a redshirt freshman quarterback making his first start accounted for seven of them.

South Dakota was supposed to beat Central Connecticut.

It did.

Badly.

That’s exactly what good teams are supposed to do.

And if Austyn Modrzewski’s first start was any indication, the most interesting takeaway from Saturday might not be that the Coyotes won.

It’s that this offense could be an absolute problem.