Final grades for the Vandals as they prepare for the playoffs

As the Idaho football team makes its final preparations for its most important stretch of the season – a third straight trip to the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs – here’s a final look at how each position group fared during the regular season.

Eighth-seeded Idaho (9-3) will face Lehigh (9-3) in the second round of the FCS playoffs on Saturday at 6 p.m. (ESPN+) at the P1FCU Kibbie Dome in Moscow.

The struggling Vandals received a much-needed bye in the first round and the Hawks defeated ninth-seeded Richmond 20-16 in their opening round game.

We’ll talk more about this match later in the week.

For now, here’s how the Vandal position groups showcased their mettle to put together another memorable season:

Quarterback – B

You’d have to go far to find many other teams that ever played four quarterbacks in a season and still managed nine wins and a top-10 finish.

Due to injuries, both sophomore Jack Layne and freshmen Jack Wagner, Nick Josifek and Rocco Koch started this season.

All four have performed admirably at times, but Layne, the Week 1 starter, returned from a broken collarbone injury just in time to start three of UI’s last four games.

This season, Layne is 64 of 103 passes (62.14%) for 915 yards (183 per game) with nine touchdowns and three interceptions.

His juke on a quarterback-keeping touchdown and flea-flickering pass to Jake Cox in the Week 1 loss to No. 1 Oregon remain some of the craziest plays of the season for Idaho fans.

Despite his limited experience, Layne has shown the poise needed to win games on the big stage, and his replacements have stepped in when needed and gotten the job done as well.

Wide Receivers/Tight Ends – B-

After losing its strongest weapons last year, wide receiver was a position group with some of the biggest question marks this season.

Idaho is clearly a run-first team, but two wideouts have shown the ability to consistently make the big play: sophomore Jordan Dwyer and freshman Mark Hamper.

Dwyer leads the league with 60 catches for 837 yards and eight touchdowns. Hamper has 42 catches for 853 yards and five touchdowns.

After that, production drops significantly.

Running Backs – B+

Another position group that has proven to be much deeper than anyone thought.

UI has four running backs who have rushed for at least 300 yards and none who have rushed for more than 550 yards.

There were few exceptions at the position due to injuries, but all that was done was to show how deep the Vandals are in the backcourt.

Junior Nate Thomas had his best season with 543 yards for a 5.3 average and five touchdowns. The best news for UI is that he is also healthy after missing some time in the middle of the season.

Elisha Cummings, Deshaun Buchanan and Art Williams also did well, but everyone is broken.

Offensive Line – A

The fact that the Vandals overcame so many injuries at QB and RB and still continued to win is probably the biggest testament to the offensive line.