LARAMIE, Wyo. — Following an all-time performance this past Saturday against the University of New Mexico, quarterback Kaden Anderson has earned his spot as the Mountain West Conference’s Freshman of the Week and a place on the Manning Award Stars of the Week list.
For the first eight games of the Cowboys’ season, the redshirt freshman was relegated to the backup QB position while Evan Svoboda led the Pokes’ offense. With Svoboda starting, Wyoming fell to a 1–7 record. That singular win was against the 1–4 Air Force Academy, which is currently at the bottom of conference standings.
In the Pokes’ Oct. 26 home stint against the Utah State Aggies, a two-quarterback system of offensive provided positive results, although the Cowboys would lose the game 25–27 after a heartbreaking last-second field goal. Either way, that game proved that Anderson could and should start.
The results speak for themselves. In last Saturday’s away game against the Lobos, Anderson threw for 342 yards and scored four touchdowns — three passing and one rushing.
That statistic — 342 passing yards — is the most a true redshirt freshman has thrown in a game since the University of Wyoming joined the Mountain West Conference in 1999. The last time any player threw around that much in one game was when Cam Coffman threw 366 yards against the same opponent in 2015, according to the University of Wyoming Athletics program.
That definitively earned Anderson his spot on both weekly award lists. The Manning Award Stars of the Week is a weekly award given to a select number of quarterbacks for stellar performances as voted on by the public.
For more information on Anderson’s new accolades, see the Allstate Sugar Bowl web page for the Manning Award Stars of the Week and the Mountain West Conference website.
