2022 Mountain West Football Top 50: #31, San Diego State WR Jesse Matthews

San Diego State’s top pass catcher is the next Aztec on our preseason countdown of Mountain West football’s best players.

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2022 Mountain West Football Top 50: #31, San Diego State WR Jesse Matthews

San Diego State’s top pass catcher is the next Aztec on our preseason countdown of Mountain West football’s best players.

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The one-man highlight reel gets his due.

Sometimes, it can take a little while for talent to get deserved recognition and that is definitely the case for Jesse Matthews, the San Diego State wide receiver who is the next athlete on our preseason countdown of the Mountain West’s top football performers.

If you’re an Aztec fan, though, you definitely knew how good he could be despite playing within an offense that didn’t allow for too many pass-catching opportunities. The San Diego native walked on with his hometown team and redshirted in 2018 before his first full season of action in 2019 enabled him to be named as a Burlsworth Trophy candidate for the first time, a season in which he caught 48 passes for 633 yards and two touchdowns and began earning a reputation as someone who could make the difficult catch easily.

In 2020, he would lead the Aztecs in receptions and receiving yards, though that would be a warm up to one of the best overall seasons by a San Diego State pass catcher in recent memory. Last year, he again led the team with 57 catches for 642 yards and nine touchdowns, spurred by a monster four-game stretch to close the season in which Matthews averaged nine catches and 116 receiving yards with at least one score per game.

While it remains to be seen whether the Aztecs will be as reliant on their passing game as they grew in the second half of 2021, you can almost set your watch to the fact that Matthews will find a way to make a crucial catch or three at some point.

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