Lucas Peltier / UNLV Athletics
LAS VEGAS — UNLV had UCLA backed up to its 18-yard line after a kickoff last September. Then an offside flag gave five of those yards back. Later that half, two penalties helped leave UCLA starting at its 39. The Rebels won, but those yards still belonged to the opponent.
Now Dan Mullen is going player by player through special teams meetings with coordinator Mitch Singler. Kicker Ramon Villela describes a head coach getting down to the individual assignment. Last season supplies a reason to welcome that scrutiny.
“Coach Mullen is on us every day,” Villela said. “Those meetings, he really goes down to every detail, goes through every player, says, ‘This is what you have to do.’”
“I don’t think in the past the head coach got as involved as Mullen is this year,” Villela said. “Everybody listens to Coach Mullen. He’s the head coach, so it’s great to have the head coach just really involved in the special teams. He runs the meeting with Coach Singler, so it’s just a great partnership between those two.”
Singler has come to know Mullen beyond the offensive and quarterback work associated with his career. Their meetings give him a chance to collaborate with a head coach he says understands all three phases.
That partnership also follows a change in Singler’s own responsibilities. UNLV announced his promotion July 7 after he worked as a special teams analyst in 2025 and a special teams assistant during the spring. He came to the program after working with the Raiders, beginning in offensive quality control in 2022 before moving into an assistant tight ends role.
His college background includes offensive work at Duke beginning in 2018 and two seasons in offensive quality control at Oregon State in 2016 and 2017. He also lettered three times as a Beavers player. Special teams now gives him responsibility for players from across the roster, including offensive starters whose contribution can extend beyond the position they play on regular downs.
“One thing that’s really cool about Coach Mullen is he’s just not an offensive-minded guy,” Singler said. “He knows the game inside and out in all phases. So to be able to collaborate with him, to know the ins and outs of not only offense but special teams and defense and to learn from a great coach like that, it’s been really fun.”
Singler wants the attention to assignments to improve UNLV’s field position.
“We give the longest field position for our defense to go defend and then the shortest amount of field position for our offense to go out and score points,” Singler said. “I really think that we give great effort. I really think that we’re really locked in in detail to what we do, but it’s just really making sure that at the end of the day our specialists do their jobs and their part.”
Return practice includes circuits for blocking techniques, schemes and situations. Players have to learn where to meet a defender and how to keep the block legal, so a productive return does not come back because of a penalty.
“We make sure our guys are detailed, we go through different circuits, different blocking schemes, different types of things that get our players ready for game day so they know how to execute our technique and they know what to do when that time comes,” Singler said.
The UCLA sequence began with Villela doing his job: a 50-yard field goal to open the scoring. Coverage then brought down the returner at the 18, before the flag moved the start to the 23. The kicker’s points remained on the board. The coverage team’s work immediately lost five yards of its value.
Later that half, an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty pushed UNLV’s kickoff to its 20. Another offside forced a rekick from the 15, and UCLA eventually began at its 39 before driving for a field goal. UNLV had made the opponent’s assignment easier before the defense took the field.
Singler’s return options include DeAngelo Irvin Jr. and freshman Peyton Zachary along with Jai’Den “Jet” Thomas. He described an evaluation that includes the players working around the returner, with fundamentals reinforced through practice repetitions and film. The names receiving opportunities in camp should not be treated as a settled return depth chart.
Irvin provides the most direct recent UNLV punt-return experience among those candidates. He returned 12 punts for 38 yards in 2025 while also catching 18 passes for 188 yards and a touchdown. The previous year, he returned four punts for 34 yards and nine kickoffs for 177 yards. He had a 40-yard kickoff return in the 2024 conference championship game at Boise State.
His earlier production also includes a 49-yard punt return at New Mexico as a freshman in 2023. Those separate seasons show why one explosive return and a season’s average answer different questions. Irvin has produced a long gain, but the 2025 punt-return total left considerably less yardage per attempt. The blockers and return decisions around those opportunities remain part of the unit Singler has to evaluate.
Zachary arrives from Carrollton High School in Georgia, where he was involved in the return game as well as an offense that used him extensively at receiver. His official UNLV biography credits him with 4,465 career all-purpose yards, including 3,688 receiving yards on 261 catches. He exceeded 700 receiving yards in each of his four varsity seasons.
As a senior, he caught 89 passes for 1,111 yards and 12 touchdowns. He finished his high school career with 38 receiving touchdowns. That establishes his experience handling the ball and producing as a receiver; it does not establish that he has already won a college return job. His camp opportunity gives Singler a younger candidate to compare with players who have already handled returns for UNLV.
Singler includes Thomas in that group. The senior running back is already an established offensive player, but Singler sees special teams snaps as a way to add to what NFL scouts can evaluate.
“You guys know he’s an electric offensive player, so why not utilize him in all things special teams-wise so he grows his wealth and knowledge on special teams and then it gives him film for scouts,” Singler said.
Thomas has already shown a special teams contribution that sits alongside his rushing work. In 2024, he returned a kickoff 90 yards for a touchdown at Fresno State, UNLV’s first kickoff-return touchdown in 13 years. His 2025 offensive season included 1,036 rushing yards and 12 rushing touchdowns, plus 39 receptions for 237 yards and another score.
Using him on special teams therefore involves more than finding someone who can run with the ball. Singler also discussed the value of contributing away from the return itself, including work against opposing coverage players. For an established running back, that gives coaches another set of assignments to judge and scouts additional work to examine. It still has to fit the team’s personnel decisions from week to week.
For younger players, the same units can provide a first route into a game before their roles grow on offense or defense. Singler said he will choose players by what they can do, regardless of class.
“It doesn’t matter who you are,” Singler said. “At the end of the day, we know the guys that can play and they’re gonna play. We’re not afraid to go play players.”
The specialist operation brings together different levels of college experience. Matt Choules transferred from Kennesaw State after redshirting in 2025, so the new punter has yet to put a college game’s worth of results behind his camp work. He is also working as Villela’s holder, making the relationship between the punter and kicker relevant to scoring plays as well as field position.
Choules said Mullen’s involvement with punters helped attract him to UNLV. He has trained through ProKick Australia and comes from an Australian rules football background. The adjustment now includes the operation around him: protection, the snap and coverage on punts, then receiving the snap and setting the ball when he holds. Those are different assignments even when the same player performs both jobs.
Long snapper Tyson Jacobson arrived after previous stops at Idaho and Eastern Washington. UNLV’s biography lists his Idaho redshirt season in 2022 and his experience snapping for Eastern Washington. Singler said he knew the Eastern Washington program through its coach, Aaron Best, but still evaluated Jacobson’s tape and fit before adding him. Familiarity supplied a connection; the football evaluation remained necessary.
Villela gives that operation a returning scorer who started all 14 games in 2025. He made 15 of 20 field goals and all 58 extra points. His season included two successful 50-yard field goals, one against UCLA and another that set UNLV’s bowl distance record against Ohio. Against Air Force, he made all three field goals, with a long of 45 yards.
Villela’s 23-yard field goal decided the 41-38 win at Miami.
Villela sees the daily work as a way to build on the returning players’ experience through changes in the coaching staff.
“There hasn’t been a lot of changes,” Villela said. “There’s been some change in coaching staff and all that, but we have a lot of returning players, so I feel like just continuing and building on what we had last year.”
