It will take a few breaths to figure out how UNLV football will fare

Tony Sanchez wants his UNLV football players to know something: Everyone has problems. Everyone has issues. Everyone except a few elite college programs suffers from a lack of depth at certain positions.

That there is no such thing as perfect, except perhaps Nick Saban’s hair on game day and those drum majors from Jackson State.

“We tell our guys that we’re focused on our world, but don’t think everybody else’s world is much different,” Sanchez said. “You want to get your guys in a bubble and understand we’re just going to worry about us and our own problems and attack them on a daily basis. You can’t be a sensitive guy because our goals are to win football games — just focus on the task at hand, and when we get out there in games, we will see where we are at.

“It’s important for us to go out and have success early. If you can get that first win, the guys start feeling good about all the work they have put in and want more of it. Again, it’s just changing that mindset from wanting to win to expecting to win.”

The second edition of UNLV under Sanchez as coach opens Thursday night at Sam Boyd Stadium against Jackson State, a Football Championship Subdivision team whose school’s marching band is called Sonic Boom of the South and is more recognized nationally than those who deliver first downs and make tackles for the Tigers.

I can’t recall more excitement and energy and positive vibes around a 3-9 team than what transpired last season with Sanchez’s arrival to UNLV, a program that more than not the past several decades resembled the RMS Titanic at the point Jack tells Rose to take a deep breath and kick for the surface and never let go of his hand.

The Rebels played hard enough last year. They just weren’t very good.

November arrived and, beaten and bruised and not able to hold up physically, UNLV predictably sunk.

But within the bubble Sanchez now speaks of is arguably the best recruiting class in school history, the fact UNLV was winning or within a touchdown in the fourth quarter of eight games last season and a growing number of donations toward an on-campus facility that could break ground in the spring and will make as much difference in the Rebels potentially winning in football as anything else. Without that building, they don’t stand a chance.

There is first another 12-game schedule to navigate, and UNLV is hardly an easy book in which to predict an ending. The Rebels will be deeper than last season because it’s impossible not to be, and their skill at certain positions will compare favorably to the better Mountain West teams.

After that, forecasting much of anything is like solving the mystery of James Patterson’s next thriller on Page 1.

“If we’re honest, on paper, you probably have three games (at UCLA, at San Diego State and at Boise State) where we will be big underdogs, but the rest of them will likely be viewed as close games either way in terms of expectations and what people think,” Sanchez said. “As a season goes on, what great teams do is figure out who they are. We all think we know, but things change when you get into the battles.

“We knew every game last season was going to be an uphill battle. We know more this year. We know the conference because we’ve been through it once. But we’re not going through many things that are different from most in the Mountain West.”

It’s hardly a league in which those near the bottom one season can’t rise quickly the next, and yet a UNLV side of which oddsmakers have assigned a win total of what is now 5 at most books could surpass the number or fall short of it.

That’s how even most of those nine other opponents could prove. The schedule is littered with toss-ups.

It all begins against Jackson State, a team the Rebels will be expected to beat handily and feel good about themselves until preparations begin for UCLA on Sept. 10, meaning we might not know for a while yet just who UNLV in 2016 really is.

“I have to be honest with you, I feel good compared to a year ago,” Sanchez said. “I feel better in a lot of ways, but as a coach, it’s a matter-of-fact deal. You go out, you practice, you go in and break it down. I don’t care if we look like a million bucks, I guarantee there were a bunch of mistakes. And when you go out and think you weren’t any good, you were better than what you thought.

“But that’s what successful people do — they’re always looking for the things they didn’t do well so they can correct them and get better.

“If you panic, you better not have this job. I don’t panic.”

That will come in handy when the inevitable icebergs of any season impede UNLV’s journey.

At this point, how many times the Rebels will need to take a deep breath and kick for the surface is anyone’s guess.

Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be a heard on “Seat and Ed” on Fox Sports 1340 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. On Twitter: @edgraney