Boise State might be without its starting safeties for season opener

When Boise State opens up the season Sept 3 and on the road against Louisiana-Lafayette, their secondary could be lacking a lot of talent.

The Broncos are already replacing Darian Thompson and Donte Deayon who are currently in the NFL, but the could be without projected starting safeties Dylan Sumner-Gardner and Chanceller James.

Dylan Sumner-Gardner did not play or travel to San Diego for the Poinsettia Bowl against Northern Illinois for an unspecified violation of team rules. James sat out the spring game on unknown reasons.

Head coach Bryan Harsin would not elaborate at Mountain West media days about either players status when speaking to the Idaho Press-Tribune.

“Right now it’s still in that same mode as we talked about in the spring,” Harsin said about if Sumner-Gardner would be facing any additional penalties. “We still have summer to finish up and fall camp to finish up and then we’ll reevaluate from there.”

As for James’ status, Harsin is keeping it within the family.

“That’s all internal. That’s for our football team and we’ll handle it that way.” We handle that amongst the team,” Harsin added. “That’s team business. What those guys need to do and you go back to the education part of things, they are doing it.”

Both of these players saw action last year with Sumner-Gardner who started the first four game before going down with a season-ending injury, and as a true freshman played in 13 games. James saw action in all 13 games last year which included nine starts.

Redshirt junior Cameron Hartsfield and redshirt freshman Evan Tyler are listed as backups on the Broncos depth chart, and are likely to be next in line to start in place of Sumner-Gardner and James.

This should not be too much of an issue against Louisiana-Lafayette, but if these two players miss the Week 2 game against Washington State then that becomes an even more intriguing game.