Don’t forget to leave cookies out for Kellen Moore on this fine football eve. The wait is almost over! Don’t forget to check out the preview article while you wait. But today? Let’s talk about Mr. Phelps:
#1, Boen Phelps, Senior, LB
Stats
Height: 6’1
Weight: 225
High school: Freeman HS (Spokane, WA)
How’d he get to The Blue™?
There’s nothing Spencer Danielson loves more than turning Pacific Northwest white boy walk-ons into tackling machines. But this time, instead of leaving him as a safety, Coach Danielson made him his linebacker protege.
At least according to 24/7 Sports, Boen’s only scholarship offer out of high school came from University of Idaho. But he, like the rest of us, knows there’s no academic value to a degree over there and smartly took the PWO from Boise State. The rest is history (and I suppose, future).
Nickname
“Bo”
Great nicknames are two syllables, but elite nicknames are just one. There’s just something terrifying about a linebacker named Bo. You take a sick day for that game. Or you die.
Look-alike
(But with hair)
Career Highlights
Phelps started 9 games in 2025, and played in all of them. He earned Mountain West POTW for his 6 tackle and pick-six performance against App State, and boasted a team-leading 233 snaps on special teams. Looking into 2026, Athlon Sports has him as a 1st-Team Preseason All-Pac 12 player, and Phil Steele has him at 3rd-Team.
2026 Prospectus
There’s a lot of noise out of camp about Boen Phelps. The growing expectation around the team is that Boen will be The Guy this year. He’s the green dot for the defense, and I think at this point it would be a shock if we didn’t see him all over the field in 2026, a leads-the-team-in-tackles kinda guy.
Is he on Twitter?
@BoenPhelps is the handle, and we put him in the “supportive tweeter” class. A common occurrence on this team, which I think does a good job of illustrating the brotherhood Coach Danielson preaches.
NIL Exchange:
Link here if you’d like to hire him for stone skipping competition duos.
Completely made up fact
Despite growing up in Eastern Washington, a wise family friend gifted Boen a copy of the 2007 Fiesta Bowl DVD. It left such an impression on the young Boen that he considered it his childhood movie. It’s said his exhausted parents often found themselves muttering “Zebranksy’s legs might be critical here to save time on throwing the ball” after a couple hundred rewatches.
