Hawaii beat Wyoming Saturday night, 17-13, to move to 6-1 on the season and claim early bowl eligibility. Before the game, though, there were, uh, some interesting tactics deployed by Hawaii to disguise the status of its starting quarterback, Cole McDonald.

McDonald didn’t play at all Saturday due to an undisclosed injury, but during pregame warmups, someone came onto the field wearing McDonald’s jersey.

It wasn’t McDonald himself. The giveaway there is the lack of dreadlocks.

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Props to Rainbow Warriors head coach Nick Rolovich for using the ol’ DECOY QUARTERBACK trick to try and confuse your opponent that your star player on offense isn’t actually hurt. I’m not even mad; this is brilliant. As for who this mystery player was, it appears as if no one really knows:

There was a player wearing McDonald’s No. 13 jersey participating in the first warm-up session today. But McDonald was not on the field during the second pre-game warmup session.

McDonald’s backup, true freshman Chevan Cordeiro, looked pretty solid Saturday night — he threw for 148 yards and two touchdowns during the win over the Cowboys.

“Chevan Cordeiro almost won the (starting) job in training camp,” Rolovich said after the game via Hawaii Warrior World. “He’s not here for big numbers. He’s here for the smile he’s gonna get from the young kid he sees tomorrow. He wants to represent this state with a Warrior jersey. That’s what he told us when he signed. He doesn’t say a lot, but I believe he dreamt about this moment when he put pen to paper.”

Rolovich added via the newspaper that McDonald’s injury was “not going to be really long term,” so perhaps that’s some good news for Hawaii heading into the BYU game. The Rainbow Warriors are currently 11.5-point underdogs for that contest.