Monday Cooldown: Red flags for USU’s offense but optimism on defense

Utah State head coach Blake Anderson checks a call during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Alabama, Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022, in Tuscaloosa, Ala. (AP Photo/Vasha Hunt)

Utah State University is now $1.92 million richer. Money earned at the cost of its football team’s dignity. Following the 55-0 beatdown, Blake Anderson is now tasked with picking up the shattered remains of his team’s psyche and reconstruct what had been a team bubbling with excitement over defending its Mountain West title.

Given the context of Utah State’s matchup with Alabama — an up-and-down Group of Five team against arguably the greatest dynasty in collegiate athletics — a loss was very much expected. But even in that context, this was a rough loss.

Yes, USU was facing the powerhouse of the powerhouses, the unrelenting force of Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide, led by reigning Heisman winner Bryce Young. But even that doesn’t fully excuse a 55-0 loss or the 41-0 halftime score. Consider 2019. The Aggies were pretty mediocre, finishing with a 7-6 record. That squad played one of the best college football teams ever, the Joe Burrow-led LSU squad. The one that finished 15-0, wiping the floor with Oklahoma in the semi-final 63-28. The one that had 20 total future NFL players, including five first-round draft picks and 10 drafted in the first three rounds. That LSU Tigers team defeated the mediocre Aggies by a score of 42-6. At the end of the first quarter, the score was 7-6 in LSU’s favor. At halftime, the game was still within USU’s grasp at 21-6. Burrow stayed in until the fourth quarter, only exiting after throwing his fifth and final TD pass in the early moments of the final quarter.

While those 2019 Aggies were still blown out, outgained by more than 400 yards and outscored by 36 points, they at least put up a valiant fight.

It’s neither fun nor entertaining to exhaustively review just how much USU struggled, but it’s necessary to explain why this isn’t just a blowout loss to a great team. There are now red flags set on this Aggie squad, and these numbers are a big reason why.

Even the most basic metric — the final score — decries the Aggies’ performance. This loss, an easy-to-calculate 55-point defeat, is the program’s worst in 33 years (the cutoff being a 66-10 loss to USC in 1989). USU has lost plenty of times in those three decades and by some pretty big margins. But it’s not been this bad.

The worst part of the loss is undeniably the offense. Sure, the defense gave up 55 points, but at least they made a few plays that (sort of) slowed the tide. We have to go back years into some of the worst seasons in the darkest eras of Utah State football to find comparable efforts to what the Aggies put forth on Saturday.

For starters, USU gained just 2.3 yards per play, the worst since 2006 (a year where USU was shut out four times in a single season) in a loss to the University of Utah. The 2.59 yards per pass attempt is the third-worst mark this century (and worst since a game in 2006). The mere seven first downs gained? Tied for second-worst since 2000. Furthermore, of the 136 yards Utah State did gain, 33 of them came on two plays (catches of 23 and 10 yards by Brian Cobbs). So, in the remaining 57 plays, the average was just 1.8 (in no game this century has USU averaged less than two yards per play).

It’s hard to overstate just how bad the offense played. And in the coming weeks Utah State will need to prove its offense is truly capable of making plays, especially after the less-than-convincing effort in its season opener against UConn. However, there’s reasonable evidence to suggest that USU will not be all that aggressive against Weber State. We’ve seen two straight games where the Aggies ran the ball more than they passed. Are they really going to start slinging it when facing an FCS opponent? We may not see regular play-calling for another three weeks when USU hosts UNLV.

While the offense is not on the right track in any sense, defensively there’s still hope. Though the scoreboard makes the defense look like a turnstile, there are some statistical gymnastics that can be done to make things look a little better. For starters, according to PFF the Aggies held Alabama to 178 rushing yards on designed runs — 58 of those coming on one play. Remove the outlier and that spits out a total of 120 yards on 26 attempts, which amounts to 4.6 yards per carry. That’s a number one can be somewhat proud of when facing Alabama. Yes, Young ran for 100 yards, but those all came on scrambles. And while keeping scrambling QBs from having similar success will be a focal point of future practices, there’s reason to be optimistic about USU stopping designed runs.

In the passing game, the Aggies did OK at times. They technically held Young under his career completion percentage (64.3 percent compared to just under 67 percent for his career prior to yesterday) and they kept everything in front of them. The longest pass play of the day for the Crimson Tide was a 25-yarder in the first quarter. There were holes in the zones Utah State tried to use, but nothing got behind them all night.

The final verdict on this game shouldn’t be a proclamation of doom upon this team. If they are able to follow Anderson’s advice to “don’t let this (game) linger” then there’s plenty of hope. The talent on this Utah State team is comparable to just about any team in the Mountain West. That means a successful title defense is always going to be in the cards.

In a way, this game could turn out as a blessing in a very ugly disguise. Last year the Aggies had the humiliation of the 2020 season to draw upon, learn from and use as motivation to prove that’s not who they were. This humiliation is something perhaps this year’s Aggies can draw on. Prove they’re not the team that took the field at Bryant-Denny Stadium and beat the teams that may now think they’re just a pushover.

At least, that’s the hope.

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

I agree to these terms.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.