4 Takeaways from the Fresno game
Remember this past summer? Utah State football looked so sharp in spring ball. The defense remained stout as ever, while the offense somewhat surprisingly rose to match it on occasion.
Thoughts of a conference championship and even a New Year’s Bowl appearance were born, entertained for a minute, then quickly shut away in order to hold expectations to a more reasonable level. Still, there remained an unspoken promise over the offseason Coach Matt Wells had at his fingertips a top-flight team that could be prolific on both sides of the ball.
Though long overdue, the Aggies delivered on that promise Saturday by hanging 56 points on Fresno in a blowout road win. Now 2-0 in conference play, and with a matchup against Boise State looming, Utah State can approach its most important game of the year with the following in mind.
1. The Mays train has left the station
Final boarding call came last week against CSU, but if you hurry you can probably still catch him in the end zone down in Fresno.
Devante Mays is not fair. With the defense keyed in to quarterback Kent Myers’ ability to pass all over the field and take off when containment breaks down, adding a punishing running back into the mix is just cruel.
Mays has about as much respect for defenders as Logan drivers have for stop signs after midnight. Every monstrous step he took Saturday looked like he was trying to pound Fresno’s turf into submission simply for being the only obstacle between himself and the end zone. The entire game he only moved at two speeds — accelerating towards the goal line and decelerating out of the back of the end zone in order to stay within Earth’s gravitational pull.
The dude accounted for 92 of Utah State’s 201 total rushing yards, and did it all on nine carries — that means on average the Aggies were guaranteed a first down every time Mays so much as touched the ball. There should be some sort of flag for that. Myers should’ve just waved down an official and told him the call was a handoff to Mays, after which the referee would simply spot the ball ten yards further downfield and tell Mays he wasn’t allowed to play for a few downs.
While USU handed out game balls in the locker room, Fresno should have been awarding participation trophies to anyone unfortunate enough to have been in Mays’ way through four quarters.
2. The Aggie ground game is a three-headed monster
Actually four-headed if you count Justen Hervey, which you absolutely should — he scored one of USU’s seven rushing touchdowns Saturday, and no touchdown should go unnoticed.
I’m not totally sure if change-of-pace quarterback is a position, but Damion Hobbs doesn’t exactly strike me as a true backup. Hobbs completed a 21-yard pass and scrambled four times for 50 yards and a score of his own in the second half, and could see similar usage in the future to keep defenders guessing.
LaJuan Hunt scored a pair of touchdowns in addition to doing a lot of unlauded dirty work in this game — running up the gut for short gains, blocking when it mattered and keeping the Bulldogs’ defense unable to cheat out on Aggie receivers are just a few examples.
All in all, the elusive running game is finally where the Aggies need it to be to maintain possession and control the tempo of a game — a necessity against bigger, badder teams and the key to easily working over smaller, sadder ones.
3. Penalty yardage trending the right way
Seven penalties for 59 yards isn’t ideal, but it’s half of what Utah State has accumulated in some games this year. The relatively clean play shows through in another statistic — the Aggies converted 8 of 15 third downs, which would seem to indicate manageable enough yardage on each of those tries for the running game to pick up those first downs and keep drives alive.
Successfully completing drives hasn’t been a strength this year for USU, but three straight touchdowns between the end of the first half and start of the second could be a sign that this offensive explosion may actually be sustainable. Expectations should remain tempered, however. The Bulldogs’ defense is probably better than they looked against us Saturday, but by the end of the first half they looked mentally checked-out — that’s what happens when a team scores 22 on you in a quarter.
4. Myers passes first two weeks with flying colors
One week removed from setting a school record in quarterback rushing yards, Myers was content with doing his damage from the pocket this game. Two-hundred and sixty yards through the air and a touchdown on 18-of-25 passing certainly got the job done, but now there arises some mystery as to how he’ll be used next week against the visiting Broncos.
Allow me a brief personal anecdote here. I happened to sit in front of Myers at a basketball game last year shortly after that awful Boise State game. I could tell he probably felt like a lot of that 50-19 beatdown fell on his shoulders — I think it had a lot more to do with Jay Ajayi’s five rushing touchdowns, but I couldn’t think of a sensitive way of bringing that up.
The point is, Myers has lost just one game as a starter. If ever there was a guy due for a revenge game, it’d be at home in the friendly confines of Maverik Stadium against the Broncos.
He’s proven capable of using his legs and his arm to exploit weaknesses in two very different defenses, and though early in the season, this certainly looks to be the deciding game in a tight MW title race.
This isn’t so much a takeaway as it is a cautionary prediction — next week, Myers is going to ball out.
— Logan Jones is a junior majoring in journalism. He’s pretty sure coach Wells doesn’t read his columns, which might be for the best since they’ve been sort of negative lately. Comments, questions and hate mail can all be sent to logantjones@aggiemail.usu.edu or on Twitter @Logantj.