Aggie defense crucial to victory
In Saturday’s football game, the Utah State University defense came up big in the second half to preserve the 30-27 victory over the University of Central Florida Golden Knights.
“I thought our defense played really well,” USU head coach Mick Dennehy said. “I thought our guys pinned their ears back and came at them.”
In the first half, UCF scored 14 points and had 172 yards on 13 of 22 passing. In the second half, the USU defense held UCF to only 112 passing yards. UCF only completed 10 of 27 passes in the second half and threw one interception.
The Utah State defensive front line worked to hold the Golden Knights by putting pressure on UCF quarterback Ryan Schneider. Utah State recorded six sacks for a total loss of 23 yards for the game. The Aggie defense also had 15 tackles for loss, adding up to 47 yards.
“[The secondary] has been stepping it up and they’ve been playing really well. It’s a team effort,” defensive end Nate Putnam said. “We [the defensive line] try to get home on the line of scrimmage and bring the quarterback down, and they’ve got to cover well enough to give us time to get there. If the quarterback can’t throw the pass it gives us all day to get home.”
Putnam had two sacks and two tackles for losses in the game.
Dennehy said, “I thought our pressure got home about as well as it has since we’ve been here. Against these guys its huge, you can’t let Schneider stand back there with a whole lot of time.”
In addition to the sacks, the Aggies were able to hurry Schneider on his passes and knock him down several times.
“I think our secondary made plays in one-on-one situations where we pressured and we got him [Schneider] to hurry a little bit,” Dennehy said. “We knocked him down a few times and we knew going in that’s what it would take.”
Strong safety Bryan Jackson said, “It’s really helpful, and I know because I play secondary. When you hurry the quarterback and put pressure on him it just makes that job for us so much easier that we have to defend [the receivers] for maybe two or three seconds.”
Besides pressuring Schneider, the Aggies came up big in the turnover department. For the game, USU had two fumble recoveries and an interception, all in the second half.
“Turnovers are what will win games,” Putnam said.
With a little more than eight minutes left in the game and leading by three, free safety Derek Shank intercepted Schneider and returned the ball to the UCF 16. The interception set up the final USU touchdown of the game.
Another key turnover came with 1:19 left in the game. Trailing by three, UCF moved the ball to the USU 23-yard line when on third-and-one play, USU strong safety Jamar Glasper forced a fumble which was recovered by Jackson at the USU 19-yard line.
“We were looking for anything we could get, we just needed to stop them,” Jackson said. “It was a great play, the ball just came flying out and it saved the game for us.”
Putnam said, “Jamar [Glasper] got that turnover in the last two minutes of the game, that was a game saver.”
The fumble recovery allowed USU to run the clock out and secured the victory.
“I thought our guys performed very admirably on [the defensive] side of the ball,” Dennehy said.