Aggies open camp for Year 2 of Andersen era
The talk around USU football players and coaches has been boiling over with optimism and excitement for months now. Then the buzz heated up even more when coaches from the Western Athletic Conference echoed that excitement by picking the Aggies to finish fourth in the league during the 2010 season. Now the helmets and shoulder pads have finally made their way out, and the time to turn potential into production is finally here.
Year two of the Gary Andersen era at Utah State began this week, and along with it has come the mentality of a team eager to show that they can compete with any opponent with whom they are faced.
“You can tell this year everybody wants it more than they did last year,” junior receiver Matt Austin said. “We’re all hungry, we all want to win and we’re going to prove ourselves this year.”
That mentality seems to be fitting in nicely thus far with the load of experience that Andersen’s Aggie squad is bringing back into the 2010 season and the impact of the experience on the practice has shown a noticeable improvement from a season ago when Andersen began his first fall at the helm of USU football.
Senior quarterback Diondre Borel said, “I feel like everyone knows their stuff a lot more. Everybody is moving at a faster pace.”
Andersen called the start of this season’s official practice much smoother from the second they walked in.
While expectations are still high, the team is still surrounded by some burning questions that could hold major implications as to how far the Aggies can go this season. The biggest question hovering over the offense is who will step in to replace injured superstars Robert Turbin and Stanley Morrison at the running back and wide receiver positions on a unit that gained more yards per game than all but 11 other offenses in college football last season. On the opposite side of the ball the question lingers of how USU will improve the production of a defensive unit that ranked No. 113 in the nation in yards per game allowed in 2010.
Senior running back Michael Smith appears to be leading the charge of four candidates to be the primary filler of some big shoes left by Turbin, and All-WAC performer in 2009. He also saw the field the most a year ago out of the four players battling for that top spot on the depth-chart, a battle which also includes another senior in Derrvin Speight, as well a duo of sophomores in Kerwynn Williams and Joey DeMartino. Smith racked up 290 yards rushing on 46 carries in 2009 while reaching the end zone four times. On top of averaging 6.3 yards per carry, the same number that Turbin averaged a season ago, Smith also proved to be a receiving threat out of the backfield catching 19 passes for 220 yards and two touchdowns.
Being the statistical leader among the running back candidates has given Smith a unique opportunity to play the role of student and teacher as he’s taking whatever advice he can from his injured teammate, while doing his best to help the progression of the other players battling him for playing time.
Smith said of Turbin, “He’s talking to us, coaching me up on what I need to do better and at the same time I’m trying to coach the younger kids.”
Despite the injury of an offensive superstar, Smith believes that he and his teammates can more than adequately fill the void left by Turbin.
“Going into the summer we had so much confindence and positive mind-set so the I feel we can do anything,” Smith said. “We can all catch. We can all run. Coach has put us in the right positions to succeed.”
While the running backs are aiming to do their part to maintain the production level of the offense, another player, junior wide receiver Matt Austin, is confident that this year’s core of receivers will be able to do their part in easing the loss of Turbin, despite losing one of their own in last year’s top receiver Morrison.
Austin said, “I think we have enough talent in the receiving core to step up and take that load off the running backs.”
Austin also is both feeling and responding to the pressure of stepping up as a leader among the wide receivers in the absence of Morrison.
“I’m not really a vocal leader, but I think I had to be,” Austin said of his role following Morrison’s foot injury that will sideline the junior for the 2010 season. “Now I’ve gotten better with it and really I’m just being a leader on the field and off the field and making plays to be a leader too.
While the offense is trying to maintain their prowess from a year ago despite some odds stacked against them, the USU defense is still on the long road to improvement from it’s performance of last year. The 2009 Aggie defense allowed 455.08 yards per contest, worst in the WAC, and is a number that the coaching staff knows they need to improve on this season.
Defensive coordinator Bill Busch likes the progress that he’s seen thus far in the team’s second year of running the scheme that he and Andersen brought with them to Logan.
“Now that we have our system intact and with what we do with another year there, it will be a big advantage,” Busch said. “We’ve obviously made ourselves better through recruiting and made ourselves better through what we’ve gotten done since the Idaho game until now with those kids and what they’ve done and what they’ve worked on.”
One surprise of the first week of practice thus far has been the standout play of several of the team’s freshman players who have put themselves right into the mix of the two-deep rotations at several different positions. Andersen said during the WAC’s media days in July that the staff would have their eye out for a freshman that could contribute immediately, and it looks like the coaching staff is getting much more than they bargained for in that respect.
“We’ve got a bunch of them,” Busch said. “I’ve never been around a group that has more freshman that have the potential to play.”
Two particular freshman, quarterbacks Alex Hart and Jeremy Higgins, are in a battle for the role to serve as Borel’s primary backup this season. Andersen said that through the first few days of practice, both have shown to have positives and negatives and that the battle is likely to go very deep into camp. Whoever ends up winning that battle will be traveling with the team throughout the season while the other would most likely spend 2010 as a redshirt player on the scout team.
As it stands through the first week of practice, the coaching staff appears to be pleased with the progress in which the team has made, but are still hoping for a bit more balance to the team’s practices. Andersen described the type of practice scenario he would like to see as one where neither the offensive or defensive units stand out far above one another.
“You want big plays on offense and defense,” Andersen said. “But a good football team, I believe, has a very controlled practice where you don’t see a lot of game-breaking plays. If you see a lot of game-breaking plays, you usually have some issues.”
With that said, Andersen feels like his team still has some kinks to work out of its system in the coming weeks of practice as the team prepares for its opener at Oklahoma.
“We had big plays which were costly on either side of the ball,” Andersen said. “Too many sacks were given up with the defense going against the offense and there were too many big runs with the offense against our defense.”