Column: In 2021, Blake Anderson brought USU back to winning ways and more
In February of 2021, just two months after Utah State announced their new head coach, a column written by The Statesman posed a simple yet relevant question: Can Blake Anderson bring USU football back to winning ways?
The short answer to that question is yes. Anderson certainly brought USU football back to its winning ways, finishing the season with an 11-3 record.
But the performance of USU Football during the 2021 season provokes another question: Did Anderson do more in his first year as head coach?
Was the 2021 season just a return to winning ways, or was it an unprecedented success? Well, yes. Two things can be true at once. In many ways, 2021 was unprecedented. In other ways, it was merely a continuation of the long-established upward trajectory of the Aggie football program.
When Anderson took the job, athletic director John Hartwell dubbed it “the start of a new era” of Utah State Football. Anderson claimed he could bring it to a whole new level, saying the expectation was to “win the Mountain West” and be “the best team in the country in the Group of Five.”
But first, he had to return the program to the winning ways of old.
From 2009-2012, Utah State went through major changes. A few names have become synonymous with this time period, including Bobby Wagner, Robert Turbin and Chuckie Keeton.
But none more so than head coach Gary Andersen. When Andersen first arrived on campus, Utah State was a bottom feeder in the WAC, wore nondescript jerseys, and played in an aging stadium. When he left, the Aggies had a WAC title, had accepted an invitation to join the Mountain West, were sponsored by Nike, and had plans to remodel what is now Maverik Stadium.
During Andersen’s first tenure, Utah State went 26-24 and 16-13 in conference play, including the 2012 season, when they went 10-2 and 6-0 in the WAC while winning a bowl game for the first time in 19 years. This new pattern of success was a stark contrast to the three-win program Andersen took over.
The momentum continued under Andersen’s successor, Utah State alumnus Matt Wells. Wells’ first year as head coach happened to be Utah State’s inaugural year in the Mountain West, and the Aggies made quite the entrance. They lost just one regular-season conference game, to Boise State, and appeared in the Mountain West championship game.
Under Wells, the Aggies amassed a record of 44-34 and 30-18, only missing a bowl game once in his six years with the team. When Wells vacated the position following an 11-2 2018 campaign to become the head coach at Texas Tech, the program rehired Andersen.
Andersen’s second stint was disappointing. In 2019, he led a team featuring quarterback Jordan Love to a 7-6 record before the infamous 2020 breakdown, where the team went 1-5 and Andersen was fired mid-season.
After a decade of growth, the Aggies had faced a setback. Tasked with fixing the trajectory of the program into the 2020s would be Anderson, the former Arkansas State head coach.
Living up to the success of the 2010s wouldn’t be easy. Utah State had a record of 74-61 during that decade, and won four bowl games.
Utah State began the Anderson era with a road win against a PAC-12 opponent, Washington State. It was their first Power Five win since beating Wake Forest in 2014 and their first Power Five road win since 1971 when the Aggies beat Kansas State.
𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝘆 𝗪𝗜𝗡𝗦𝗱𝗮𝘆 : Week 1 @ Washington State
#1-0 | #AggiesAllTheWay pic.twitter.com/qgDgyIb8OG
— USU Football (@USUFootball) September 8, 2021
One win, though, is far from a pattern of success. Anderson and his Aggies still had a long way to go. After that historic win, USU beat North Dakota, then traveled to Colorado Springs and defeated Air Force. An impressive 3-0 wasn’t unprecedented, but still wildly impressive. The last Aggies coach to start a season 3-0 was E. Lowell Romney in 1919.
After the undefeated start, Utah State dropped two consecutive games in losses to Boise State and BYU before going into a bye-week.
Coming out of bye-week, Utah State’s winning record was in jeopardy. The Aggies had the chance to either give up their winning record and fall to .500, or pick up their fourth win to surpass their season win prediction — 3.5 — set by several sportsbooks.
The Aggies did the latter, defeating UNLV to kick-start a five-game win streak, outscoring those five opponents 188-109.
Thanks to their on-field performance and outside help, the Aggies found themselves in the driver’s seat to reach the Mountain West Championship with two games remaining.
Winning the championship would certainly put Andersen’s 2021 squad in unprecedented territory.
Stumbling at home against Wyoming before defeating New Mexico to clinch the Mountain Division, USU finished with a regular-season record of 9-3; making 2021 an undeniable successful return to winning ways.
However, it was nothing that hadn’t been done before.
But when the Aggies traveled to Carson, California on Dec. 4 for the MW Championship against 19th-ranked San Diego State, that all changed.
In that vaunted game, Utah State made history by winning their first-ever Mountain West title over the 11-1 Aztecs, 46-13. Those 46 points were the most ever in Mountain West title game history.
𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝘆 𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓶𝓹𝓲𝓸𝓷𝓼𝓱𝓲𝓹 𝗪𝗜𝗡𝗦𝗱𝗮𝘆 ! 🏆#MWChamps | #AggiesAllTheWay pic.twitter.com/GwbnOXPbld
— USU Football (@USUFootball) December 9, 2021
Winning the championship earned the Aggies an invitation to the first-ever Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl. Utah State’s opponent would be the Pac-12’s Oregon State. For the seventh time of the 2021 season, the Aggies entered the game as underdogs.
And for the fifth time, the Aggies pulled off the ‘upset.’ Utah State handled the Beavers 24-13. Just 15 weeks after picking up their second-ever win against the PAC-12, the Aggies did it again, this time playing their third-string quarterback, Cooper Legas, for the majority of the game.
Take a closer look at @USUFootball‘s win against Oregon State at the @LABowlGame.
📹: Joshua Davis pic.twitter.com/t2DQlJlhmM
— Utah Statesman (@UtahStatesman) December 20, 2021
So, yes, despite being derailed just a year ago, Utah State Football is back to its winning ways. In just his first year, Blake Anderson has followed those who came before him and reinstalled a winning tradition they worked hard to establish.
Similar to both Andersen and Wells, Anderson had a program-record 11-wins.
Anderson didn’t stop there, though. He defeated two Power 5 teams in one season, the first time that’s happened in program history. And in just their sixth win over an AP Top-25 team in program history, USU knocked off SDSU to win its first Mountain West title.
En route to reestablishing the winning culture of old, Anderson and the 2021 USU Football team made this season arguably the most successful and decorated in Aggie history.