Run game has strong showing in second football scrimmage

The running game took center stage at Maverik Stadium on Friday afternoon as the Utah State football team hosted the second scrimmage of spring practice.

“Today was about the run game,” said coach Matt Wells after the scrimmage. “Our focus was trying to come in and establish the run and try to run the ball.”

As a team, the Aggies recorded 134 yards rushing and three touchdowns on 28 carries.

Senior Devante Mays led all rushers with 62 yards, coming on just three carries. Sophomore running back Justen Hervey had 11 carries for 49 yards and one touchdown. Junior Tonny Lindsey had eight carries of his own, finishing just behind Hervey with 36 yards.

Junior LaJuan Hunt, who received the bulk of the carries for USU a season ago, saw limited action in Friday’s scrimmage. Hunt carried the ball three times for 13 yards – including an 11-yard scoring run.

“It’s a good battle,” Wells said. “Guys are trying to earn a role. That battle will go through summer and into training camp, but I see ways to get all four of those guys the ball.”

As a whole, the offense averaged 5.2 yards per carry in the scrimmage, up from the 4.5 yards the team averaged in games last season.

“The offense has made drastic improvement from last year through this spring,” Wells said. “The offensive line has really done a nice job of wrapping their arms around (newly-hired coach) Steve Farmer. I think we have really run the ball better.”

Farmer was announced as the offensive line coach at USU on Feb. 9.

Recognizing the need of a group effort for an offensive line to be successful, Wells declined to hand out singular praise to any of the linemen.

“They’re never an individual up front,” Wells said. “There will be individual honors at the end of the year for the o-line only if we win a lot of games and play good on offense … and then those guys will get recognized.”

The success of the line allowed the ball-carriers to find seams in the defense as the offense had five runs of 11-yards or longer.

“The line did a good job of opening holes and we were patient and just hitting it,” Lindsey said.

On the other side of the ball, the defense was limited because of some minor injuries picked up during the spring, but still showed flashes of growth.

“I think we’ve seen some individual improvement,” Wells said. “There’s some really, really young linebackers that are playing right now and a lot of guys that haven’t played in this defense very long.”

Freshman defensive end Cristopher ‘Unga, sophomore nose guard Gasetoto Schuster and sophomore defensive end Adewale Adeoye were specifically mentioned by Wells as young players who have had strong spring performances.

“(Adeoye) is like berserker-effort every day, just chasing the football,” Wells said. “He’s a guy that’s really enjoying playing. That’s a guy that’s going to earn himself a role.”

All three showed up on the stat sheet after the scrimmage as Adeoye and ‘Unga each picked up a sack and Schuster had two tackles.

The defense had four sacks in the scrimmage, six pass breakups, an interception and also blocked a field goal, but struggled to stop the run in short-yardage situations.

“Defensively, you can’t let teams run the ball in the red zone,” Wells said. “You’ve got to make them throw it in. We will die a fast death if we allow teams to run the ball on us in the red zone.”

Overall, the offense scored five touchdowns and a field goal against the short-handed defensive unit. Junior quarterback Kent Myers opened the scoring with a 50-yard pass to sophomore tight end Dax Raymond.

Myers finished the scrimmage 4 of 11 passing for 70 yards and one touchdown but he was also responsible for the lone interception. Cade Smith was the only other quarterback with a touchdown pass.

The five quarterbacks who saw snaps combined to go 13 of 30 for 156 yards, two touchdowns and one interception on the day.

The passing attack will see increased focus as the team prepares for the next scrimmage, Wells said.

The Aggies final spring scrimmage is the annual Blue and White Scrimmage at Maverik Stadium on Saturday at 2 p.m.

— thomas.sorenson@aggiemail.usu.edu

Twitter: @tomcat340