USU looks to play role of spoiler
Last season it took the Utah State University football team six games to record its first win. This year, the Aggies are hoping for a different story.
The only thing standing in the way Saturday is the No. 9 ranked University of Nebraska Cornhuskers.
Kickoff is set for 5 p.m. at Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium.
“I am not as worried about Nebraska as I am about Utah State,” said Aggie Head Coach Mick Dennehy in his weekly press conference.
Utah State goes into Lincoln, Neb. hoping they have improved an offense which managed negative 9 yards rushing and only 162 yards of total offense against Utah.
“My biggest fear going in was too many three and outs,” Dennehy said. “When we did have a good play on first down, what we did on second down put us in third and long [situations].”
Despite USU’s difficulties on offense against the Utes, Nebraska Head Coach Frank Solich said the Aggies had some bright spots.
“Utah State played well against Utah,” Solich said in a press release this week. “It was a very good ball game, certainly better than the score indicates.”
This will be the seventh meeting between the two teams and it does not look good for the Aggies, as they have never beaten Nebraska.
Although the Aggies struggled to find a rhythm offensively against the Utes, Nebraska defensive coordinator Craig Bohl said he respects USU’s offensive capabilities and is not underestimating the men in blue and white.
“You’re looking at an offense, that through their formations, tries to either confuse you or tries to gain an advantage by leveraging and outnumbering you,” Bohl said in the Lincoln Journal Star.
In order to be successful against the Cornhuskers, the Aggie offense must neutralize a very speedy Nebraska defensive team, Dennehy said.
“Defensively, I would categorize [Nebraska] as a team that plays with a tremendous amount of speed from their defensive ends to their linebackers to their secondary,” Dennehy said.
If the Aggie defense can hold up against the Cornhuskers like they did during the first three quarters against Utah, it could end up being a close game. That will be no easy task as Nebraska is currently averaging 314.5 yards per game on offense with 241 of those yards coming on the ground.
Defensively, if the Aggies want to expose a Nebraska weakness, it may be a passing game averaging less than 74 yards passing per game. Solich said he expects the Aggies to try and pressure quarterback Jamal Lords when he drops back in the pocket.
“They present a number of problems and the offensive formations they run, the complexity of their defensive front, the fact that they blitz from all over will be again a team that puts a little bit of pressure on you,” Solich said.
Although Dennehy said he was pleased with his defense’s performance against the Utes, he said they must avoid allowing Nebraska to control the time-of-possession battle.
“I was very proud of the way our defensive guys played with the exception of allowing them to sustain some drives because we didn’t tackle as well as we needed to tackle,” Dennehy said. “We can’t do it just alone on defense or just alone on offense or just alone with our special teams’ performance. We have all got to turn it up a notch, play within ourselves and do our jobs and bring our level of performance up to where we all feel it is acceptable.”
USU will turn to junior college transfer James Samuel – who is making his first career start for the Aggies – to jump start the Aggie rushing attack.
Another factor that could present a problem for the Aggies will be the number of fans. For the 250th consecutive home game, Memorial Stadium will be sold out.
“People care, generally speaking, about the football that is played here and the players that play here,” Solich said. “And that’s always a plus when it comes to recruiting. It’s always a plus when it comes to lining up and playing ball against an opponent. Certainly it’s the home-field advantage and our crowd has given us that game after game.”
Despite the daunting task ahead, Dennehy said he is not going to worry about the factors of the game USU cannot control.
“We need to go back and we need to pay attention to ourselves,” Dennehy said. “We need to get back to execution and that is where we are going to start today [Monday].”
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