Takeaways from Thursday’s USU football press conference
On Thursday morning, Utah State football hosted a press conference to introduce new offensive coordinator Bodie Reeder and re-introduce Frank Maile and Stacy Collins, who will take over as co-defensive coordinators for Justin Ena. It lasted a little under 20 minutes but there was plenty of information disseminated through Anderson and his newly hired/promoted coordinators.
Here’s some of the highlights.
Taking his time, thinking it over
Andersen admitted he isn’t one to overthink his options, a personality trait he said bleeds into his hiring of new staff members.
“Anybody that knows me very well knows I usually make decisions very quickly, and I don’t take a lot of time to think about hires, usually,” Anderson said.
Apparently that changed in his search to fill Mike Sanford Jr.’s vacated offensive coordinator position. Hiring Sanford’s replacement, Reeder, technically was a shorter process than hiring Sanford. It took 22 days after USU re-hired Andersen in 2018 until Sanford hopped on board on New Year’s Eve. Anderson shaved 10 days off that time in hiring Reeder with only 12 days passing after Sanford’s Jan. 3 departure for Minnesota.
Despite this technicality, it seemed to feel longer to Andersen, who called it “a long process” that involved “a bigger group of coaches.” On this go around, Andersen apparently wanted to put more thought into this process than previous tries.
“This time, I thought it was very important that I did everything I could to take my time,” Andersen said.
As far as why Reeder ultimately stood out, Andersen talked about Reeder’s approach to managing the offense in the offseason as well as during the season.
“He looks at the opportunity to be the general manager of the offense as a great opportunity,” Andersen said. “That has to do with recruiting, that has to do with daily communication with not just the quarterbacks but with the offensive line, with the wide receivers and building those relationships. It has to do with being able to look at me and say ‘Listen coach, this is what we’ve got to get today out of practice. We’ve got to be able to do this.’ Building our football school, which is a huge part of our offseason this year.”
No more high tempo
Okay, that isn’t entirely true. When asked about what his offensive style would be, Reeder said the offense would have “multiple tempos,” which could include high tempo at times. But the main implication of that statement Aggies fans should take away is that the 2018 “One minute or less” scoring offense will now be a figment of the past. Instead, Reeder will mold his offense around the skills present in the locker room.
“I want to take advantage of the guys that we have in the room,” Reeder said. “I want to play to the strengths of our offense. We’re going to have multiple tempos, multiple personnel’s and make sure we’re getting the balls to our playmakers in space and the correct fashion in which they need to get it.”
That word, “multiple” came up again a few moments later as Reeder explained he doesn’t believe in having one exact system or book that he carries around and implements with each offense he works with. In short, his offensive system varies.
“We’re going to make sure that we’re multiple and we’ll make sure that we have different schemes that can attack the defense from sideline to sideline and vertically down the field,” Reeder said. “We’re going to have a couple of different run schemes that we can run the ball inside in our zone schemes and outside in our zone schemes and take advantage of gap runs.”
Quarterback weapons
For the first time in several years, there will be something of a quarterback battle. When Andersen first walked in the doors and took over in 2018, he left no doubts that Love was the starter and no one else had a shot at beating him out for the first start in 2019 barring injury. Henry Colombi, Love’s backup for the last two years, is now the incumbent starter with Love departing for the draft; but Andersen left the door open this time.
“Right now, Henry is (the starter) because he’s got the upper hand when we go through spring because he’s got those reps,” Andersen said. “But Andrew (Peasley)’s not going to say ‘I don’t want to compete.'”
Peasley, who will be a redshirt sophomore (Colombi a redshirt junior), is coming off a 2019 season-ending injury. Before he went down, Peasley had showed tremendous improvement from his redshirt 2018 season. Two other quarterbacks are also currently on the roster. Freshmen Cooper Legas and Josh Calvin, both three-star QB recruits, just completed their redshirt seasons in 2019 and have a solid year of development under their belts.
Even if Colombi takes advantage of his head start in the QB battle and makes it boring by running away with it in spring ball and fall camp, there’s a possibility for things to still be rather interesting under center. Andersen went out of his way to talk about the athletic ability of both Peasley and Legas.
“There’s some unique athletic ability with two of our quarterbacks,” Andersen said. “They’re elite athletically as far as quarterbacks go.”
The point Andersen tried to make was that, even though Colombi stands as the incumbent, there’s a chance for the offense to use its two very athletically gifted quarterbacks “as a vicious weapon” against opposing defenses. Maybe Andersen spent some time watching the New Orleans Saints since the end of the Aggies’ season.
Back to co-defensive coordinators
Last season, with Ena as the lone defensive coordinator, was actually the first time since 2015 that Utah State had just one DC. In 2016 and 2017, Kendrick Shaver and Frank Maile shared those duties, and in 2018 Maile was co-DC with Keith Patterson. The move to a collaboration on defense was a move back to the familiar.
“It’s always been a collaborative effort here and it always will be,” Collins said. “We’ll collaborate with it, we’ll put a gameplan together with it and when we hit those game days on Saturdays, there’ll have a definitive plan of how we’re calling it and working with it, but it will always be a collaborative job with an unbelievable staff.”
Maile and Collins will also be moving back to the defense after being out of position, so to speak. This past season, Maile coached the tight ends while Collins, the inside linebackers coach from 2016-2018, led the running backs and special teams in 2019.
Base defense shift
Last season, Utah State consistently ran a 3-3-5 defensive front; three defensive lineman, three linebackers and five defensive backs. It wasn’t technically new as the Aggies had run the front in 2018, but that season also saw plenty of 3-4 fronts. When asked if there would be any changes to the base defense, Maile said the defense would go back to more of the 3-4 fronts seen in 2018.
The main shift that would occur with that change comes with the linebackers and how the defense attacks through them. It’s not just that the defense will go from having three to four LBs, how those linebackers play is altered significantly and affects how the rest of the D operates. The two outside linebackers become edge rushing/containing forces with limited coverage duties. It could help the Aggies generate more of a pass rush and improve outside run defense. Consider that as more of a 3-4 linebacker in 2018, Tipa Galeai had 65 tackles, 13.5 TFLs and 10.0 sacks, but as a rusher in a 3-3-5 base D, he finished the year with just 55 tackles, 9.0 TFLs and 5.0 QB takedowns.
“We really want to bring the attacking style of defense back,” Collins said. “Hard emphasis on the takeaways — we were fortunate in 2018 to lead the nation in takeaways. Three-and-outs, get ourselves off the field and give the offense a chance to get back on, change those paces, put the stress on other defenses. TFLs and sacks and playing great red zone defense.”
Utah State won’t have Galeai to reprise his role from 2018, but Anderson did note that the new defensive approach will be aided by recruiting. Not from this offseason but from this time last year.
“All those young linebackers are now growing and maturing,” Andersen said, “and you saw some of them get many opportunities, especially after (David Woodward) went down. You saw some young faces hop in those spots.”
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Twitter: @thejwalk67