Zach Vigil breaks records

An Aggie football record more than two decades old has been broken, and all it took was one small stat correction.

Senior linebacker Zach Vigil was credited with one more tackle for a loss after officials reviewed his game against UTEP in the 2014 Gildan New Mexico Bowl. The seemingly minor adjustment brings Vigil’s total to 43.5 tackles behind the line of scrimmage in his career at Utah State, breaking Jermaine Younger’s record of 43 tackles — a number untouched in the record books since 1993.

USU head football coach Matt Wells mentioned the possibility of Vigil’s unrecorded stats after the Bowl Game in December.

“There’s an offseason project for our defensive graduate assistant,” Wells said. “He’s telling me right now he looked down, and he said ‘Coach, I think we missed a couple halves earlier in the year.’”

Half tackles, awarded when multiple teammates contribute to bringing down an opposing player, also boosted Vigil’s single-season total to 20.5, tying the Mountain West record for tackles in a season.

Only four players in Aggie football history have brought down more players than Vigil, who finished his USU career with 389 total tackles, 156 of those coming in his senior season.

During his senior season, Vigil averaged 11.1 tackles per game — good enough to rank seventh in the nation and second in the Mountain West. The Clearfield native will graduate as part of the winningest senior class in USU history, winning 37 games and appearing in four straight bowls, winning the last three.

— logantjones@aggiemail.usu.edu

Twitter: @Logantj