Byron Vaughns and Daniel Grzesiak
FORT COLLINS – Utah State learned the full truth of two old football clichés on Saturday – no win is ever guaranteed, and anything can happen in a game.
The Aggies walked onto the field of Canvas Stadium as two-touchdown favorites against the Rams of Colorado State. By the fourth quarter, USU was fighting to close out an eventual 17-13 road win with its fourth-string quarterback, true freshman Bishop Davenport, handing the ball off to the running back, Calvin Tyler Jr.
“What can you say? Wow. Not the way we scripted it. Super proud of the guys to overcome all that happened,” USU head coach Blake Anderson said. Later, he added to that saying these kinds of wins just “don’t happen.”
“To give up a blocked punt and to go through three quarterbacks and lose as many guys we did during a game. Those are games you typically lose and somehow we found a way to win,” Anderson said.
Quarterbacks were in short supply in Fort Collins on both sides. The Rams were already down to its third-stringer, a walk-on freshman in Giles Pooler, after its week one starter, Clay Millen, and its backup signal-caller, Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi, were too injured to play. Utah State was already without its week one starter, Logan Bonner, having backup Cooper Legas making his third start of the year this week.
But by the end of the first half, USU was forced into trotting out its fourth-string guy to hand off the ball and go into halftime.
Prior to the chaos that led to the Aggies hitting the emergency button at QB, they were moving the ball rather well. Legas led the offense to 175 yards in three drives with a touchdown that put USU up 7-3 late in the first quarter. Legas was 9 of 12 passing for 85 yards along with 27 yards rushing. His best play was a 32-yard rainbow pass thrown perfectly into the hands of Justin McGriff for his lone touchdown.
That turned out to be the last moment things came even somewhat easy for the Aggie offense.
At some point on that long touchdown drive, Legas suffered a concussion. When exactly wasn’t clear but there were a few times the junior QB took hits to the helmet, including a play where roughing the passer was called and one run where Legas was hit as he slid to the ground.
“He took a couple shots, one of which I thought should have been obviously a penalty. Very frustrated that he wasn’t protected when he slid,” Anderson said. “He did not remember the rest of the drive I don’t think. It was just kind of…gone. So, we checked him out immediately, we knew he needed to be pulled.”
On the next offensive possession after Legas’ touchdown pass, Utah State’s third-stringer, Levi Williams, trotted out. He didn’t last long though either. He took his first snap 39 seconds into the second quarter but just eight minutes later, his snaps were numbered. On a 25-yard designed run, Williams was tackled from behind and his right foot was caught underneath him. This led to an ankle injury that would eventually take him out of the game. Williams played a few more snaps after his injury, the coaches eventually made the decision to pull him
“He wasn’t in a position tonight to really be mobile and protect himself against a very good defensive front,” Anderson said.
Davenport took his first snap with one second left in the second quarter. He handed the ball off to Robert Briggs and the Aggies went into halftime down 10-7 on the road with three injured quarterbacks in the locker room. When asked if he ever thought he might get in the game, Davenport answered “Not at all. Not at all.”
“I kind of go into every game trying to prepare myself that I am going to get it, but no, not at all,” Davenport said.
In a predicament such as this, going full conservative would be an understandable call, but the Aggies didn’t shy away from the pass on two huge drives in the third quarter. On the first drive, Davenport threw the ball three times and carried it two other times (kind of carried it twice, one was a fumbled snap he had to hang on to and suffered a four-yard loss) for a net of 27 yards. The Aggies kicked a field goal on that drive – where placekicker Connor Coles redeemed himself of two missed field goals in the first half to nail a 49-yarder – to tie the game at 10 apiece.
Davenport again was heavily involved on the next drive, though more on the ground game. He ran the ball three times on an eight-play drive, including a 19-yard scamper and a four-yard run for the Aggies’ second touchdown of the game and a 17-10 lead.
“The moment’s not bigger than him. He connected dots when we needed to. He pulled the ball down and ran,” Anderson said. “For a guy that had not had any reps with us offensively other than just drill work on a daily basis, he was very calm and collected and allowed us to have the chance to win the game.”
For all of Davenport’s poise, he didn’t lead a powerful offensive attack by himself. He tallied just 70 total yards through the air and ground out of 360 total from the Aggies. The true drivers behind this win were the defense and the consistent play of Tyler in the backfield.
Tyler led USU in rush attempts with 24 and netted himself 129 yards rushing. The senior running back has now run for 100-plus yards in three straight games, the first Aggie player to accomplish the feat since Kerwynn Williams had four straight 100-yard games to end the 2012 season.
“He’s the senior, the veteran guy,” Anderson said. “He’s running the ball better and better each week. Gotta give credit to the offensive line, too, because they’re moving bodies for him. But he’s a calming presence. He’s not a real vocal guy but he doesn’t seem to get rattled. And right now, in a game like tonight that’s pretty important.”
The Aggie defense, led by a huge night from defensive end Daniel Grzesiak, bottled up the Rams’ offense despite some advantages CSU gained via turnovers and a blocked punt. In fact, the Rams only got six points total off of Utah State’s two turnovers and the blocked punt. Those three drives started on the USU 29, 20 and 12 yard lines but resulted in three field goal attempts, one of which was missed.
“Defensively, to hold those guys to 13 points and hit the quarterback like they did. Great job,” Anderson said. “If that thing gets out of hand from our defense then we’re not in a position, tonight at least, to make a run at it.”
Utah State finished with eight tackles for loss as a team and three sacks. All of those sacks were by Grzesiak who now has 4.0 on the season.
“You know, they’re my old coaches. I love those guys,” said Grzesiak who played under CSU head coach Jay Norvell when both were at Nevada. “And they run the air raid and I’m a pass-rusher. So it was just perfect. I finally got to get a lot of pass rushes in. Back end was holding up a long time. So it was great.”
The Aggie pass rush had three additional QB hurries, one each by AJ Vongphachanh, Byron Vaughns and Grzesiak.
“It was needed,” Anderson said of the pass rush. “We had not really played this style of offense this year. And so the ability for our pass rush to show up was something that was really important.”
Fitting of Tyler and the defense’s role in maintaining the lead built in the third quarter, those two were responsible for the two game-clinching plays.
First, the defense cut off what would be Colorado State’s final drive of the game. That series featured a 25-yard pass play near the start that set the Rams up near midfield. The Aggies were flagged for pass interference on the next play but were bailed out by an ineligible man downfield penalty by CSU that offset USU’s infraction. But on the next play, Pooler air-mailed a pass over the head of the intended receiver and right into the arms of safety Gurvan Hall. Initially, Hall returned the pick for a touchdown, but a holding penalty negated that and Hall was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct on his celebration to boot.
Nevertheless, Utah State took over on its own 38 with 5:16 to play and needed to run out the clock. Tyler ran the ball seven times on that drive for 21 yards. The biggest of those went for only two yards, but it was on a 3rd and 2 with 2:16 on the clock that gave USU a new set of downs. That conversion kept the ball in Utah State’s hands with Colorado State out of timeouts.
The Aggies are now on their first winning streak of the season and are 3-4 after this ugly win. Though, for a team that’s already hit rock bottom in the season, Anderson’s words on ugly games ring true: “There’s no such thing as an ugly win right now with this group.”
