Levi Williams leads Aggies in thrilling 2OT win over New Mexico to make USU bowl eligible – Cache Valley Daily

In what was essentially a win-or-go-home game for Utah State, the team had to turn to the third-string quarterback, Levi Williams, to lead its offense to a road victory over New Mexico.

The performance wasn’t pretty in many cases, riddled with penalties and other self-inflicted errors, but Williams’ 351 total yards of offense and five total touchdowns, powered the Aggies to a 44-41 victory in double-overtime over the Lobos, making USU bowl eligible in the last breath of the regular season.

Williams started off essentially perfect, leading USU on back-to-back scoring drives that led to a 14-7 lead. The junior quarterback completed 6 of 7 passes for an even 100 yards and a pair of touchdown passes to Jalen Royals, also adding an eight-yard rush for good measure.

Where things weren’t pretty came mainly on defense, starting from the very first drive.

On a 2nd & 9, Utah State looked to have a screen pass completely sniffed out, rallying hats toward New Mexico running back Andrew Henry for what looked like would be as much as a five-yard loss. Except, none of the roughly eight Aggies who ran in the direction of Henry actually brought the back down. Consequently, Henry not only made it back to the line of scrimmage, but another 64 yards for a touchdown that tied the game 7-7.

WHAT A RUN! Andrew Henry takes it 64 yards for the TD.
📺: CBS Sports#GoLobos pic.twitter.com/Cetw58DUdE

— New Mexico Football (@UNMLoboFB) November 24, 2023

 

The Aggies never trailed during regulation, and never yielded a tie until the final moments of regulations after going up 14-7 at the 8:34 mark of the first quarter. Utah State pushed its lead to 10 points three separate times, going up 17-7, 24-14 and 31-21. Each time the Aggies gave up that two-possession lead, sometimes after having a chance to go up by even more but failing.

What kept Utah State from moving further ahead was a mix of stalling on offense, poor defense and a metric ton of penalties allowed the Lobos back in the game multiple times and ultimately tie the game at the end of the fourth quarter. A particular thorn in the Aggies’ side was New Mexico running back Jacory Croskey-Merritt, who ran for 233 yards, his second straight 200-yard game.

The metric ton of penalties amounted to 13 accepted penalties for a loss of 183 yards. New Mexico wasn’t immune from the flag-fest either, getting penalized 155 yards on 15 accepted penalties.

“I’ll have to go back and watch them. I clearly thought that it was really quick to throw some flags,” Anderson said. “I just have to assume that they’re all legitimate flags and we got to do better.”

Despite much of penalties and occasional stalling on offense, late in the game the Aggies seemingly had the game in hand, just needing to make a stop on defense, or wind down the clock on offense. With 12 minutes left in the fourth quarter, Williams led the Aggies on a 15-play, 90-yard touchdown drive in which the junior QB ran for 41 yards himself, 28 of those rushing yards coming on designed pass plays where the athletic QB simply tucked the ball and ran.

The drive not only produced a touchdown and a 31-21 lead, but ate up six minutes of clock, forcing New Mexico into a more hurried approach to getting the points to tie. But the Lobos responded very quickly, taking just 2:05 to go 75 yards and bring the game to 31-28, putting the pressure back on the Aggies.

Needing a good four-minute drill, Utah State instead went three-and-out. A key call on the drive came on 3rd & 9 where Williams completed a 10-yard pass to Colby Bowan, only for Terrell Vaughn, who didn’t touch any defender on the play, was called for offensive pass interference. Wiping out a conversion that would’ve given Utah State 1st & 10 with just over two minutes on the clock and New Mexico only having one timeout.

A nice consolation to the failed conversion was a 60-yard punt by Ryan Marks, pinning the Lobos on their own nine-yard line and giving them a long field ahead to tie or take the lead. The clock read 2:09 and New Mexico had used its last timeout.

In one of the most remarkable game-tying drives in college football history, Hopkins completed just 3 of 12 passes he attempted (for just 36 yards), in a drive that ultimately went 86 yards. Unfortunately for the Aggies, three of those incompletions were waived off because the referees called pass interference penalties three times against the Aggies. One of those came on 3rd & 11 from New Mexico’s eight-yard line, allowing the drive to stay alive. 

At the end of that drive, New Mexico had run out of time and had to kick a chip-shot 22-yard field goal with four seconds left in regulation to tie the game 31-31.

Into overtime the two sides went, and neither wasted time in scoring on their respective drives. Utah State took four plays to go the 25 yards and New Mexico needed just three. For a moment, though, the Aggies season appeared to hang on a potential two-point attempt from the Lobos. But a USU timeout seemed to change New Mexico’s mind and they kicked the PAT to send the game to a second overtime.

In that second overtime, Utah State finally made the plays it had to. The plays it didn’t make in the first, second, third, fourth quarter or first overtime. Plays on BOTH offense and defense. And they came from the hero of the night, Williams, and the most experienced man on the entire team, Hale Motu’apuaka.

New Mexico, having the honors to go first on offense in the second overtime, looked like it would march into the end zone almost as easily as the first drive. Five straight runs gained the Lobos 24 yards and a 3rd & Goal from the one-yard line. Everyone in the stadium, from fans to coaches, thought the same thing. The ball was about to be carried by Croskey-Merritt, a man who, at that point, had 234 rushing yards.

Everyone in the stadium that had a Croskey-Merritt run on their mind turned out to be correct, perhaps none of those people as key as Motu’apuaka who broke through the offensive line to drop Croskey-Merritt for a one-yard loss. From 3rd & Goal at the one to 4th & Goal from the two made New Mexico less excited to go for it all and the Lobos settled for a field goal, giving Utah State a chance to walk off.

“To get that stop when we had to force the field goal was absolutely huge, absolutely huge,” Anderson said. “And sometimes that’s all it takes is one play when you’re struggling in a lot of other areas.”

“It was a great feeling,” Motu’apuaka said of making the stop. “Coach called a great play, just executed it well. And I was just very happy.”

The Aggies nearly had to settle for a field goal themselves, getting stuck on a 4th & 1 from the 16-yard line. It would have been roughly a 33-yarder and in normal conditions such an attempt is child’s play to a college kicker.

But the conditions were far from normal, and had changed from the start of overtime. It led to Utah State calling a timeout after sending Elliott Nimrod out for a potential game-tying kick and then sending the offense back out onto the field.

“We collectively talked about it and agreed that it was just too risky to (kick it),” Anderson said. “It wasn’t a chip shot. The wind was blowing hard and we felt like we’d run the ball at least efficiently most of the evening and it was the right gamble.”

The decision paid off as Rahsul Faison, who had 106 yards himself on the night, gained three yards to easily get the first down. Williams threw an incomplete pass on the next play, setting up for the biggest moment of the night.

Williams, distracted by his pre-snap reads, mis-handled the belt-high shotgun snap and dropped the ball. He immediately picked it up, broke an arm tackle running to the left side of his offensive line, and ran it into the end zone.

A walk-off touchdown in Williams’ first start in more than 700 days.

WHAT A GAME!!!! @USUFootball wins on a long run by Levi Williams#AtThePeak l #MWFB l #AggiesAllTheWay pic.twitter.com/R1uRfJiKS1

— Mountain West (@MountainWest) November 25, 2023

“I just kind of took my eye off the ball for a second and kind of fumbled it to my right,” Williams said in his description of the play. “Then once I picked it up, I saw the angle that the (defensive end) had on me. So, I got a little bit of width. And then once I got outside of him, I realized there wasn’t anybody left. And those secondary guys don’t like to tackle a big guy like me. So I just ran as hard as I could for as long as I could, found the red end zone.”

The Aggies must now prepare for what comes next. Presumably that would be a bowl game, though it’s not a complete certainty Utah State will make a bowl game due to math surrounding the number of bowl spots available and number of bowl-eligible teams. USU is eligible itself, the 11th time in the last 13 seasons they’ve been so, and the third consecutive year under Anderson.

Stat Leaders

Utah State players are in bold, Nevada players in italics.

Mountain West Standings

Standings and results updated though 8 p.m. on Nov. 24

Team	This Week’s Opponent	MW Record	Overall Record
UNLV	vs San Jose State	6-1	9-2
Boise State	vs Air Force	6-2	7-5
San Jose State	@ UNLV	5-2	6-5
Air Force	@ Boise State	5-3	8-4
Wyoming	@ Nevada	4-3	7-4
Fresno State	@ San Diego State	4-3	8-3
Utah State	44-41 W @ New Mexico	4-4	6-6
Colorado State	@ Hawaii	3-4	5-6
Hawaii	vs Colorado State	2-5	4-8
Nevada	vs Wyoming	2-5	2-9
New Mexico	44-41 L vs Utah State	2-6	4-8
San Diego State	vs Fresno State	1-6	3-8