Phil Steele’s long-running college football preview magazine is making its way around the country following its recent release. Among many, many other things it contains Steele’s picks for four preseason All-Mountain West teams. It comes shortly after Athlon Sports released their own last week, which also included four full all-conference teams. Steele doesn’t appear as optimistic about the Aggies, only featuring eight players who earned nine overall selections. One notable reason for this is his inclusion of players from the “Pac-2,” Washington State and Oregon State whereas they were not included in Athlon’s teams. As such, the Aggies rank T-5th among the 14 teams accounted for with these teams, behind Boise State (15), UNLV (14), Fresno State (12) and Colorado State (12), being tied with Wyoming and San Diego State (both at nine), and coming in ahead of Hawaii (eight), Air Force (six), Washington State (six), Oregon State (five), San Jose State (four), Nevada (four) and New Mexico (three). Three USU players were named to the First Team, those being wide receiver Jalen Royals, safety Ike Larsen and long-snapper Jacob Garcia. All are pretty obvious choices, especially Royals and Larsen who were named All-MW First Team at the end of

Considering the quarterback position is universally seen as the single most important one on the football field, each team’s signal caller (or group of them) gets extra attention. So ESPN, more specifically staff writer David Hale, naturally went and divided all 134 Division I football teams into 20 tiers based on their situation at quarterback. We’ll take a look at where Hale placed Mountain West teams in his various tiers while analyzing the placement and adding a bit of context for each situation. At the end, I’ll give my own rankings for every team in the Mountain West. Tier 11 Utah State (Spencer Petras, Bryson Barnes) Boise State (Malachi Nelson, Maddus Madsen) Both the Aggies and Broncos were placed in Tier 11 (technically, it was 11-B, which also means there were 21 tiers, not 20). There’s an interesting contrast between the two QB rooms. Utah State has experience with Petras and Barnes combining for more than 20 starts at the Division I level, but neither were exactly dominant since neither has thrown for more than 1,800 yards in a single season. Boise State is also pivoting to a degree as the expected full-time starter, Taylen Green, transferred. Though unlike Utah State,

Preseason rankings and predictions are gradually coming out, with preseason all-conference team season already underway and awards watch list season visible on the horizon. To that end, it’s worth taking a look at what some of the national outlets predict for the order of finish in the Mountain West and Utah State specifically. The three examined here from Kelley Ford, Phil Steele, and Bill Connelly. All three project USU roughly in the middle but with some variance, none actually have the Aggies in the exact same spot in a projected order of finish. The theme is the same though, Utah State is not expected to be among the best and has a lot of room to improve in the eyes of the national media. Kelley Ford (K-Ford Ratings) This is the projected order of finish in the MW standings from Kelley Ford, the number in parenthesis is the average number of conference wins (out of seven possible) according to the model used. Boise State (5.9) Fresno State (5.2) Air Force (4.3) Wyoming (4.0) UNLV (3.8) Utah State (3.3) San Diego State (3.2) Colorado State (3.2) San Jose State (3.0) Hawaii (2.9) Nevada (1.7) New Mexico (1.6) BOISE STATE and FRESNO