Monday Cooldown – Utah State doing more of the same, good, bad and otherwise | Sports

Someone in the sports universe, be it Utah State, UNLV or the football gods themselves, decided that what last week’s Boise State/Utah State game needed was a sequel. And that’s exactly what we all got. The Aggies once again basically sat out the first half on both sides of the ball and then decided the second half would be a good time to get going.

After the game, interim head coach Nate Dreiling zeroed in on the positives, praising the offense for its effectiveness and insisting that the defense — which is third-worst in the country in points allowed per game (42.8) — is “close” to turning a corner.

“I know I sound like a broken record up here. This team is so close to really taking off. so close. And you guys saw it,” Dreiling said in the post-game press conference after the UNLV loss.

It’s a logical stance to take and one Utah State needs to cling to. If they simply give up now then every player and coach on the team should hang up the cleats and put away the whistles permanently. No self-respecting, competitive person with ambitions of being a top-level player can admit defeat halfway through the season and just give up.

And to the Aggies’ credit, they haven’t given up in either game. They’ve powered through the embarrassment to try and salvage as much as possible from each of their last two losses.

Looking at the first half vs second half of each game, there’s a lot to be optimistic about statistically, and not just on the offensive side of the ball. Despite losing both games by a combined 48 points, in the second half of each game, USU was actually either even or far ahead in points, with an overall net of +18 in the two second halves combined.

The problem is that there are realities that must be faced. For one, it’s frankly stupid to take the second-half performances against Boise State and UNLV at complete face value. Neither were putting their best foot forward at that point, especially the Broncos. Dreiling even noted that BSU had most of their reserves in and that it impacted the balance of power in the second half.

There is room for interpretation on how much UNLV took its foot off the gas. The Rebels pretty much kept their starters in the whole game since the Aggies made a push in the second half which meant UNLV weren’t really in the point differential/time left sweet spot where coaches look to pull their starters. They probably could have, but when USU nearly made it a two-possession game midway through the fourth quarter it meant the Rebels weren’t going to deploy the second unit in full. To Dreiling, that means he can draw more positives from that two-quarter span than he was for the Boise outing.

“Boise State was a lot of their backups. There’s no, there’s no doubt about that. UNLV was their starters the entire time. We know that, they know that,” Dreiling siad. “Now the problem is when you’re down 41-7, it really don’t matter. That’s way too hard of a hole. The biggest thing is our players did walk away more confident then you probably could imagine. I mean, UNLV’s got a chance to make the playoffs and we just got after it in the second half. And the funny thing about it is we didn’t call any different calls on offense or defense or special teams, but the kids had belief and they executed at a very high level. Everything I’ve been talking about for the last month and a half. And that’s what it looks like.”

Still, UNLV threw just five pass attempts the entire second half. When the Rebels had the ball in the third and fourth quarters it was all about burning clock and getting the game over with. The full offensive playbook that resulted in six straight scoring drives to end the first half (five of those being touchdowns) wasn’t really being utilized. Neither of the second halves are truly indicative of actually competing with either of those two teams. When the chips were down, the Aggies were rocketed off the field by teams that were just better than them. Once Boise State and UNLV lifted their foot off the gas, Utah State made up a few points on the scoreboard (Heck, against UNLV the Aggies even managed to tick off some gamblers by covering the spread).

So what hope does Utah State have this season? Well, Dreiling was pretty open about what will give them something to work for, almost too open. Putting it bluntly, the schedule is way, WAY easier from this point on. The Aggies faced three teams ranked inside the top 40 in the ESPN SP+ rankings with UNLV the second-easiest at 66.

The second half of the season — which will be underway this upcoming Saturday — features one team inside the top 95 of SP+ (Washington State, 57th), with two teams in the bottom 15 in the country according to that ranking. It’s a caliber of opponent the Aggies are much more confident in beating.

“We just played two of the best teams in the conference. The rest of these guys, we should go out there and win,” said USU tight end Broc Lane.

Even with this easing the the difficulty level, Utah State absolutely must improve in numerous ways. After all, one of the teams during the “difficult” part of the schedule was Temple, ranked 127th in SP+. The Aggies lost that game by three scores, letting Temple put up 45 points. Mind you, if Temple’s performance against USU is taken out of their average, the Owls would have the literal worst scoring offense in the country (13.6 points on average with that adjustment, and even with the game against USU counting, Temple ranks 120th).

If you can’t stop the worst offense in the country, who can you stop?

The answer may simply be that this defense won’t stop anybody. You can never completely write off an entire unit, but we’re six games into the season and that’s a big enough sample size to make at least some assumptions. If there’s one thing the Aggies can try to do, it’s stop giving up explosive plays. Any team when forced to go 8-11 plays for a scoring drive every time, will score less often. Utah State’s opponents rarely have to do that. Just three of UNLV’s nine scoring drives lasted longer than five plays. Boise State was a little more methodical given all but two of their scoring drives lasted at least five plays, but they also had two one-play scoring drives. The ones where Jeanty went 63 and 75 yards in two whole rush attempts.

UNLV and Boise State combined for 29 explosive plays (here defined as passes of 15+ yards and rushes of 10+ yards) and gained a combined 773 yards on those plays. Just do the math on that. On 29 of the Rebels and Broncos’ plays they averaged 26.7 yards per snap. On the other 112 plays the average is just 3.3.

It’d be disingenuous to just put that 3.3 yards per play number on a whiteboard and just say that’s what the Aggies are really giving up if you just exclude explosive plays. Every team gets explosives and every team gives them up. It’s why teams average in the 5-8 yards per play range and not the 2-4 range. Limiting explosives is the name of the game here. If the Aggies cut the total of these explosive plays in half, it’d go an extremely long way in shoring up the defense. Just to visualize, if we took out 14 plays, that’s 328 yards the Aggies get back (assuming the 26.7 per play average for said 14 plays and converting them to 3.3 yards instead).

If only you could just wipe out 14 explosive plays as easily as I do in a weekly column. Utah State has to do it on the field. And according to Dreiling, the issue isn’t that they’re being outmatched by better teams. Rather, it’s an execution and consistency issue.

“Big plays don’t come from being outmatched. They come from being misaligned or having miscues. Not looking at who you’re supposed to look at,” Dreiling said. “Anyone can fit a play correctly once, but it’s having the discipline to do it over and over and over again. And that’s what we’re gonna continue to push in practice.”

The Aggies have had seemingly plenty of times where they fit a play well on defense once or twice — with spurts of excellent defense in the first half against Temple or Utah, or in the second half against Robert Morris and UNLV — but there’s no consistency for an entire game to be found.

Dreiling will try to corral the defense and get them to execute. Perhaps he will succeed, perhaps he won’t. For the immediate future, the hopes of the team may simply lie in its offense which is quickly becoming more and more capable. Spencer Petras is heating up, averaging 375.3 yards per game in his three most recent starts and an 8-4 TD/INT ratio, which bodes well for when USU faces defenses even less adept than the Rebels and Broncos are.

The one question for the offense will be just how many points must they score to outpace what the defense is giving up?