Monday Cooldown — Looking at USU’s decision to go for it on fourth and inability to stop UNM on third | Sports

Utah State lost its sixth straight football game on Saturday. Unlike the previous five, the margin was within one score, 50-45.

And yet, for all it mattered, the score might as well have been 50-0. The Aggies lost yet again and any hopes of salvaging the season may very well be gone.

There are a lot of moments that could be deeply examined but the most controversial one is worth diving into the most (especially since I didn’t dive all that deep into it in my recap). That moment being Utah State’s decision to go for it on fourth down on its own 34-yard line up just two points, 45-43, with about two-and-a-half minutes left in the fourth quarter. With just one yard to go, the Aggies didn’t have to gain much but the stakes were massive. New Mexico had two timeouts and holding USU meant getting the ball just on the edge of field goal range.

Let’s break down New Mexico’s field goal range to get a better picture of the math behind this. Having the ball on the 34 makes a field goal attempt about 51 yards (conventional wisdom for the calculation is to add about 17 yards to whatever yard line is, 10 for the length of the end zone and either six or seven for how far back the holder is from the line of scrimmage).

Lobos kicker Luke Drzewiecki has a career-long of 47 yards, made last year against Nevada, with his season-high in 2024 being 45 yards against Montana State. Drzewiecki is 0-for-2 in career attempts of 50+ yards and 5-for-9 on attempts between 40-49 yards and 11-of-15 between 30-39 yards.

You’d expect interim head coach Nate Dreiling and his special teams staff to be fully aware of these numbers, along with the fact that conditions were decent enough to expect Drzewiecki to be able to hit close to or longer than his career high in terms of distance. But with him being around a coin flip in terms of accuracy, you’d imaging USU would feel it still had a pretty decent chance if it just managed to hold New Mexico from getting a first down in the situation of a turnover on downs. In that case, the shortest field goal would have been about 42 yards. And while the chances of a miss from that distance aren’t superb, they aren’t bad by any means.

That’s what the defensive side of the equation looks like. If the Aggies didn’t get it, the defense would still have a chance to force a long field goal against a kicker who’s slightly better than 50/50 at that distance. 

So what about the offense?

Getting just the one first down would have virtually guaranteed victory. Utah State couldn’t have run out the clock on just the one new set of downs, but it would have drained all of New Mexico’s timeouts and the two-minute warning stoppage. Punt the ball at that point and the Lobos would have had to drive 70-80 yards in just under two minutes. And for all the success New Mexico had in moving the ball, so much of that came from the threat of Dampier’s legs. If put into an all-pass situation, it’s so much less likely.

The final point of the equation, though, is how to gain the yards themselves. A run is the pretty obvious choice, though the Aggies really struggled all night to get a good push against the Lobos. A different defensive front than USU was expecting played a part in only rushing for 4.2 yards per carry. And that’s including a 43-yard run from Herschel Turner. Remove the outlier and the Aggies averaged an even 3.0 yards per carry on the afternoon.

Still, that’s 2.0 yards more than Utah State needed, making the decision to run in the situation still fairly obvious. The call, a QB sneak, is pretty generic but it’s also one the Aggies have found success in. In just the New Mexico game, Petras gained six yards across three QB sneaks — though one was taken back for a penalty. The Aggies ran it back-to-back on the goal line in the first quarter, first on 3rd & 1 from the four yard line to get a first down and then quickly again from the two, which netted USU a touchdown.

QB keeps it for the USU TD😤 pic.twitter.com/O8Ai4fGlDT

— USU Football (@USUFootball) October 19, 2024

The consistent success should have been enough to evoke confidence in the play. It’s just too bad New Mexico was wise to it at that point. The Lobos saw it coming the whole way, stacking the A and B gaps with defenders and stuffing the line of scrimmage to the point that Petras had zero chance going up the middle.

The Lobo defense comes up big on 4th down.

📺TruTV
#GoLobos | #EarnedNotGiven pic.twitter.com/G75x5SbZZ5

— New Mexico Football (@UNMLoboFB) October 19, 2024

Perhaps a sidestep toward the C gap could have worked (and some QBs do that to counter the amount of pressure put in the inside gaps) or maybe some more creative play-calling, either in the sneak itself or just putting more power behind it. Running it three times before in the same game and then not countering when New Mexico sold out on that singular probably didn’t help either.

And, of course, getting blown up at the line of scrimmage doesn’t help either.

“Our initial thought process was that it was we ran the same play on goal line in the first quarter. We ran it back-to-back plays and we were able to obviously score a touchdown with that,” USU tackle Trey Anderson said of the play. “Obviously [New Mexico] knew it was coming and they loaded the box and we we tried our hardest to push the pile and stuff. But we just came up short and it was unfortunate.”

This one play obviously held an overwhelming amount of significance, but it only was that way because the Aggies let it be so. The previous 58 minutes, in particular the more recent 28 minutes, included too many failures on defense to truly justify oneself in saying that it was the failed fourth down that truly lost the game.

Any offense that scores 45 points should never half to walk back to the locker room as losers. And yet that’s exactly what happened.

If there’s one reason the Aggies gave up 50 points, especially after only giving up 14 at halftime, was a complete failure to execute on third down. Utah State couldn’t get off the field to save its life. After holding the Lobos to 0 of 4 on third down through first and part of the second quarters, Utah State allowed conversions on 10 of the next 11 third down attempts. And the one third down stop they did get didn’t matter as the Lobos converted on the ensuing fourth down.

This is eerily similar to what happened to the Aggies when they lost to Temple back in September. The Owls converted just 1 of 5 third downs to start the game and then converted 9 of 11 the rest of the game. Not coincidently at all, the Aggies allowed 31 total points in the first halves against Temple and New Mexico and 64 in the second halves of those games.

Another interesting similarity is just how much the quarterbacks in both of those games were able to dominate on third down. Evan Simon ran for multiple first downs and threw two third down TDs against USU. Dampier had a direct hand in eight of the ten conversions (nine if you include the fourth down conversion) either by his arm or legs. Statistically, the Aggies are OK at getting sacks, averaging 1.7 per game to rank 87th in the nation. But making the most of that pressure seems to be beyond the defense.

It’s perhaps ironic that a week after Dreiling put a positive spin on the upcoming second half to the season by saying the schedule would be far easier that Utah State would lose to the lowest-ranked team left on said schedule (New Mexico were ranked 126th by ESPN’s SP+). Now, with losses against two teams that are around the bottom 10 in every 1-134 ranking out there (Temple is the other, ranking 127th in SP+), who are the Aggies expecting to be better than? They’re underdogs in every game. They must play above who they’ve been on paper in every game the rest of the season to get a win in any of them.

Dreiling has the unenviable task of trying to wrangle a 1-6 team together to play five more games. Five games against teams that will be favored, some by quite a bit. Two of those games will be in front of the home crowd, who may be less inclined to watch this team, especially with winter weather descending on Cache Valley.

So what’s the message Dreiling has for his team at this point?

“The big thing is, is what mindset do we want?” Dreiling said. “And this has nothing to do with football, but more so to do with life. You can tap out. you can take the easy way and quit and lay down and wait for next season or what’s to come. Or you could persevere. Get closer together. Outwork people. Find a way to continue to make it through. Life ain’t easy, and we know that, and there’s always ups and downs. And it preys on the people who give up and quit and that’s not who we’re going to be.”

Whether for pride, learning life lessons, getting good film for the next stop via the transfer portal, each player on the Aggies has to find a reason to play their hardest and show improvement. That’s the mark of a competitor, someone at least capable of winning. And the next five games will sift the wheat from the tares in that respect.