LOGAN – Utah State’s thrilling win over Wyoming won’t go down in the history books as the most well-played game in Aggie history. And perhaps it won’t be remembered as much more than a bright spot in a forgettable season. It’s a natural and expected reaction but perhaps not quite fair to the coaches and athletes who were finally able to walk off the field with every reason to wear an ear-to-ear smile.
Despite imperfections, the Aggies made plays when it mattered. And that’s what winning teams do, which is why they can be proud. They did what great teams do — win games even when they play bad. So while the defense had its flaws and the offense sputtered for much of the game, when push came to shove, Utah State upped its game and made the plays necessary to fly out of “Laradise” with a win and a .50 caliber Rocky Mountain Hawken rifle.
Three key sequences stand out on offense with the defense’s moments being scattered through parts of half a dozen drives. We’ll look at the offense in a moment and start off with the deserved credit for the oft-maligned Aggie defense. They stood up when backed up against a wall quite often. This in and of itself helps define Utah State’s imperfect, but clutch performance.
Wyoming had six drives with at least one snap taken inside the 30-yard line. That’s six prime scoring opportunities with as many as 42 points within close reach. Contrast with the Aggies who had just four drives with a snap taken inside the 30.
Despite having the far more opportunistic offense, Wyoming scored fewer points than Utah State in these key scoring chances. USU had 20 total points on those drives, Wyoming just 19 (if you’re wondering where the missing points are from the final score, USU had a 36-yard TD so that’s not a drive that snapped the ball inside the 30, Wyoming had a 54-yard TD, so that’s also excluded).
Perhaps even more damning is that one of USU’s drives inside the 30 was artificially shortened (the game-winning field goal drive ended prematurely for reasons of clock at the Wyoming 22).
Breaking down Wyoming’s offensive efforts even more, it ran 24 plays inside the 30 and gained 69 yards (excluding penalties from both teams that occurred on or around these plays). A whopping 2.9 yards per play. Outside of the 30, the Cowboys gained 401 yards on 49 plays, or 8.2 yards per play. That’s not exactly a flawless comparison, since plays that are closer to the end zone are going to, by nature of the potential yards available, average fewer yards. But the absurd contrast at least says something about how the USU defense made sure to make it count.
Narrowing it even more you can see that the outlying plays from Wyoming players in otherwise solid performances in particular areas all happened in clutch situations.
In 11 rush attempts, Cowboys running back Sam Scott was stopped for a loss just one, single time. It was on the three-yard line in the third quarter.
Evan Svoboda, in five designed runs, was stopped for a negative gain just one single time. It happened one snap after Scott’s two-yard loss.
Wide receiver Tyler King terrorized the Aggies in the air and on the ground (that 54-yard TD was his as he outraced USU around the edge and to the end zone). In nine touches he was stopped for a loss just once. The one in which DJ Graham also forced a fumble, albeit with some controversy over whether it was targeting.
Calling the defensive performance perfect, or even great, would be a mischaracterization. Wyoming’s offense averaged 17.1 points per game prior to Saturday and put up 25, its second-highest scoring total of the season and only third game above 20 points in eight games. The Cowboy’s rushing offense had averaged 2.9 yards per carry throughout the season with no single game above 4.6 yards per attempt. Against the Aggies they averaged 6.6. The 470 yards gained by Wyoming was by far the highest it’d gained all year (next closest was 381).
But what you can’t say is that Utah State wasn’t clutch as hell on defense.
In a weird, but perhaps all-too-fitting way, the offense had a similar story to tell. The 378 net yards was the second-lowest of the season (only beaten out by the game in which USU was shut out by USC). Petras broke his streak of games with 290+ passing yards and had his lowest completion percentage since the Temple game. Heck, for the entire third quarter, Utah State ran six plays for a grand total of nine yards, giving Wyoming 12 of the 15 minutes of that quarter to work on its comeback.
Just like the defense, though, USU’s offense showed up on all the clutch drives.
Arguably the most important sequence for Utah State was the end of the first half. For the first time in the game, Utah State trailed 10-7 after Wyoming scored 10 unanswered points. The Aggies scored on their opening drive but then punted twice and had a failed fourth down conversion.
After Wyoming went up, Utah State got to work. Rahsul Faison’s best work was unleashed on the Cowboys as he ran six times for 54 of his eventual 131 yards. Four of Faison’s five longest rushes of the game came on that single drive alone and it set up a game-tying field goal from Tanner Cragun.
Following that 3-point kick, the defense got to work on the complimentary football head coach Nate Dreiling has preached at USU all year. They intercepted Svoboda and set the Aggies up on the Wyoming 44. Faison again put in work, catching a career-long 36-yard pass from Grant Page on a trick play and then powered his way through the final eight yards on his ensuing rush attempt.
In a span of exactly 60 game seconds, Utah State went from down 10-7, to up 17-10. And even though the Aggies’ offense completely ground to a halt in the third quarter, it still took the Cowboys 16 minutes to make up the ground lost in one minute.
Speaking of Wyoming making up the ground, when it did score a touchdown to go up 22-17, the Utah State offense finally woke up again for its next clutch showcase. After gaining nine yards in an entire quarter, the Aggies went 75 yards in one drive. Two Wyoming penalties, one for pass interference and another for unsportsmanlike conduct (on head coach Jay Sawvel) certainly helped, but so did the three plays after in which Petras completed three passes for 37 yards, including the 10-yard TD pass to Josh Sterzer.
And finally, the piece de resistance: Utah State’s game-winning drive and walk-off field goal by Cragun.
Again, the context of this drive is that four of USU’s five drives in the second half were three-and-outs. Even after that 75-yard touchdown — which was followed up by a forced fumble that put the offense on Wyoming’s 47 to hand the Aggies a golden platter on which to score a game-icing touchdown drive — all the offense could muster was three plays for six yards.
Outside confidence may not have been at its highest, but Utah State continued its trend of playing its best in the most important scenarios.
The initial first down proved to be the most difficult, as Petras completed just 2-of-3 passes for seven yards, requiring Kyle Cefalo to pull out all the stops by throwing in backup quarterback Bryson Barnes to run a designed QB run on 4th & 3. After Barnes ran for six on that crucial down, Petras came back in and slung the ball around, completing a pair of passes for 26 crucial yards. Combined with a nine-yard run by Faison, those plays were enough to get the ball well within Cragun’s field goal range. The 40-yard walk-off kick ensured his eventual selection as Mountain West Freshman as well as Special Teams Player of the Week.
.@TannerCragun WALKS IT OFF!#AggiesAllTheWay pic.twitter.com/iysKhRjU5K
— USU Football (@USUFootball) October 27, 2024
Utah State’s offense still has work to do, especially with Jalen Royals and Broc Lane confirmed to be out for the season. It’s just nice to see that Petras, Faison, and the rest of the offense were still capable enough to make plays, even if they were a tad inconsistent in doing so. They had to start somewhere, and this was far from the worst start a post-Royals USU offense could have gotten to.
As a final note, it’s kind of an odd coincidence that all two of Utah State’s touchdowns plus its final game-winning drive all included some kind of unconventional play. The opening TD of the game was a reverse flea-flicker. The second was one play after a double pass. And the final scoring drive featured a fourth down conversion from the backup QB on a designed run. Kind of neat.