The coaching staff for Utah State have kept things pretty close to the chest with its roster, schemes, depth chart and other player personnel info. Though one of the few assumptions that has been made is that returning quarterback Bryson Barnes will earn his way into being the week one starter for the Aggies. The senior has actually never been a week one starter in his collegiate career, but despite that fact has been a consistent feature for both USU and at his previous stop with the University of Utah.
If Barnes does end up taking the reins of the offense under first-year head coach Bronco Mendenhall and returning (from a two year stint in 2012 and 2013) offensive coordinator Kevin McGiven, how different will the unit be from recent years? Well, the Aggies haven’t really had a QB like Barnes playing full time. Key words being “full time.” Utah State has had running QBs — Levi Williams and Andrew Peasley the most recent examples of impactful runners at the position — but those two combined for 208 passes in six combined seasons spent in Logan. The main quarterbacks have mainly been guys that were decently mobile, but not true runners. Cooper Legas is the only Aggie QB to eclipse 300 rushing yards in a season in the last seven years, that is until Barnes blew that number out of the water with his 530 last year as just a part-time starter.
Kent Myers is probably the most recent real running threat the Aggies have had at QB. He was actually the third in a run of duel threat quarterbacks for the program, going from Diondre Borel, Chuckie Keeton and then to Myers. Barnes can bring back the glory of a running QB to Logan and let’s look at the numbers to see just how his rushing ability compares to others in the field.
Barnes averaged 7.8 yards per rush attempt last year, which ranks ninth among all FBS quarterbacks in the last decade for a single-season (minimum of 35 attempts). Pro Football Focus data further shows how much damage Barnes did on the ground as he ranked fifth in the nation in “breakaway percentage” (rate of designed runs where he gained 15 or more yards). Even with that out there, the two most drastic examples of his potential dominance on the ground were his final two games of the season. Utah State featured Barnes as a primary weapon against San Diego State and Colorado State and he did not disappoint. Barnes ran for a USU quarterback record 193 yards against the Aztecs and then followed it up with 185 yards on the ground against the Rams.
On the high end, it’s possible Barnes could push for 1,000 yards if the Aggies used him like the primary rusher. He certainly played that role in those games against SDSU and CSU where he ran the ball 39 times. If he held that 19.5 carry per game average into this year, he’d be looking at 230+ carries over a 12-game regular season and that’d be an easy path to 800 or more yards, with 1,000 if he averaged around 4.5 yards per carry. But that’s probably not the role Barnes will play as he’s more likely to see in the range of 8-10 carries per game on average, peaking at around 20 for a single game. That’s been the more regular rate for him in his starts with the Aggies and Utes.
Now, the running QB thing is nice and all, but the modern game is a passing game. Barnes needs to be able to throw the ball effectively. And this is where dive into his biggest weakness: deep passing. According to PFF data, Barnes completed just 8 of 22 passes that went 20+ yards down the field with zero touchdowns and four interceptions. PFF’s grading ranked Barnes 122nd out of 141 QBs on deep passes (min 20 pass attempts) and his (NFL) passer rating of 43.4 ranked 131st. He had similarly bad rankings even while at Utah, so this isn’t a one-year phenomenon.
The most aggressive Barnes got in his passing was against his former team, Utah, just last year. Of his 22 deep passes on the season, 12 were in that game alone per PFF. Unsurprisingly, his outing against the Utes featured half of his season completions on deep passes but also contained half of his interceptions on those attempts. This more gunslinger-esque style resulted in a higher number of positives, such as setting his season high in passing yards against the Utes. It just came at the cost of having a higher number of negatives as it was one of his two multi-interception games and he also had his lowest completion percentage of any games of the year (51.6 percent, the only lower being his 0-for-1 passing mark against Wyoming).
Let’s not cherry pick any of these deep passes against the Utes and just clip all of them together and see the good, the bad and the ugly. As a small note, the PFF play-by-play data wasn’t available for this so these are all the plays that look to be passes of at least 20 yards downfield, except there are 13 of them. So according to PFF, one of these wasn’t a pass attempt of 20+ yards. You can decide which.
There’s a lot of nuance to pretty much every one of these passes. Some passes should have been intercepted, but weren’t. Others were intercepted but were more on the wide receiver than on the QB. A few times the receiver bailed out a slightly inaccurate throw and on others Barnes just sailed the pass over his target’s head. What is clear after all of it, though, is that Barnes’ accuracy is leaving at least a little to be desired, if not a decent amount. There were a few dimes, but they were a bit too few and far between.
On passes in the short and medium range, Barnes has done just fine. Not elite, but certainly good enough to run the offense (we’ll get into his better examples of passing in a second). PFF grades rank Bryson Barnes at 118th on passes of medium depth (10-19 yards), though he ranked a notably better 84th in 2023 with the Utes, giving him at least a history of being decent on these passes. A similar story plays out in short-range passes and on attempts behind the line of scrimmage. He has average, maybe slightly below average, efficiency and production on passes within 19 yards of the LOS. Barnes is solid enough so that if he doesn’t improve his deep passing it’s not going to be a backbreaking issue for the offense. Just a weakness that the team will have to reckon with and one that will lower the ceiling of the offense by making chunk plays harder to come by.
Let’s move forward by taking a look at how all of Barnes’ skills can come together in an actual offensive series, not isolated plays here and there. The following series of clips, comes from a touchdown-scoring drive at the end of the second quarter of Utah State’s game against San Diego State late in the year. The Aggies had trailed 13-0 in the late stages of the opening half of that game, but stormed back for a 14-13 lead in the eventual 41-20 victory. Several plays from this game, along with some of the concepts we’ll go over, were reviewed in the Monday Cooldown series featuring this game.
This drive is a good example of putting all of Barnes’ talents to use. And it goes beyond just having him run the ball on a consistent basis. The very design of the plays in this drive take advantage of the fact Barnes is a threat. So even when he’s not the guy carrying or throwing the ball, his presence as a threat plays toward USU’s advantage.
The most common way Utah State worked to take advantage of Barnes is through the read-option, where they allow certain defenders to go unblocked, but make those guys choose between tackling Barnes or the running back. This allows the USU offensive linemen to get to the second level of the defense for free without significant penalty. If you have an elite offensive line, you can get to the second level straight up without many gimmicks. If you’re Utah State, and don’t often have an elite O-line, manufacturing ways to do it through these play designs is a pretty solid substitute. The very first play of this scoring drive is a good example of this principle.
Play #1 (1:33 2nd Q / 1st & 10)
A big part of the success of this play (and to a degree what was seen a lot in this game) was San Diego State’s clear lack of preparation for a running QB. Spencer Petras began this game as the starter and SDSU played like Petras was still behind center. The principle of this play is still clearly present, though, even if it worked a little too well. The Aggies were able to just not block one of the defenders, giving its O-line an easier job to get to the second level, get hands on the linebackers and it’s a 16-yard run on first down.
Play #2 (0:57 2nd Q / 3rd & 7)
We skipped a few plays, the first being another read-option that gained a modest three yards and then a pass play where no Aggie WRs got open so Barnes threw the ball away. Nothing terribly interesting. That brings us to a key third down, arguably the most important play of the drive.
This is a glimpse of Barnes as a pure passer. There are no gimmicks. No using his legs. No play-action. Barnes simply has to read a defense, find the right receiver and make a good throw. San Diego State didn’t make it super easy. The coverage was disguised behind the facade of showing six rushers and Barnes had to do some quick diagnostics post-snap. Making things even less ideal is that on the side Barnes keyed in on there were three guys in coverage to his two potential targets. But he stuck with it, shook off the ticking clock that was a blind-side pass rusher and he read the safety’s movements to spot a throwing window. Barnes then threw a solidly-placed pass well in the catch radius of his receiver for a very important third-down conversion.
Play #3 (0:53 2nd Q / 1st & 10)
Here is just another opportunity for Barnes to shine as a passer and he acquits himself rather well when called upon to make multiple reads and think on his feet. The play had an initial target of potentially throwing a quick pass to the receiver at the top of the screen (Grant Page, No. 8) and you can see just how quick it’s supposed to be given all the O-linemen go for chop blocks. But there’s also a pretty clear secondary option in case Page faces press coverage, as he did on this play. Josh Sterzer, the tight end, came over to block so Barnes could roll away from the pressure and he had several options on the backside to throw to. And much like his previous pass, he put it pretty well on the money and made it look not nearly as tricky as it can be. This is a pass that could verily easily have gone wrong and the window is deceptively small with the defensive back lurking around. Barnes hit that window while on the move where an inaccurate or short-armed throw would have resulted in an interception and probably a pick-six.
Play #4 (0:48 2nd Q / 1st & 10)
This is a play that actually went wrong (or at least not great with just two yards gained), but mainly because of a missed block. It’s mostly interesting for the creativity in play-calling as this play features the weakside defensive tackle being unblocked, as opposed to the DE/EDGE that is typically the one ignored in lieu of getting to the second level. Had the strong side edge defender been blocked properly (and maybe also a better block on the linebacker), Herschel Turner would have gone for anywhere from six to 10+ yards.
There’s actually a much more successful example of this play from the Colorado State game from last year (a week after the USU-SDSU game). The Rams had this play on film and all the knowledge that Barnes was going to start. And they still weren’t prepared for this variation. The defensive tackle flew up the field and Barnes scurried away with enough space in front of him to begin real estate development.
It’s a solid play design and a good way to keep all defenders on their toes and continue to create ways for the offense to run the ball effectively with either the running back or quarterback.
Play #5 (0:31 2nd Q / 2nd & 8)
You’re maybe beginning to see why this series is the one being featured. It’s got the full suite of play types, from read-options, drop-back passes, rollouts and now an undesigned run from Barnes who scrambled when the defensive backfield left space open on the one side of the field. And while it may not have been the most graceful run from Barnes, he made the linebacker, who’d basically been spying him from the zone defense, miss just enough so he could dive for the first down and set up the highlight of the day.
Play #6 (0:21 2nd Q / 1st & Goal)
This play had to be reviewed, but was in fact called a touchdown by the slimmest of margins. Page made a truly special catch, but some credit does deserve to go to Barnes. This is a very low percentage throw. PFF data back in 2018 said that only 33.3% of passes in these scenarios are caught with a 2020 ESPN article noting that only 5 of 37 of these end zone fade routes resulted in catches for touchdowns in the 2019 NFL season. Most of the time the QB just air-mails the ball over the receiver’s head because they’re trying to avoid an underthrow and potential interception. Barnes got the ball into a catch-able area without undue risk for an interception. Yes, Page still did the vast majority of work here, but Barnes should get his due as well.
Other Plays
Another fun, creative play that’s worth including comes from later in the SDSU game. It’s not as great without the context of the fuller game, but it was an example of Utah State running some successful toss plays against the Aztecs, and in earlier games and then making a read-option style play out of a simply running back toss to fake out the defense.
Probably the area where Utah State got its most creative was in short yardage. Barnes got some spot snaps in short-yardage situations even when he wasn’t the starter, such as USU’s game against Hawaii. In plenty of cases, the Aggies ran read option and Barnes was decently successful. What’s really fun was when they made the defense think Barnes was going to run in short yardage and then threw the ball instead, baiting the defense away from the intended pass target. They burned Hawaii twice this way. Barnes threw two passes in that game and both were TD passes to Sterzer.
Both of these plays were very well designed and executed pretty well aside from that. The first was the most bamboozling for Hawaii as it went all-in on what the Warriors were 100 percent sure was a QB keeper for Barnes. Instead he found a wide-open Sterzer for the easiest TD of both their careers. And on the second, the Aggies didn’t sit on their laurels and assume they could get away with the same design. On that second TD, the Aggies made the Warriors think it was a standard QB rollout because of course they’d have their running QB roll out toward the sideline. That action just sucked the defense in and away from the backside screen USU set up for Sterzer.
Most of this ability to trick the defense will definately be gone if Barnes is the main QB. Teams will know to prepare for any options and not go all-in on stopping Barnes on the ground since he’ll be doing plenty of throwing. However, when you’re in a short yardage scenario, it is a very helpful thing to have the defense guessing up until the last moment what you’re planning on doing. A defense that’s playing on its back heels, overthinking all the possibilities, is an easier one to score against.
If McGiven can be as creative as the Aggies were with their play-calling against the Aztecs and Rams, this offense could be fun. Barnes may not be the prototypical high-level passing QB, but he has ways to hurt a defense if the coaching staff utilizes him and the other weapons they’ll have on offense, effectively.
