For about a quarter-and-a-half, Utah State was competing with No. 18 Vanderbilt, holding the lead for a few minutes of the opening half and putting up several scoring drives. But in the end, it simply wouldn’t be enough as the Commodores’ offense ran rampant over the Aggies’ defense to hand them a 55-35 defeat.
Utah State’s offense got out to almost as good of a start as the team could hope for. Bryson Barnes completed 15 of 22 passes in the game with 161 passing yards, three touchdown passes and 48 rushing yards. However, Barnes left the game early in the fourth quarter with an undisclosed injury after fumbling the ball on an 18-yard scramble. USU head coach Bronco Mendenhall declined to give any update on Barnes’ status or provide any details about the injury.
Backup quarterback Jacob Conover stepped in and completed 11 of 14 passes for 92 yards and two touchdown in the final quarter in reserve.
“Wow, did he do a nice job stepping in,” Mendenhall said of Conover. “Poised and executed really well. And I was really proud of him coming in after Bryson went down.”
Barnes’ efforts helped scrape together three scoring drives in the first half, the second of those being a true college football sicko’s work of art. The Aggies managed to, in a sense, have two three-and-outs, give up a safety on a disaster special teams play and get a touchdown all in the same drive.
Starting at the 1:29 mark of the first quarter, the Aggies began a drive on their own 25-yard line. Three plays later and they’d had a net loss of seven yards, thanks in part to a holding penalty. Ao they lined up to punt. Then both the best and worst thing happened at the same time. Punter Landon Rehkow whiffed his punt attempt and in the scramble to get the ball back he had to shovel the ball out of the back of the end zone for a deliberate safety to prevent a Vanderbilt touchdown. But away from the action and before the attempted kick, a Vanderbilt defender committed defensive holding, wiping out the disasterous mistake by the Aggies and gave them a first down.
“What seemed to be backwards end up going forwards, which, it’s college football,” Mendenhall said. “So training our players to be resilient, consistent, be able to adjust quickly as part of how we’re working to train them.”
That wasn’t the end of the interesting happenings on that drive. Having been gifted a first down, Utah State proceeded to effectively go three-and-out for a second time, gaining five yards in the next trio of plays. Rehkow trotted out for a second punt, only to have Vanderbilt commit a roughing the kicker penalty that handed another first down to Utah State.
The Aggies wouldn’t blow a third chance to make something of out of that drive and would march the remaining 42 yards down the field for a touchdown and a 14-7 lead with 11:22 left in the second quarter.
Scoring drive brought to you by the Tight Ends! @bryson_barnes10 ✈️ @LittleSterz34 📺 @SECNetwork pic.twitter.com/4jAZnyzp1w
— USU Football (@USUFootball) September 27, 2025
It was at that point where 18th-ranked Vanderbilt had clearly had enough. The Commodores scored 21 unanswered points as Diego Pavia took over the game along with his favorite target for the afternoon, Junior Sherrill. Pavia ran for one of those three straight TD and tossed two others to Sherrill. Pavia finished the game with 321 passing yards and five touchdowns, three of those to Sherrill.
The worst part about the end of the half was how many points the Aggies gave up so quickly, especially given the fact Vanderbilt was slated to receive the second-half kickoff. In the final 6:18 of the half, Vanderbilt scored 24 points, part of five consecutive scoring drives. In that time, the home side tied the game, took the lead and built as much as a 14-point lead near the end of the second quarter.
Utah State even had a moment of relief late in the half spoiled by Vanderbilt’s offensive prowess. After giving up a touchdown with 1:20 left and going down 28-14, the Aggies managed to execute a perfect two-minute drill to score and shave the lead to just seven points, 28-21, with only 20 seconds left before halftime. Except Vanderbilt still wasn’t done. After USU did a squib kick, Pavia scrambled for a 33-yard gain which put the Commodores in field goal range, good enough to give them a 31-21 lead when halftime finally arrived.
“That certainly was a big swing. I was very frustrated with the field goal right before half, as well as the (kickoff) didn’t go exactly where we wanted it to, shortened the field. They end up getting a field goal,” Mendenhall said. “If we attempt to execute a call, something at the critical moments of the game, those things need to be pulled off. But yeah, that’s that stretch certainly there was a separation.”
Vanderbilt’s unstoppable offense march was only paused by the mid-game break. It took the second-half kickoff and went 75 yards in 11 plays to increase the lead to 38-21.
Facing this deficit, and following what was a fourth three-and-out of the afternoon, Utah State took one last shot at surprising Vanderbilt. On fourth and seven, the Aggies tried a fake punt (as if punts hadn’t already been interesting so far). Rehkow completed a short pass to Josh Sterzer and looked to have a first down. However, Sterzer fumbled the ball as he dove for the line to gain. Utah State recovered the pigskin, but as Sterzer lost the ball before he got to the first-down line, by rule it was a turnover on downs.
From then on, the game was effectively over.
Vanderbilt’s scoring prowess ended up producing a string of eight consecutive scoring drives. Six of those were touchdowns and two were field goals. After a week in which Utah State flexed its full defensive prowess in holding McNeese to just seven points, this kind of performances was the furthest possible from what USU could want. The 55 points allowed is the second-worst allowed by the Aggies since 2019 (worst in that span was allowing 62 at Boise State in 2024).
An almost overlooked positive from the game was a breakout performance from tight end Broc Lane. He caught a career-best seven passes for 98 yards, recording the most yards by an Aggie tight end since 2010. Mendenhall gave a high praise to Lane and his performance in context with the graduate senior’s season and career.
“He and I both have kind of been waiting for which game it was gonna be that it was gonna be ‘here he goes,'” Mendenhall said. “And so perfect timing as Broc’s been battling injuries and coming back and I remember coaching at New Mexico a year ago and just watching all the film and being very impressed. So health, experience and opportunities kind of coming together for us at the right time for Broc.”
Lane, fresh off his best individual performance as a collegiate athlete, expressed gratitude for his increased role in the pass game, but wasn’t satisfied given the end result for his team.
“Always a blessing getting the targets but at the end of the day man, we want that win. We wanna walk into a SEC program, top 20 team and beat them,” Lane said.
Utah State now heads into its first bye week of the season. Getting healthy will be a big priority. The Aggies already have an extensive injury list with five players confirmed as out for the season and another 17 players that have missed multiple games recently. The list grew even longer today as starting left tackle Jake Eichorn was injured and didn’t return, meaning the Aggies are down both of their starting offensive tackles as right tackle Trey Andersen has missed the last couple of games after being injured in the game at Texas A&M.
