For the first time this season, the Utah State football team is on a winning streak. This comes after the Aggies closed out a gritty 17-10 win over Fresno State on Saturday in yet another strong performance from their defense.
The Aggies’ defensive unit posted a fourth consecutive game of allowing the opposing offense to score 17 points or fewer (and the third week with allowing 14 or fewer). The dominant outing included 10 tackles for loss, including two sacks, along with four pass breakups and eight QB hurries. Fresno State averaged just 0.6 yards per rush attempt, its worst single-game rushing average since 2024.
“It’s unbelievable, like, it don’t feel real,” said USU defensive tackle Tyree Morris when presented with Fresno State’s rushing numbers. “We take pride in our defense, and that’s something we do, take pride in the run, stopping the run, and we’ve been harping on that a lot.”
That defensive performance was part of what Head Coach Bronco Mendenhall felt was a complete complementary effort from the team. Utah State shut out the Bulldogs in the first half (the team’s second consecutive first-half shutout), and the offense benefited in a way that helped build a 14-0 lead at the mid-game break. The momentum of shutting off the Bulldogs’ offense helped the Aggies find rhythm on offense.
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“Not many teams are playing team football,” Mendenhall said. “Fresno couldn’t score, and that just built the confidence, and as part of the plan we were hopeful to have Fresno play from behind. And so that worked according to plan.”
The most notable case of the defense (and special teams) making things easy for the offense was on the Aggies’ second touchdown of the game. USU’s defense held Fresno State to a three-and-out inside the Bulldogs’ own 20, which was followed by a Javen Jacobs 23-yard punt return. That set the Aggies up just 46 yards away from a touchdown, and the offense took full advantage with a touchdown six plays later.
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Many of the usual cast of high performers were playing their best in the defensive effort. Brevin Hamblin led the team with nine tackles, plus 1.5 tackles for loss. Asher Cunningham added eight tackles, 2.0 TFLs, and split one of the Aggies’ two sacks. Defensive tackle Carson Tujague got his sixth and seventh pass breakups of the season (on back-to-back plays), which made him the FBS leader in PBUs among non-defensive backs.
Mendenhall had a lengthy response when asked about Tujague’s performance in particular, outlining his journey from being a walk-on to what the Burlsworth Trophy nominee is doing currently.
“There’s no one that works harder on our team, and you’re talking about someone that walked on to a college football program and then got cut,” Mendenhall said. “Sometimes grown-ups get that wrong. Recruiting services get it wrong. And he’s been around our program since he was a little kid and seeing practices. Don’t ever count him out. He just works, and he works, and he works, and he’s absolutely the leader on our defense.
“And he sets the markers for our defense every week, which is far more important than myself or Coach Howell doing that. And the team follows him, and those are effort plays, right, to push an offensive lineman back far enough and then to align your rush lane and then to put a hand up while you’re in combat to knock a ball down. Those are hard plays to make, and he’s remarkable.”
One of Utah State’s standouts, however, was someone who’d previously played a limited role: defensive tackle Ronnie Mageo. The transfer from Baylor has appeared in all nine games this year, but hadn’t played more than 29 snaps in a single game, and had played just 30 snaps on defense in the last three weeks combined.
But with an injury on the D-line, Mageo was called into action. He played 45 snaps and spent a considerable amount of time creating chaos in the Fresno State backfield. He was part of two sacks on Jayden Mandel and finished the day with 3.5 TFLs.
“Ronnie came from Baylor and didn’t have much opportunity there, and he came here and has been adjusting to the culture and the demand and what the relentless expectations are here,” Mendenhall said. “Tevita Tuha was hurt, and so Ronnie got his chance and powerful lesson, much like it was with Bobby Arnold two or three or four or five weeks ago, when Chapman Lewis went down. Bobby came in, and we just kept playing, kept rolling. And that same thing happened today, which, tribute to Ronnie for being ready and battling and preparing himself to help not only himself but the team.”
Utah State relied on that defense even more in the second half, as the offense scored just three points. And while the defense bent a little bit, yielding 205 additional yards to the Fresno State offense, the Aggies largely held. And when USU gave up ground, it came at the cost of time. The Bulldogs needed 14 plays and nearly eight minutes just to kick a field goal and open their scoring account for the game. Their next two drives had 15 plays combined, but both came up empty with one punt and one turnover on downs.
Even though the Aggies’ offense struggled to put up points in the third and fourth quarters, one key aspect of the offense was still helping to move the ball: the run game. Previously a major weakness, averaging just 113 yards per game through eight weeks, the Aggie run game is finally finding traction. Last week, Utah State rattled off 247 rushing yards against the Rams. That was followed up by 152 rushing yards, which is the fourth-most allowed by Fresno State in a game all season.
“The first couple of games, we were struggling in the run game, so I think we really took the time to really dial in what we have to do in the run game,” Vailahi said. “Coming into this game, we knew it was going to be a physical game, so you know, we just had to run the ball, out-physical them.”
The Aggies’ ground game outpaced the pass attack, which ended with 117 yards through the air. Although it was quarterback McCae Hillstead who produced the most in the ground game, leading the way with a team-high 56 rushing yards. Sesi Vailahi added 39 yards on 10 carries, followed by Jacobs’ 36 and then 20 from Nehemiah Washington.
That rushing attack came in handy most in the Aggies’ one scoring drive of the second half. Fresno State had just been held to a turnover on downs, and Utah State took over with a 14-3 lead and 9:15 left in the game. The Aggies ran eight plays, seven of them runs, and accomplished three major things that helped set up victory. Firstly, the drive drained nearly five minutes off the clock. Secondly, Fresno State burned all three timeouts trying to preserve their chance at a rally. And third, it set up a 43-yard field goal attempt which kicker Kian Afrookhteh sent between the uprights.
Afrookhteh’s kick at the tail end of that 57-yard drive put Utah State up 17-3 with 4:21 left in the game. With no timeouts, Fresno State burned nearly three minutes of its scarce time to score its only touchdown of the game. And when the Aggies recovered the expected onside kick, they knelt out the clock on their fourth victory of the season (and third in Pac-12 play).
