Monday Cooldown — Sacks, penalties and other emerging trends for USU after loss at A&M | Sports

Week 1 in college football (or any sport, really) is where overreactions are in their prime. Now, a whole, grand, long-spanning seven days later we have the full and glorious truth about what’s going on with Utah State football. Jokes aside, now that Week 2 is in the books it’s time to look at what we know about the Aggies as the sample size of on-field evidence has grown.

When asked his thoughts on this very topic, USU head coach Bronco Mendenhall the trends with his team are “still developing.”

“I would say personnel and roles are becoming defined. Team identities, by side of the ball, [are] becoming clearer,” Mendenhall said. “A lot of that has to do with the opponent you’re playing. Especially the contrast from a spread personnel team in Week 1 to a lot of 12 personnel at Texas A&M in Week 2 and a different caliber opponent. And so you start to see the beginnings of what an identity would be. Still not enough time in terms of trends. Yeah, we’ve seen protection being a challenge so far in terms of protecting our quarterback. But I also see productivity and creativity and a lot of possibilities offensively.”

That’s a very coach-speak answer, but he did include at least one specific detail, namely issues on the offensive line. Last week’s Monday Cooldown included a quick breakdown of the Aggies’ issues in pass protection. Much of that still holds true, but unlike last week where schematic or communication issues held a big part of the blame, the Aggies got straight-up beat more often. They either put themselves in tough situations where good defensive play-calling led to sacks, or you had times like when left tackle Jake Eichorn just got big-boyed by A&M’s top pass rusher, Cashius Howell, on three consecutive plays. There’s not really a way to sugar-coat that and there’d be no point to do so.

This is the reality of Utah State’s offensive line and pass protection scheme as a whole, which includes the running backs who haven’t been any better than the linemen. The unit has been unreliable for two consecutive games in protecting Bryson Barnes and has cost the Aggies points. Has it cost them a win? Doubtful. USU obviously won its first game despite those sacks and even if it’d given up zero sacks or pressures vs A&M a win would have still been unlikely for a host of other reasons. But that’s no reason to expect it won’t eventually cost them a win. Just imagine if Utah State’s defense hadn’t played a very good second half against UTEP and the Miners had mounted a rally. Would the lackluster offense, caused in part by a couple of sacks, have been as excusable as it was at the time? Can the Aggies beat Air Force this next Saturday if they allow another six sacks?

Questions asked about pass protection will only get tougher the longer this trend continues.

A bit of a tangent, but it relates to sacks, and that’s how often Utah State has faced third-and-long situations (and/or similar passing down scenarios). Half of the Aggies’ sacks allowed have occurred on third down, with one-third coming when it was 3rd & 10 or longer. All but four have happened on obvious passing situations (any time the distance to a first down than 10 yards or longer with the exception of 1st & 10 or 2nd & 10). There are clearly issues with protecting Barnes in these situations, which any team will inevitably find itself in every now and again, but the Aggies are very much not helping themselves by how often they face long third downs.

“We need to capitalize on first and second down. We can’t be having third and longs,” USU wide receiver Braden Pegan said following the game. “It makes it really easy for the defense on third and long, so we can’t get behind on first and second. I think that’s the biggest improvement we need to make.”

Officially, Utah State has faced 26 third downs across its two games and converted on just four of them. That 16% conversion rate is good for 132nd (out of 136) teams in FBS. A massive factor in that is the Aggies’ average yards-to-go on third down being 9.6. But even in this context, USU is still underperforming. Based on some (admittedly old and NFL-oriented) data on expected conversion rates by distance on third down, the Aggies should still be in the low 30s in conversion percentage. And yet they’re half that. The fact that not all of USU’s third-down struggles are distance related can be seen in its conversion rates on the more manageable distances (defined here as 3rd and less than seven yards to go). Utah State is still 2 for 9 in those situation, a conversion rate which would still rank the Aggies 127th in third down conversion rate.

There’s some analysis to be done with how sacks have impacted Utah State’s offense overall, but it goes hand-in-hand with something else that’s been a self-inflicted thorn in the Aggies’ side: penalties. If there had been an assumption that Mendenhall would come in and fix USU’s issue with penalties — it had ranked 123rd or worse each of the last three years — it was sorely mistaken and arguably went against prior evidence.

If Mendenhall had a magical “don’t-commit-penalties-anymore” button he used on programs he coached, it would have showed at New Mexico. But the Lobos ranked a dead-last 133rd in penalties per game last year under Mendenhall (and this year the Lobos are currently the least-penalized team in college football). His previous history at Virginia and BYU is mixed. His time with the Cougars is hard to nail down as the NCAA’s database for penalties per game ranks only goes back to 2012, cutting off seven years of his tenure in Provo. But from the four years we have, his teams averaged a rank of 97th, ranging from a high of 70th and a low of 119th. In contrast, his teams while at Virginia were consistently inside the top 35 in the nation, being one of the most disciplined teams in the country while he was there. The worst season was 2021 when the Cavaliers ranked 76th, but the average was 38th and got as high as 12th.

If one wanted to see the silver lining in this dark cloud, it’s that Utah State is not committing the more serious penalties with regularity. The Aggies may rank last in penalties per game but are T-118th in the amount of yards they are penalized per game. Though it ends up being more cold comfort than silver lining given how much penalties, alongside sacks, have hamstrung Utah State’s offense.

Here’s the promised analysis which involves sacks and penalties. It’s a comparison on Utah State’s drives when it commits a penalty or sack on a drives vs when it doesn’t. Drives where the only penalty occurred on a punt were counted as not having a penalty for this purpose since it didn’t impact offensive performance.

That teams score more points on drives where they don’t suffer major negative plays is a blatantly obvious point that doesn’t really need to be made. What’s telling in this analysis is just how many drives have been impacted by penalty. Of Utah State’s 26 drives (which excludes end-of-half drives where running out the clock was the priority), more than half have been impacted by penalty or sacks. The Aggies have had worse than coin-flip odds of having a drive hamstrung by largely their own doing. 

Looking at all of the penalty or sack-impacted drives and there are only three out of 14 drives that yielded points. Two were field goals, in which the penalty and/or sack had a direct impact in Utah State having to settle for just three points, and one was a touchdown. But that one TD drive was bailed out by USU’s opponent committing a penalty. The drive in question was USU’s third-quarter-opening series against Texas A&M in which USU committed an illegal formation penalty that turned 3rd & 3 into 3rd & 8. Utah State gained just two yards on a run play on the ensuing third down by an A&M personal foul penalty extended the drive that ended with Barnes throwing a touchdown pass to Braden Pegan.

Here’s a look at what Utah State could be accomplishing on offense based on points scored per drive and some napkin math.

Taking the numbers from these hypotheticals as gospel would be a fool’s errand. Instead what it shows is how clear it is that there’s much more juice there is left to squeeze out of this offense if they can just get out of their own way with penalties, sacks and poor third down management. It’s why Mendenhall, in the earlier quote, said there’s “productivity and creativity” along with “a lot of possibilities offensively” and wasn’t lying through his teeth when speaking those words.

Shifting over to defense, a big question to ask is whether Utah State’s defense really got beat so badly that it indicates a reversal of the positive trends seen in the UTEP game. The answer is maybe. Giving up 554 total yards and 44 points is not something you can just shrug off and say you’re a good defense. So it’s clear the Aggies aren’t going to be a top-tier defense unless things drastically change. But in the context of who they’ve played there’s still reason for optimism.

The most noticeable difference from the UTEP game to the Texas A&M game was how many chunk plays Utah State allowed (i.e., passes of 15+ yards and rushes of 10+ yards). Against UTEP, that number was a paltry six. A great number and one USU was justifiably happy with. On Saturday vs Texas A&M, though, that tally skyrocketed to 16 which is very much not good and nothing to be proud of.

“Defensively, very few big plays in the first game and more than we would have liked in game two,” Mendenhall said, though he added that, “caliber of opponent, style of play is also part of it.”

Mendenhall added that “caliber of opponent” and “style of play” is also a part of the analysis for Utah State’s increased level of big plays allowed. Last year, A&M ranked 57th in the nation in plays of 10+ yards and 83rd in plays of 20+. This year, so far, they are 17th and 5th in those same categories, respectively. That sample size obviously includes the big plays they got against USU, but the Aggies didn’t do a whole lot worse than UTSA, which allowed 13 chunk plays to A&M (though that may not be the best company as the Roadrunners went on to allow 43 points to Texas State, jury’s out on their defense).

Checking back in on UTEP and it did far better with its chunk plays, though it was also against an FCS team. The Miners had a similar number of big plays, only eight, but gained 372 yards on those as they included gains of 48, 49, 63, 74 and 94 yards. UTEP gained a grand total of 100 yards on chunk plays against the Aggies.

So, relatively speaking (and in the small sample sizes we have so far), Utah State is doing alright in allowing explosive plays on defense. We just need to see more of this defense to be more sure about this.

This week’s cooldown ended up skewing pretty far in the negative direction but that shouldn’t be taken as evidence of the Mendenhall era being off to a bad start. Utah State won a game it was supposed and lost a game it was supposed to. There was good and bad throughout. The bad things have now been explored rather thoroughly. The good, not as much. But the good is certainly there. The offense, when it isn’t getting in its own way, has shown promise. The defense, when not facing top-tier SEC skill, is a solid unit capable of stopping or slowing down most opponents. And with a lot of teams in the Mountain West having pretty shaky starts, Utah State meeting expectations means it’s doing pretty well compared to its conference mates in a relative sense.

And if Utah State is able to down the Falcons this upcoming week, there will be plenty of positives to sink our teeth into for next week’s edition of the Monday Cooldown.