College football arrives in Cache Valley this Saturday as Utah State hosts Idaho State on Merlin Olsen Field in the soon-to-be-renamed Jim Laub Family Stadium. It ends a _-day span since the last time the Aggies officially played a gridiron football contest.
All throughout the seven-plus months without Aggie football, questions have slowly built up as to what the 2026 version of the team would look like. Bronco Mendenhall enters his second season as head coach, hoping to make Utah State the third program he’s taken from the doldrums of mediocrity to the upper echelons of college football.
Since nothing has happened on the field yet, exactly zero questions posed by fans, media, or any other interested parties have officially been answered.
That changes in three days.
Although there are plenty of crucial questions which will remain unanswered even after the conclusion of Saturday evening’s entertainment, we’ll at least get something. Here are the most pressing questions that will get significant, even if incomplete, answers this weekend.
Is the offense what the USU coaches and players say?
Utah State’s offense is a vast ocean of unknowns and speculations. The unit is returning only a handful of rotation players from last season. The full list comprises three starting offensive linemen, Jimmy Liston, George Maile, Tavo Motu’apuaka, and a couple of secondary options at their positions: running back Javen Jacobs and wide receiver Anthony Garcia.
Virtually everything else is new in 2026, either new to Logan or new to regular playing time. The Aggies have a new offensive coordinator, Robert Anae. They have a new quarterback, McCae Hillstead. Most of the wide receiver corps are newcomers or players who weren’t in the two-deep depth chart last year.
No one outside of those who were privileged to be on the inside of the closed practices and scrimmages has a good idea of what this offense really looks like. But all of those with knowledge have been saying the same things, from the offense being unique to being more talented.
“We’ve got a lot of really talented receivers,” said Hillstead in a recent press conference. “We’ve got a very talented core group of guys up front that’s blocking for us, and then our running backs. So I think we’re very versatile, and we’re going to be able to do a lot of things.”
Defensive tackle Carson Tujague, who gets to view the offense from a different vantage point as someone who practices against it, called the offense “unique.”
“I think our offense is a really unique offense, an offense that I’ve never really played before,” Tujague said. “And they’re definitely going to challenge defenses, especially schematically.”
All of Utah State’s players and coaches are singing the praises of the offense, how good it is and the great things they believe it is capable of. But this is also exactly what every cast of coaches and athletes would say in the preseason.
Until the cleats actually dig into the turf on the first kickoff, everyone believes they are a championship contender. Week 1 is when the Aggies will actually be capable of walking all the talk they’ve done in the preseason.
Can the defense elevate itself above recent seasons of struggles?
Utah State finished the 2025 season ranked 131st nationally in yards allowed and 90th in points allowed. Not exactly something to be proud of. There were signs of an improving defense by the end of the year, but not enough to close out games against Boise State and Washington State.
With a new year comes new potential. And one of the things Utah State feels better about its defense is depth. According to Tujague, depth is the unit’s “biggest improvement.”
“Across the board on defense, from secondary to linebackers to D-line, we all have a lot more depth,” Tujague said. “Which is going to help us a lot more as we get later into the season, especially as injuries come throughout the year. Just being able to keep guys fresh is going to be huge for our defense this year.”
Much like with the offense, this is pretty much entirely talk. But Week 1 will be an even better opportunity for the defense than it will be for the offense.
While the offense will face a relatively average FCS defense, Utah State’s defense will face an elite Idaho State offense, one that will be better than the offenses of other FBS opponents. Not only that, but the style of the Bengals’ offense will be a great test as to whether the Aggies have learned from some of their biggest weaknesses in 2025.
The pass-heavy offense of Idaho State, led by veteran quarterback Jordan Cooke, resembles two different styles Utah State played last year: San Jose State and Hawaii. In those two games, Utah State gave up a combined 1,080 yards to the opposing offense. Most of that came through the air as SJSU and Hawaii combined for 104 pass attempts against the Aggies, 50 by the Spartans and 54 by the Warriors. Idaho State will also likely cross the 50 pass attempt threshold.
Even though pretty much every team knows Idaho State passes the ball the vast majority of the time, it remains difficult to stop. Mendenhall called it “a really well-designed and executed system.”
“The run game is a nice complement. The draw game, the screen game. So even though they’re throwing the ball a lot, there’s complements that are coming to it,” Mendenhall said. “The ball’s gone quickly. The quarterback knows where to deliver it, when to deliver it. His reads are fast. He’s very effective”
Utah State will need to be disciplined and active to slow down Idaho State. And the depth Tujague said the team has should help with that. So, if the Aggies hold the Bengals to only a couple touchdowns or fewer, it’ll be a great sign that the defensive struggles of the last few years could be behind Utah State.
Will the team stop shooting itself in the foot with penalties?
According to an ongoing study by Action Network of the most penalized teams in college football, Utah State is the fifth-worst team in terms of penalty discipline over the last five seasons. The study factors in total penalties and penalty yards, among other factors, to produce an overall score by which teams are ranked.
Mendenhall was brought in with the expectation that he would instill discipline off the field and on it. However, his tenure has not included a solution to the persistent penalty problem. In fact, if you look at year-over-year data from Action Network’s ongoing study of penalties, the Aggies seemed to get worse. Action Network released a version of the same study in 2025, with data comprising the 2020 through 2024 seasons. Utah State ranked sixth-worst in that study. This past summer, when the 2025 season was added to that dataset, the Aggies fell to fifth-worst.
We’ve seen three different head coaches attempt to tackle this problem. All three have given answers that make for nice soundbites. None have actually solved the problem.
