Utah State had its first scrimmage of fall camp. Here’s what was said afterward

One scrimmage in, and a few things appear to be pretty clear about Utah State football.

The Aggies’ offense — so often among the best in the Mountain West Conference under former head coach Blake Anderson — appears to be in good shape, particularly at the quarterback position with Spencer Petras and Bryson Barnes, and at the running back position with Rahsul Faison and Robert Briggs

The Aggies’ defense — one of the worst in all of the FBS a year ago — still has some work to do ahead of the upcoming season.

At least according to interim head coach Nate Dreiling.

“The offense was and is currently way ahead of the defense,” he said in a release following Saturday’s scrimmage, the first of fall camp for Utah State.

“They did a good job throwing the ball and running the ball. They just have so many weapons and I think Spencer (Petras) and Bryson (Barnes), and all the guys that went in, did a great job of facilitating who needs to touch it. So, hats off to them. Defensively, we need to tackle a little bit better and get our feet set. The offense did a good job with tempo, which forces you to communicate fast, so we have to catch up in that regard.”

Dreiling noted that USU’s defense did turn things around in the second half of the scrimmage after the first 45 minutes heavily favored the offense.

“The offense came out firing right away, which is awesome, and the defense faced adversity,” he said. “They came back, and in the red zone, we held them to four straight field goals which is huge.

“Red zone defense is a main priority for us, keep making them snap it and once they get inside of the red zone, make them kick it. So that was great. More importantly, we can’t wait to play good defense until we get into the red zone, so we have to prevent them from coming down there. It was good to see them handle adversity.”

Briggs has been a part of some notable Utah State offenses over the years now, including last year’s which ended the season ranked No. 25 in the country in total offense and No. 26 in scoring offense.

He came away pleased with the offense’s showing.

“I thought we did pretty good,” Briggs said. “It all starts with the offensive linemen, and they came out and did a fantastic job. The offensive line is always doing its job, and all we need is a little crease and we just start it off from there.

“The receivers came out doing their job, the quarterbacks looked pretty good, and everyone came together. We just played as a team.”

Safety Ike Larsen, one of the faces of the Utah State program, wasn’t too down on the defensive performance either, noting, “It wasn’t bad. The offense came out firing and we responded.

“It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t our best ball that we can play, but we will go watch it and see what we can get better at so we can be better next time.”

Larsen specifically noted that it wasn’t adjustments that led to the defense performing better, but increased intensity and better technique from the defenders themselves.

“Just passion for the game,” Larsen said. “The coaches can’t rile us up every time, we have to rely on each other. Just buying into our teammates and what we are doing, and we took off from there.

“I don’t want to say we did awesome; I think we did good. Like I said we are going to go watch and see what we can do better. ... No adjustments were really made. We’ve been practicing the red zone for about six months now, since coach Dreiling has been here. Towards the end of the scrimmage, we started being better with our techniques, so it’s just us playing like we know how to play.”

Dreiling wasn’t about to make any sweeping decisions based off the scrimmage. In fact, most of the day was spent developing USU’s depth, which necessitated playing younger, more inexperienced players as opposed to those expected to start this season.

“We have some back-end guys that we’re just playing it safe with and a bunch of older guys that don’t need these reps,” he said. “We feel good about where our top ones are at.

“Now it’s figuring out who’s going to be the next guy up, and who’s going to be the two and three that we’re rotating in, so that was the plan for the back end on the defense. I’m really impressed with some of these young guys. Everyone’s getting their chance and now you get to learn from the film and keep getting better.”