Utah State football wasn’t competitive against USC. Cause for concern or no?

There is no sugarcoating it, Utah State was thoroughly dominated by No. 13 USC Saturday night.

The Aggies were beaten worse by the Trojans, far worse in fact, than they had beaten Robert Morris — a middle-of-the-road program in probably the worst conference at the FCS level — the week prior.

The numbers are a bit staggering from the 48-0 loss in Los Angeles:

• USC racked up 544 total yards of offense, 295 through the air and another 249 on the ground. Utah State? Well, the Aggies managed only 190 yards and didn’t break the 100-yard rushing mark.
• The Trojans shut out Utah State, USC’s first shut out of an opponent since 2017. It was the first time the Aggies hadn’t scored in a game since a 55-0 loss at Alabama in 2022.
• USC averaged 10.2 yards per completion and 6.7 yards per rush. Utah State could only manage 5.7 yards per completion and 3.8 yards per rush.
• On the night, the Aggies only averaged 3.8 yards per play and only ran 50 total plays, in comparison to the 78 run by the Trojans.
• The Aggies had more than twice as many penalties as USC — 9 to 4 — and went only 2 for 11 on third down tries, compared to USC’s mark of 6 of 10.
• USC had 28 first downs in the game. Utah State had only 10.
• USC finished with seven tackles for loss and three sacks. The Aggies had only two tackles for loss and were unable to bring down Trojans quarterback Miller Moss a single time.

Those are just some of the numbers, though. The reality of the game was somehow even worse.

Utah State’s offense — so effective a year ago and in the second half against Robert Morris in Week 1 — was toothless. Without bite.

There were flashes here and there, courtesy of wide receiver Jalen Royals and running backs Rahsul Faison and Herschel Turner, but those glimmers of competency were few and far between.

The Aggies’ defense — the pet project of interim head coach Nate Dreiling — was overmatched from the outset. Tackling was an especial challenge, particularly when it came to stopping USC running backs.

And while a stated strategy of making USC drive down the length of the field played out often, much hoped for mistakes from the Trojans did not materialize very much at all.

Just touchdown after touchdown after touchdown, particularly in the second half.

USU’s special teams had a good night. Kicker Elliott Nimrod and punter Stephen Kotsanlee did a great job keeping USC star returner Zachariah Branch from making an impact, but when your biggest win in a shutout loss is on special teams, you know things didn’t go particularly well.

How much of it — the blowout loss — was USC being a great team? Are the Trojans elite again?

“They proved why they are one of the best teams in the country,” Dreiling said. “They did an unbelievable job on offense and defense. They are going to be hard to beat. ... With this offense, they are just so hard to stop because they are so explosive, and now they have a defense that has always been talented but is so sound.

“It’s unbelievable how well they are teaching their players to play. They have length and now they know how to use their length, and that is why they have a chance to not only be one of the best offenses in the country, but man, one of the best defenses. That is a complete football team right there that is going to play a long, long time.”

USU quarterback Bryson Barnes played successfully against USC a season ago while with Utah. This time around, things didn’t go nearly as well and he noted that — in his estimation — that the Trojans are better this season.

“A lot of athletes across the board and that is what they looked like last year,” Barnes said. “But obviously with the new (defensive coordinator), new schemes and he put the talent in better positions.”

It has to be bad that the Aggies couldn’t compete, though. Right? No matter how good USC may end up being? That is a harder question to answer.

Historically, Utah State has not been competitive with ranked teams. At all really. Utah State is now 6-67 all-time against AP Top 25 teams, 0-7 all-time against USC and 1-31 all-time against current Big Ten teams.

Only two years ago, the Aggies went to Tuscaloosa and were shut out by Alabama 55-0. That USU team still managed to become bowl eligible, which would be a rousing success for this year’s team, given everything that happened before the season.

The Aggies didn’t play well Saturday night and they know it. Nowhere close to well enough to come away with the upset, especially.

“We had a hard time tackling, which we figured was going to be tough,” Dreiling said, “and offensively, just finishing drives. There were flashes of good stuff, but ultimately if you are going to beat a team of this caliber, everything has to go perfect.”

Being shut out hurt, Barnes said.

“That is super frustrating. You never want to see a big fat zero on the scoreboard, and at the end of the day there are definitely things we have to clean up.”

Dreiling said that his team came out of the gates shell shocked and players weren’t themselves for a bit.

“Weren’t playing our type of football,” he said. “Once they settled in we did a much better job and then it just came down to tackling some of the best athletes in the world and we were not able to do that consistently enough to get off the field.”

He continued: “Points are hard to come by when you are playing an unbelievable team that is well-coached. I thought early on we had some drives, but we had a couple tipped balls, turnovers and penalties. It was just hard, man. I thought our O-line did a good job of finishing. I thought we ran the ball better than I thought we were going to. We had good push up front.

“It is just hard to get a number of those (runs) together to keep the ball on the field and keep the possession going. (And) the whole object on defense was to create long drives and when the opportunity came to capitalize on mistakes. The only problem was they didn’t make an mistakes for us to capitalize on.”

If Utah State executes the way it did against USC in future games, be it next week at home against Utah or at Boise State on Oct. 5 or at home against UNLV on Oct. 11, bowl eligibility will be a long shot.

While there are few Mountain West teams that can compare to USC talent-wise, the reality is the Aggies didn’t execute well at for much of Saturday’s contest to compete with the best in their own league. Not with Boise State nearly upsetting Oregon and UNLV dominating Utah Tech, specifically.

There were positives from the loss, too, though. Some individual performances were encouraging, as a handful of players proved they can play with some of the best in the country — Ike Larsen. Jalen Royals. Rahsul Faison. Avante Dickerson. JD Drew.

Mostly, though, the positive for Utah State was simple. The Aggies didn’t quit. They competed from opening kickoff to final whistle, even while getting the doors blown off.

“We didn’t quit out there,” safety Jordan Vincent said. “At any time in that game, I felt like I could look to my left and look to my right and dudes were willing to finish, wiling to fight, play tough and play hard.

“I feel like that is the identity we try to have and I’m glad I can look around that locker room — regardless of the score — and know we didn’t quit out there.”

Barnes took it even further.

“I’m proud of the guys. From the first snap to the last snap everyone was giving it their all,” he said. “There was a lot of toughness. No quit in anybody.

“That is the biggest thing we will be able to carry throughout the season. Regardless of what the scoreboard reflected, we had dudes giving it their all each and every play. I think that is really going to pay dividends when it is Week 8 or Week 9 in the Mountain West. We don’t give up, regardless of what that scoreboard is.”

Utah State will have to be better going forward. The performance against USC — even if the Trojans end up being one of the elite teams this year — wasn’t good enough.

The good news is the Aggies know it and have proved they won’t give up in trying to get where they need to be.