Football: Highs, Lows and I Don't Knows - 9/25

We all know that the past few decades of Aggie football had been some dark times until Gary Andersen arrived.

Just how bad were they though? Let's use three wins as a measuring stick, since that was often as good as it got for USU football since the turn of the century before Andersen came around. And even since GA has arrived, the third win has taken its sweet time to get here. Below is the date in which Utah State finally got its third win of the season for each year over the last 12 years...

2000: Oct. 21
2001: Nov. 10
2002: Nov. 9
2003: Nov. 1
2004: Nov. 20
2005: Nov. 26
2006: 3rd win?
2007: Seriously, what 3rd win?
2008: Nov. 29
2009: Nov. 14
2010: Nov. 6
2011: Nov. 5
2012: Sep. 22

This marks the first time since 2000 that the team's third win has come prior to the month of November. And if you want to know when the last time USU won its third game in September prior to last weekend, you have to go all the way back to 1978.


Anyway, that's your fun fact stat of the day. Let's knock out the highs, lows, and IDKs.

THE HIGHS

Kerwynn Williams - 21 carries for 205 yards, two touchdowns, 9.8 yards per carry... What else really needs to be said? K-Dub was a man possessed on Saturday, and chances are that's going to be the case against most teams the rest of this year. Maybe not 200+ yards every game, but for how quick he is and how tough to wrap up he's proven to be for most defenses (with Utah and Wisconsin being exceptions), Williams looks ready to dominate the rest of this season.

Zach Vigil - Dude has pretty much dominated defensively in every game so far this year and is a huge part of how dominant USU's defense has been. His 5.5 tackles for loss, three sacks, a forced fumble and a blocked punt lead the team in each category, while he's second in total tackles with 29. Hell of a find by Andersen in bringing this dude into the program as a walk-on. If GA is able to spot untapped talent like Vigil's and Jake Doughty's too for that matter, this program is going to stay in a great spot.


THE LOWS

Tavaris McMillian - Did not see this coming one bit to start the year. After minimal impact against Southern Utah, I justified it on the basis that nobody really racked up the defensive stats in that game. Then against Utah, Bojay kinda stole the show and made every tackle imaginable. But it's been two more games now and McMillian still hasn't gotten his game going. Comparing his last four games of last season to the first four games of this season, it's night and day...

2011 last four: 20 total tackles, 5 tackles for loss
2012 first four: 9 total tackles, 0.5 tackles for loss

The talent is undeniably there. We saw it all throughout last season, and he's still made a big play here and there, but he's got to start making some tackles too.

Chuckie Keeton's deep ball - This looked fantastic against Southern Utah. Hasn't really since then outside of Cam Webb's miracle catch at Wisconsin. The Colorado State game saw a couple of shots deep that missed by quite a ways, and none worse than Keeton's second interception of the game. I don't know if that was supposed to be a come-back route or not, and if it was that was still a bad decision to throw that ball. Either way, it was a brutal miss. Travis Van Leeuwen had his guy burned deep, which is what the play looked to be drawn up as, but Keeton underthrew the hell out of it.

Again, maybe that play was drawn up differently, but it was poorly executed either way.


THE I DON'T KNOWS

Part of the offensive line - The Colorado State looked to be a solid improvement from the Wisconsin game, which probably anybody could have predicted. Without those massive, fast and strong defenses coming at the O-line, they probably will have an easier go at things. And really, none of this much concerns Tyler Larsen, Jamie Markosian or Eric Schultz. Those three are solid. The other two spots still have plenty to prove, and hopefully the CSU game was indicative of more good things to come.

Matt Wells - So far, so good since the team is 3-1. The offense hasn't really been anything epic so far, but they've done just enough to win in all four games. Only one of those were they let down by special teams, while against both Utah and Colorado State, special teams made a big play to either immediately or eventually result in points. Things have looked a little bland at times though. Granted we're out two NFL running backs from last year, but I feel like the talent is still there to put up more points.

On the bright side, USU has jumped out to an early lead in every game, which is huge for setting the tone. The Aggies have outscored teams 51-0 in the first quarter this year. The fourth quarter is USU's second highest-scoring quarter this year too, which is an improvement from the last three year's when Dave Baldwin was allergic to scoring late in games.

On the down side though, the offense has had a poor start to every third quarter this year outside of SUU. On the whole, the Aggies have been outscored 14-29 in the third quarter through four games.

All in all, we might not run it up under Wells like we did with Baldwin at times, but Wells has also shown to be much more consistent. I guess my feelings at this point toward Wells would be along the lines of, "Good start so far!! Got any other tricks your waiting to unleash?"