USU football preview: Fighting for time

LOGAN — There's something strange on the wall in the shiny new football meeting rooms on the north end of Romney Stadium.

No, it's not a portrait of Merlin Olsen, MacArthur Lane or even Chris Cooley.

It's a three-deep roster — something current Utah State coach Brent Guy hasn't had the luxury of creating since he arrived in Logan three seasons ago.

"We actually have real competition for positions," Guy said. "We didn't have that a couple of years ago. It took so long for us to add players we sometimes had guys that weren't pushed. They didn't have to work to get playing time."

Now, Guy said, the Aggies are finally to the point here his fourth recruiting class is in place and no one can take playing time for granted.

"It's going to be pretty tough to narrow it down to the 64-man travel team," he said. "That's kind of nice."

The newfound depth came at a cost, though. While Guy and the Aggies were redshirting 28 freshmen last year, they struggled and lost the first 10 games of the season.

And while USU did wrap up the 2007 season with wins over Idaho and New Mexico State, the Aggies are far from a team on the cusp of greatness. In fact, Sports Illustrated gave Utah State the dubious preseason honor of being ranked as the worst football team in the country.

"When we see stuff like that," senior safety Caleb Taylor said, "we want to prove everybody wrong. We know we're a better football team than we were last year. We know we're not the worst team in the country."

And yet, despite beating two WAC schools on the road to end the year and returning 17 starters, the Aggies were also picked by the WAC coaches and media to finish at the bottom of the conference.

To avoid those bottom-feeding predictions, Utah State will have to show improvement on a variety of fronts.

It's a little hard to pinpoint exactly where to start, but the Aggie offense ranked 115th in the NCAA last year with just 277.92 yards per game. With only 153 yards of passing per game, USU ranked 116th. The 124.9 rushing yards per contest was good enough for 94th in the country.

Clearly, Utah State could use a few more yards and a few more points — the 20.6 per game was 101st.

"We're going to be more aggressive on offense," Darrel Dickey, USU's second-year offensive coordinator, said. "We know we're going to have to open things up a little more. This year, I think we have the personnel to do that."