What are the biggest questions surrounding the Aggies?

For nearly a month now, football has been an afterthought in conversations regarding Utah State.

Sure, when the news first broke that USU intended to fire Blake Anderson as the program’s head coach, there were briefly discussions about which Aggie players might leave — per NCAA rules, players have 30 days to enter the transfer portal following a head coach’s departure — and enter the transfer portal.

There were also a couple of days where it seemed as though safety Ike Larsen would leave the program and ultimately wide receivers Zakkarii Black and Micah Davis did.

But by and large, conversations about Utah State football have centered on Anderson’s dismissal, as well as that of deputy athletic director Jerry Bovee, associate athletic director Amy Crosbie, and director of player development and community engagement Austin Albrecht.

That all is about to change.

Fall camp for Utah State begins Thursday, and a month from now USU will kick off the 2024 season with a game at home against Robert Morris.

Given all the off-the-field turmoil, there are plenty of questions about this Aggies team.

Here are some of the most notable.

Are the right coaches in place?

With the departure of Anderson, Utah State’s coaching staff has changed. Not significantly in terms of new coaches, though there are a few of those. No, the most significant changes have come via increased responsibilities.

USU announced that offensive coordinator Kyle Cefalo will be the team’s offensive play-caller this season — in 2023 Anderson performed that duty — in addition to serving as the wide receivers coach. It will be the first time in Cefalo’s career that he will call plays.

There’s more though.

Offensive line coach Cooper Bassett is now a co-offensive coordinator. The closest he’s come to that in his coaching career was when he was the run-game coordinator/offensive line coach at West Texas A&M.

Hayden Kingston, formerly an offensive analyst, is now USU’s quarterbacks coach, tasked with leading a room that is filled with newcomers to USU in Spencer Petras, Jacob Conover and Bryson Barnes, as well as the talented but unproven CJ Tiller.

On defense, Bobby McMillen, a USU coach as of February, will be the co-defensive coordinator, along with interim head coach Nate Dreiling.

Then there are the new additions, as of last week, Troy Morrell and Dave Wiemers. Morrell will be the team’s associate head coach and a senior offensive analyst, while Wiemers will be a senior defensive analyst.

Even though Anderson was the only coach to leave USU’s coaching staff, the group looks little like it did last season with new faces and new responsibilities aplenty.

And that is before you mention that Dreiling is now a first-time head coach at only 33 years old.

Are the coaches up to the task of leading Utah State through significant tumult? They’ve done so already for nearly a month, but the saga surrounding the termination of Anderson isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Can the Aggies’ coaching staff actually help propel USU forward in 2024 rather than just tread water for the season? USU is coming off back-to-back 6-7 seasons and had one of the worst defenses in all of the FBS last season. Improvement is needed.

Dreiling has his supporters, chief among them being athletic director Diana Sabau.

“We are blessed to have Nate Dreiling,” Sabau told the Deseret News. “Nate is a head coach. He has all the tools and he is ready to go. When he came to us from New Mexico State in January he was embraced quickly by our team.”

Dreiling has to win over the entire team, though, and he knows it.

“The hard part about this job with where we were at, I’ve been around the defensive guys so much,” Dreiling said at Mountain West Conference media days. “Now I have to get these offensive guys to believe in me as well if this is going to be successful.”

Did Utah State address its biggest weakness enough?

Over the course of the 2023 season, a general theme emerged about the Aggies. In losses to Air Force, San Jose State and Boise State it was most pronounced, namely that the Aggies were small where it matters most — in the trenches.

USU has never had the biggest offensive and defensive lines, but Anderson talked numerous times last season about the need for USU’s O-line and D-line to get bigger and stronger. To do that, he said over and over, was going to require some additions to the program.

By most metrics, Utah State succeeded in bolstering both of its lines during the offseason.

On the O-line, the Aggies welcomed notable transfers in Trey Andersen and George Maile, both of whom were contributors at power conference programs, Andersen at Pitt and Maile and Baylor.

And on the D-line, USU has been almost completely remade. The Aggies adding Macyo Williams from Kent State, Gabriel Iniguez Jr. from New Mexico State, Ricky Lolohea from Oklahoma State, Miguel Jackson from Charlotte via the transfer portal — and that is just at the defensive tackle position.

At defensive end, USU added a good collection of junior college talent and transfers too, including Marlin Dean and Carl Nesmith (two highly regarded juco players), Gabe Peterson from New Mexico State and Lawrence Falatea from Washington State, to name a few.

There is now optimism about the Aggies’ offensive line, given the team also returned a chunk of young talent, including Teague Andersen and Wyatt Bowles.

“They were thrown into the fire last year,” Cefalo said. “And now they know they can do it and have some confidence.”

Offensive line success is about talent but also continuity and USU appears to have a good combination of the two.

On the defensive line, there is work to be done. Even though the Aggies went to work in a major way to bolster the front seven.

Dreiling and company are not lacking in belief — about the defensive line and the defense as a whole. Let’s call it measured optimism.

“Let’s get the defense caught up and let’s go win some games,” Dreiling said.

Is Spencer Petras the next Logan Bonner? Or better?

When Logan Bonner transferred to Utah State in the winter of 2021, few would’ve expected him to become — statistically at least — one of the best quarterbacks in Utah State history. The transfer had been somewhat injury-prone at Arkansas State, and though he had flashes of talent, he wasn’t all that proven.

Bonner quickly put any doubts about his ability to bed with his performance during the 2021 season, which culminated in a MWC championship.

And though the remainder of Bonner’s Utah State career was up-and-down, marred by injury, his addition to USU can only be viewed as a positive.

He came, threw the ball around at a record-breaking pace, and won a good number of games.

The Aggies couldn’t wish for much more than that from their latest QB transfer: Spencer Petras.

A former starter at Iowa, Petras has only one season of eligibility remaining and the hope is that he ends his collegiate days on a high note.

“A kid like Spencer, it doesn’t matter where he is at, he has one year left and wants to make the most of it,” Cefalo said.

Listed at 6-foot-5, 230 pounds, Petras isn’t going to wow anyone with his mobility, but he has a big arm and is able to make every throw required in Utah State’s offensive system, something the Aggies haven’t had since Bonner.

Cooper Legas, now at Tulsa, was elite with the deep ball but struggled with intermediate throws. And McCae Hillstead, now at BYU, had significant throwing potential but lacked consistency as a true freshman.

Petras is, after offseason attrition, now the Aggie quarterback who is most familiar with the offense, having studied it closely during the fall while he was working as a student-coach on Iowa’s staff.

It was the USU offense that lured Petras to Utah State.

“The statistics speak for themselves year-after-year,” he told the Deseret News. “Being at the top (of the MW) in almost every offensive category is impressive. I love the wide splits that we play with. I’m a pocket guy with a strong arm. It is exciting, the ability to make a defense cover 53.5 yards.

“When I was in high school I did a lot of RPO stuff. We didn’t do that at Iowa and it is fun to get back to stuff that I’ve done in the past.”

The potential exists for Petras to have the sort of one-and-done season that will be remembered, not all that dissimilar to Bonner.

Who else is there besides Jalen Royals?

Jalen Royals was the breakout player for Utah State a season ago. And that is putting it mildly.

Royals went from being a near unknown — only the most diehard of USU fans had an inkling as to his potential — to being one of the best receivers in all of college football with a record-breaking season that saw him record a USU-best 15 touchdown receptions, along with 1,080 receiving yards.

Throw the ball in his general vicinity and Royals usually made the catch, slipped past a defender and strolled for a monster touchdown. He had touchdown receptions of 71 yards, two for 57 yards, 51 yards and 50 yards last season. Royals was a big-play machine.

That is expected to continue.

“I’ve had to play against him all spring,” Dreiling said. “When the ball is in the air thrown to Jalen, I’m just going to run to the offensive side real quick so I can start clapping. You can’t guard the guy. His ball skills, his catch radius is unbelievable.

“There is a reason he is going to be a top draft pick, first or second round. Ultimately, what people don’t see is how this kid works. He has his head down, doesn’t talk the most but his work ethic is unbelievable. And there’s how smart he is. He is going to be a handful. And we feel like with Spencer, his stats are going to continue to sky rocket.”

The question entering the 2024 season is what help will Royals have.

Terrell Vaughn is gone, his eligibility exhausted. Davis was expected to be the No. 2 to Royals, but he is in the transfer portal, reportedly headed to Ole Miss.

The next leading receiver on the team a year ago was Colby Bowman, who is still around, but he became more of an afterthought as the season progressed.

So who will take advantage of all the attention paid to Royals?

The Aggies will lean on running backs Robert Briggs and Rahsul Faison, both of whom have enjoyed previous success.

Dreiling and Cefalo both made note of tight end Broc Lane and Josh Sterzer as important pieces going forward.

And then there is former juco All-American Robert Freeman IV, who seems to be the heir apparent at slot receiver to Vaughn.

Who the No. 2 receiver will be isn’t likely to be determined until the games are played. Practice and actual game play aren’t the same, after all.

But Cefalo especially is excited about the collection of skill talent USU has accumulated.

“From an offensive standpoint, from a wide receiver’s standpoint, I have like one new face in there,” he said. “We’ve got a bunch of kids that chose to be here, chose to stick around. And are also good players.

“We had a lot of kids last year just gain confidence. I love the experience. I love the talent. I honestly couldn’t be more excited about the possibilities we have in front of us.”

How is the Aggies’ headspace?

Perhaps the most significant question, one that will follow Utah State throughout the season barring a run of perfection, is whether the Aggies will be able to handle the off-the-field distractions.

Anderson being terminated as head coach wasn’t the only difficult thing that befell the program this offseason. A much more human tragedy occurred when transfer Andre Seldon Jr. died in a cliff-diving accident at Porcupine Reservoir, while with multiple Aggie teammates.

Then there’s the fact that USU replaced some 50-plus players during the offseason. Chemistry and continuity could be hard to come by, especially on defense.

Fair or not, if at any point the Aggies start to struggle, questions will be raised. Was the team ready? Should they have even played this season? What should be expected from them, if anything?

Dreiling noted at MW media days that he believes in his team.

“We talk all the time, with my leadership council, what is our identity,” Dreiling said. “You can say stuff and put in on the wall but that isn’t your identity. We are going to find out in the first couple of games — No. 1 what is our toughness level? No. 2, how much do we care about each other? And No. 3, ultimately is this team going to come together and prevail?

“Right now, it is a very resilient group and let me tell you why I feel so confident. Circumstances don’t define you, but they do reveal you,” he continued. “The players, coaches and staff that I have in front of me, I just feel more confident in the world that they are going to come out swinging and have a huge chip on their shoulder.”

That belief remains for those around the program.

Said Sabau: “That group has challenged each other and are pushing each other, completing every task that they can. This year, we’ve started to have a lot of leadership in that locker room, and when I say they believe, I am not kidding you. ... A player-led locker room is so successful. I really see that happening this year.”

Talk is all we have right now when it comes to the Aggies and college football in 2024. And though it all sounds good, like Dreiling noted, it will take time — actual game time — to see exactly what kind of team Utah State has this season.

Fortunately, the actual games are only a month away and an unforgettable offseason is soon to be the rearview mirror.

And it all starts with fall camp.