The Aggies host Southern Utah in their home opener on Saturday, September 16th at 7 pm.

The Thunderbirds are 0-2 to start their season having lost 2 road games to FBS teams: Arizona State 24-21 and BYU 41-16. However, they have been competitive in both loses. In the ASU game, they blocked a punt and returned it 47 yards for a TD to draw within 3 points with 7:50 to go in the game.

The loss to BYU, in front of over 60,000 fans in Provo, was much closer than the score indicates. BYU only had 46 more total yards than the Thunderbirds: 394-348. Special team breakdowns did them in including a blocked punt, a long KO return, a missed FG and a missed extra point.

The first two Aggie games have left me with more questions than answers. Although we rolled over a weak TAMC team, I didn't think we looked particularly sharp overall on offense. We had 4 TO's including 2 picks and a fumble by Hastings. Bright spots included how Lan Larison showed he has the ability to be one of the best RB's in the Big Sky and the dominate play of our defense. Overall, it was a promising win that left us with a few things to clean up and execute better.

The loss to #16 OSU was no surprise but the margin of the loss was, at least to me, surprisingly big. OSU beat us soundly in every phase of the game and, other than a couple of plays to start the game, our offense was overwhelmed by their defense and their overall team speed ran us ragged on defense. To our credit, we continued to play hard in the second half. Thankfully, the Beavers had stepped off the gas by then also and started playing a lot of their 2nd and 3rd stringers.

So a dominate win by the Aggies over a very weak team followed by an overwhelming loss against an FBS power has left a lot of questions to yet to be answered about about the Aggies. I think this game against a pretty good FCS Southern Utah team will give us more insight as to where we stand before we begin Big Sky play on September 23rd when our old nemesis Eastern Washington comes to town.