Saturday night’s home game against McNeese State, an FCS program in the Southland Conference, could easily be one for Utah State football to overlook.
McNeese State is 1-2 to the start the season, with back-to-back losses to Louisiana (FBS team in the Sun Belt Conference) and Weber State (FCS team in the Big Sky Conference).
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According to ESPN’s SP+ metric, McNeese State is currently No. 199 out 766 college football programs, meaning the Cowboys are the about as middle of the road as you get in the FCS (there are 129 FCS programs right now).
McNeese State wasn’t picked to win its conference this year. The Cowboys didn’t get a single first place vote and were picked to finish sixth out of 10 teams.
Oh and McNeese State gave up 44 points this past Saturday — at home — to Weber State.
Add it all together, and Utah State should easily win its third game of the season this weekend. To that point, ESPN’s matchup predictor gives the Aggies better than a 95% chance to win the game.
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It would be easy for the Aggies to overlook the Cowboys. Easier still when you consider who Utah State’s opponent is the following week — No. 20 Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee.
A win over the undefeated Commodores, who are trending toward one of the better seasons in their program’s history, would be pretty monumental for the Aggies, who genuinely believe they should have given No. 10 Texas A&M a better challenge a couple of weeks ago in College Station. An upset of Vanderbilt would be dramatic evidence that the Bronco Mendenhall era is headed in the right direction and fast.
If ever there was potential for a trap game for a Utah State football team, this weekend’s game against McNeese State is it.
Mendenhall isn’t even slightly concerned. Not with this team, not this season.
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“It is not hard (to keep this team focused on McNeese State),” Mendenhall said Monday. “We’re so early and so new and really, all the players have to do is just turn on the film and it’s like ‘Oh.’”
Beyond that, Mendenhall has a healthy respect for FCS opponents. Twice now he has had teams — early on in rebuilds — lose home games to FCS teams: Virginia in 2016 to Richmond and New Mexico last year to Montana State.
“Two of the programs I’ve recently taken over, we lost to an FCS opener at the beginning,” Mendenhall said, “so the perception of what maybe an FCS opponent is, or a given name that maybe folks aren’t as familiar with — there’s really good teams (at the FCS level). There’s good coaching.”
So even though Vanderbilt beckons and there is a good chance the Commodores will be 4-0 and ranked in the teens in the AP Poll, Mendenhall was defiant — Utah State won’t be overlooking McNeese State.
“Our team will not have that issue,” he said. “We’re hungry. There’s so much to work on and and it’s so early in the process that, again, the focus is completely on us, and it’s a quality opponent.”
