LOGAN — 'Tis the season just before the football season and Utah State head football coach Matt Wells is ready to make the switch.
“As soon as I get on the flight for Vegas Monday night, the summer’s over,” Wells said of his trip to Las Vegas for Tuesday and Wednesday’s Mountain West Football Media Summit.
“That signals the end, but it’s good. I’m excited to get started.”
The Aggies, who are slated to open fall camp on Aug. 1, and play their season opener at Michigan State on Aug. 31, are embarking on their sixth season under the former USU quarterback. Chuck Shelton, who was in Logan from 1986 to ’91, was the last coach to helm Utah State that long, and Wells’ 34 victories currently rank him fourth all-time behind Dick Romney (128), Chuck Mills (41) and Bruce Snyder (37).
Wells could easily be just one win behind Snyder heading into the 2018 season, and that’s something that makes him extremely anxious to get back on the field. After going a career-worst 3-9 in 2016, Wells had things headed back in the right direction last year, and the Aggies were sitting at 6-5 heading into the final game of the regular season.
If a lot of those guys take another big step throughout the summer and in training camp like they did last year, then we should improve on our win total. – Utah State head coach Matt Wells
But a difficult 38-35 defeat at Air Force left Utah State at .500 heading into the NOVA Home Loans Arizona Bowl, where the Aggies suffered an even more painful 26-20 overtime loss to New Mexico State.
“The way we lost both games, if you want to say it, on the last play of the game, leaves a taste in your mouth throughout the whole offseason,” Well admitted. “It’s a taste that is (about) improvement, of urgency, a desire to change the results of close games when you know that you’re close to having a really good season.”
But the potential for “a really good season” from the Aggies in 2018 certainly exists. While Utah State isn’t likely to knock Boise State out of the top spot in the Mountain Division of the Mountain West, most preseason predictions suggest the Aggies will be a strong contender for second along with Wyoming and Colorado State.
And in June, Phil Steele’s College Football Preview placed Utah State second on its “2018 Most Improved List” behind Florida, a bold prediction for a program that won six games last season.
“It is a high expectation,” Wells acknowledged. “And I’m sure that it’s based on a lot of returning starters we have coming back. And if a lot of those guys take another big step throughout the summer and in training camp like they did last year, then we should improve on our win total.”
Just as he did last year, Wells said he expects to get a lot of questions about his offensive line. Only this year, rather than try and explain how the program was undergoing a complete O-line overhaul and adding lots of new faces on big bodies, most of the questions will be about all of the experience returning from what ended up being a very good unit in 2018.
Seniors Quin Ficklin (center), Sean Taylor (right tackle), Rob Castaneda (right guard) and Roman Andrus (left tackle), and junior Moroni Iniguez (left guard) are all back. However, with the emergence of redshirt freshman Alfred Edwards, the Aggies will likely place him at left tackle and shift Andrus to left guard and use Iniguez for depth along the line.
“Alfred had a really great spring, so if he’s in the mix to start at left tackle, now we’ve got five returning starters vying for four spots,” Wells noted. “That’s going to create some really good competition, and we’ve got really good depth behind them.
“… We’ve got some really good youthful linemen in the program who are going to play this year, and I’ll say it a year away: I’m not going to be majorly concerned about the O-line in a year.”
Sophomore quarterback Jordan Love, who took over the starting role from senior Kent Myers last year as a redshirt freshman, is “bigger and stronger,” according to Wells, and also learned to throw with more touch during spring football.
Love will have a couple of new targets to throw to in late signees senior Jalen Greene, a transfer from USC, and junior Devin Heckstall, a transfer from Los Angeles Valley Community College. The Aggies also added sophomore safety Shaquez Bond out of Southwestern College in California in May.
“I think they’re added bonuses,” Wells said of the trio of athletes from Southern California.
Defensively, the Aggies lost standout cornerback Jalen Davis and safety Dallin Leavitt to graduation, but Wells is very optimistic about his front seven, both the returning starters as well as newcomers like TCU transfer Tipa Galea’i (linebacker) and Oklahoma State transfer Fua Leilua (defensive end).
“You add those two guys to the mix with the guys up front and the linebackers, and that’s a very solid front seven,” Well declared. “The No. 1 key for us is stopping the run. We’ve got to do a better job of doing that then we did last season down the stretch, and force people to throw the football.”
With the departure of co-defensive coordinator Kendrick Shaver for Washington State, Wells brought in veteran defensive coordinator Keith Patterson, most recently of Arizona State, to help oversee the defensive along with Frank Maile. But for just the second time in his six seasons, Wells will benefit from having the same offensive coordinator back for a second straight campaign.
“And you know, we should be better in (offensive coordinator) David Yost’s second year, with the continuity and familiarity with his system hopefully taking it to another level,” Wells said.
Unfortunately, Wells lost a very key — albeit unofficial — member of his staff in the offseason. His dad, Jim Wells, passed away unexpectedly at the age of 72 in Matt’s hometown of Sallisaw, Oklahoma. The father of both Matt and Luke Wells, an assistant on USU’s staff, the longtime dentist was the Aggies' "pseudo-recruiter in Oklahoma and Texas."
“He would send us things from the newspaper, which is kind of dating him, but we always got evaluations from him,” Wells recalled. “He was a dentist that wanted to be — and thought he was — a coach. But I think he was proud of his boys and probably through us a little bit in terms of that.
“He always enjoyed sports and pushed us to be our very, very best.”
Matt Wells said his father made it to nearly all of his home games the final three years he played for the Aggies and traveled to all of the bowl games as well as at least a couple of home games every season since he became head coach.
In fact, the last time Matt was able to spend time with Jim Wells was last April when he came out to watch the Aggies’ annual spring game. Matt said when it started to rain in the second quarter, he looked up from the field toward his office, where Jim was watching the action from a couch alongside legendary Aggie trainer Dale Mildenberger.
“I told the ref, ‘Look up there. You’ve got a dentist that’s close to retiring, and a retired trainer that’s in the hall of fame — and they’ve got all of the answers,’” Matt Wells recalled with a small laugh. “He started laughing, and I said, ‘Just so you know, they’ve got all of the answers for the head coach as well as for the white hat referee.’”