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COLORADO — In their Mountain West Conference debut, Utah State made their presence known. The Aggies offense came out of the gate fast, scoring on their first two drives and the defense overcame a few first half miscues to shut down the Falcons rushing attack; but for the second week in a row, Chuckie Keeton was the story.
Keeton matched a career high with five touchdown passes, completed a career high 32 of 40 pass attempts for 360 yards, threw one interception, and 77 yards rushing. It's the fifth time in the last seven games Keeton has thrown for over 300 yards, and now has seven career 300 yard games. So if we look at Keeton's numbers through two games this season they look a little something like this:
Chuckie Keeton 2013 Stats
| PASS COMPLETIONS | PASS ATTEMPTS | PASS YARDS | COMPLETION PERCENTAGE | TOUCHDOWNS | INTERCEPTIONS | RUSHING ATTEMPTS | RUSHING YARDS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 63 | 80 | 674 | 79% | 7 | 1 | 23 | 162 |
I mean, if you were judging him purely by numbers, I guess you could say he's okay.
Today also marked another milestone for Keeton as passed the 1,000 yard rushing mark for his career; Diondre Borel is the only other quarterback to eclipse the 1,000 yard mark. Here are a few other observations from today's game:
Receivers are for real
Coming off a stellar performance at Utah, Travis Van Leeuwen and company continued their success today in Colorado Springs. Van Leeuwen's six catches are a new career high, after setting a career high last week at Utah with 5, and caught his first touchdown of the season.
Brandon Swindall didn't catch a touchdown this week but, like Van Leeuwen, set a new career high in receptions, 5; yards, 63; and career-long reception, 24 yards. Travis Reynolds had a career high 59 yards, including a 36 yard touchdown catch. Bruce Natson finished with 5 catches and 41 yards, we also got a look at junior college transfer, Ronald Butler; and by that, I mean we saw him take his first career catch 23 yards for a touchdown. Not a bad debut.
In all, Keeton spread the ball around to 10 different receivers.
Front seven dominates run game
Air Force was able to rack up 409 yards and average over six yards per carry last week against Colgate; this week against the Aggies, not so much. Utah State's defense held the Falcons to 162 yards on 49 carries; their leading rushers from last week, Jon Lee and Broam Hart, were held to 72 total yards after both of them went over the century mark a week ago. Jake Doughty once again led the team in tackles with 11 and as a team, they had four tackles for loss.
Most importantly, they didn't allow Air Force to control time of possession; the Falcons only held the ball for 10 minutes and 36 seconds in the second half.
Secondary needs to clean up miscues.
However, as good as they were in the run game, the Aggies secondary again struggled with pass coverage. Air Force consistently, and quite easily, had receivers get behind the Aggie defense. Luckily for Utah State, Air Force couldn't catch a cold. The Falcons had six dropped passes in the first half, half of those could've been touchdowns. It's a difficult thing to judge initially, considering the Aggies were so focused on the option game, but it did look like they made better adjustments in the second half and players were staying home after biting on just about every play action pass the Falcons threw in the first half.
The secondary also had trouble with penalties; on the Falcons touchdown drive in the second quarter, the secondary drew two pass interference and one holding call. These kept the drive alive and ultimately led to a touchdown. I don't need to say it, you all know it, but you absolutely cannot have a drive with that many penalties. With passing attacks from USC, San Jose State, and Boise State coming up, the Aggies need to fix this really quick.
