Former Boise State coach, quarterback will be on the other sideline Saturday at Utah State
Utah State offensive coordinator Mike Sanford is known as a great teacher but, while preparing for his first season with the Aggies, he had to become a student.
Sanford has coached in Stanford’s pro-style offense, Boise State’s diverse attack and wide-open schemes at Notre Dame and Western Kentucky, but he didn’t take his playbook with him to Logan, Utah. Instead, Utah State stuck with the up-tempo, pass-heavy approach it adopted two years ago and Sanford had to adapt.
“That was really good for the kids to be able to stay solidified and stay comfortable with it and for the coaches to learn,” Utah State coach Gary Andersen said during Mountain West Conference media days in July.
Andersen applied a similar approach when he took over at Wisconsin in 2013, and Utah State quarterback Jordan Love said not having to ingest a new playbook took a tremendous amount of pressure off the players, who already were going through a transitional period.
“Especially having dudes who haven’t played as much, having to learn a whole new playbook and then trying to play at a high level, too. That’d be hard, but they already know the playbook and they’re comfortable with it,” Love said in July. “I thought that was a neat deal. Why change what is working?”
Last season, Utah State led the Mountain West in scoring (44.6 ppg) and total offense (515.6 ypg) and finished No. 3 in the conference with 314.9 passing yards a game. This fall, the Aggies returned just one starter on the offensive line, and they had to replace their top three receivers and last year’s leading rusher, Darwin Thompson, who is now playing for the Kansas City Chiefs. So even though he has been the one doing the learning, Sanford’s skills as an instructor have come in handy.
“I believed he was a tremendous teacher from what I was told, and he is a tremendous teacher,” Andersen said. “He’s himself every day, and it’s easy for the kids to respect him. He cares about the kids first and he’s a football coach second, and that’s very important to me when I’m hiring a coach.”
Sanford will face his alma mater Saturday when the Broncos visit the Aggies (8:30 p.m., CBS Sports Network).
Sanford played quarterback at Boise State from 2000 to 2004. He returned in 2014 as the offensive coordinator and helped the Broncos win a Mountain West title and beat Arizona in the Fiesta Bowl in coach Bryan Harsin’s first season. The Broncos ranked ninth in the nation with 39.7 points per game, the best the offense has performed in Harsin’s six seasons at the helm.
He left after one season and spent the next two as Notre Dame’s offensive coordinator, where in 2015 the Fighting Irish averaged 466.4 yards and 34.2 points a game.
“He’s a Bronco, and Mike did a really good job the time he was here and we obviously had a successful season,” Harsin said. “He had his opportunities to go and he got himself into a head coaching position, which I know was his goal.”
Sanford was hired as the head coach at Western Kentucky in 2017. He won nine games in two seasons and was fired in November 2018 after the Hilltoppers went 3-9. He wasn’t on the hunt for a job for long, though. Utah State hired him in December after Andersen said he heard nothing but good things about Sanford from offensive line coach TJ Woods, who was on Sanford’s staff at Western Kentucky.
“He has a good, solid background, and he’s been part of some pretty good offenses,” Andersen said. “He’s in a good spot and I just hope I can keep him for a while.”
This year, Utah State’s offensive numbers are in the middle of the pack in the conference: No. 7 in scoring (28 ppg), No. 4 in total offense (430.5 ypg) and No. 4 in passing offense (283.2 ypg). But the Aggies’ offense is dangerous enough that it put up 35 points against Wake Forest and 37 in a two-point win two weeks ago at Fresno State.
“To me, they have weapons on the outside, weapons at tight end, they have some pretty good running backs, so you’ve got to be on your game,” Boise State defensive coordinator Jeff Schmedding told the media Tuesday.
The Aggies’ offense relies heavily on tempo. Sanford’s experiences in up-tempo offenses date back to his days as Western Kentucky’s passing game coordinator in 2010 under Willie Taggart, who was recently fired at Florida State. Schmedding compared the speed with which the Aggies run plays to Florida State, which the Broncos rallied in the fourth quarter to beat in the season opener.
“They give a lot of problems to teams that can’t line up, so we’ve got to do a great job simulating that and being on top of our game in practice so when we get to the game it’s not as difficult,” Schmedding said.
On Saturday, the stakes will be high for the Broncos. If they can combat that tempo and come away with the win, they’ll clinch the Mountain Division title and host the Mountain West title game.
Harsin didn’t seem phased when asked Monday about facing one of his former assistants on an annual basis. He said it was just “part of the business.”
“You start looking at the tree from all the coaches that have been here and where they’re at,” Harsin said. “There’s a lot of Broncos out there in the coaching profession, so we’ve got to go compete against them and that’s the bottom line.”
NO. 20 BOISE STATE AT UTAH STATE
When: 8:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Maverik Stadium (25,100), Logan, Utah
TV: CBS Sports Network (Carter Blackburn, Aaron Taylor, AJ Ross)
Radio: KBOI 670 AM (Bob Behler, Pete Cavender)
Records: Boise State is 9-1 overall, 6-0 Mountain West; Utah State is 6-4, 5-1.
Series: Boise State leads 18-5 (last meeting: Boise State won 33-24 in 2018 in Albertsons Stadium)
Vegas line: Boise State by 9
Weather: 44 degrees, partly cloudy, 3 mph wind
