Finally the full-time starting QB, how does Bryson Barnes feel about Utah State ahead of 2025 season?
He's had plenty of playing time, at Utah first and then at Utah State last year, but often because of an injury suffered by the starting QB, be it Cam Rising or Spencer Petras.
Barnes has proven to be quite the backup, filling in admirably for both Rising and Petras, winning notable games and breaking school records along the way, but as a career backup he's rarely been afforded the majority of practice reps and never really been fully prepared for the role of starting quarterback.
'I definitely always got the short end of the stick,' Barnes told the Deseret News last fall. 'I didn't get the reps (at Utah) that I felt like I deserved to be able to be prepared for when my moment came. It was more so just be prepared without reps and get thrown into the fire in about every circumstance that I was in.'
Everything is different now, though.
Barnes is QB1 for Utah State and he's feeling pretty good about it.
'It's been great,' Barnes said Wednesday on the Mountain West Network. 'To finally have a year where I am the guy and you are able to come in and get a lot more reps than I have had in the past.'
Barnes has needed every rep he's gotten, as the Aggies have been remade under new head coach Bronco Mendenhall, on offense especially. Gone is just about every real contributor on offense from a season ago, except for Barnes, replaced by transfers from across the sport, many of whom have done little so far in their collegiate careers, albeit many at Power Four schools.
'We have a lot of new players, a lot of new faces, especially on offense,' Barnes said. 'So especially as quarterback you have the role to bring those guys in and make sure we are all on the same page.'
In Barnes' estimation, that has happened. It started happening during spring camp and the offense has only coalesced more as the summer has progressed and player-led workouts have taken place.
'I feel like those first four months of the year was a great time,' Barnes said. 'Especially going through spring ball, getting everybody on the same page, getting a feel for everybody.
'... Everything was really clicking when we got to about halfway through spring ball. You can sit there and draw on the whiteboard and you can go over the playbook all you want, but when you get out there on the field and you start repping it, it's a whole different angle you got to deal with.
'And so we needed to iron out those wrinkles throughout spring ball and I really feel like towards the end of spring ball we were really clicking,' he continued. 'Everybody was kind of on the same page. And that really has kind of carried on throughout the summer as well, when you start adding walk-throughs and different things like that that are player ran. So it's been great.'
It helped, Barnes said, that he has seen just about everything there is to see over the course of his college football career, which has included four years at Utah, including the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, and then last season with Utah State.
'I am a veteran,' Barnes said. 'I've been doing this five, six years with that extra COVID year. So I've been around a lot of ball. When you bring all these new faces in, I've kind of been through these different processes that've been tried in the past, so it has been about what would be the best way to get everybody caught up to speed?
'And I feel like I've been through a big refining process of what is the best way and so I feel like we really had an accelerated process of getting everybody on the same page this year because of that.'
Getting on the same page has included learning and embracing the team culture Mendenhall is trying to instill at Utah State.
How's that adjustment going?
'I just feel like it's going to be a completely different culture than what Utah State has been used to the last couple of years,' Barnes said. 'And it's really exciting, you know, bringing Bronco in and having that big culture change — it's going to show on the field.
'... Bronco has a history of doing great things and so buying into that culture, I mean it is only going to reap great rewards for Utah State.'
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