Coachspeak: Yost on Utah State’s Love

The coach who saw Jordan Love rise to stardom reflects on the No. 1 pick's winding path.

Bill Huber | May 31, 2020

GREEN BAY, Wis. – In 2015, David Yost was an assistant coach at Washington State. Its hot quarterback recruit, Ian Book, had decommitted and chosen Notre Dame. That left Mike Leach’s Cougars scrambling for another quarterback. Leach’s staff zeroed in on a group of about eight quarterbacks. One of those was Jordan Love.

“We weren’t sure if he was a Power-5 guy,” said Yost, now the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Utah State. “He was a tall, lanky guy that looked like had a good arm but you didn’t sit there and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, he has high-level arm talent.’ You’re like, ‘He looks good but he looks real skinny.’ He kind looked like a baby deer when he was running. You could tell he hadn’t grown into himself yet. I think he was 180 pounds at that time.”

As National Signing Day approached, the Cougars took yet another look at Love but ultimately turned elsewhere. Love, in turn, stuck with his commitment to Utah State – the only FBS school to offer a scholarship.

It’s funny how things work out. After spending the 2016 season at Oregon, Yost was hired by Utah State in 2017 to be the Aggies’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under Matt Wells.

By that point, under the supervision of strength coach Dave Scholz, Love had gotten up to 210 pounds. The additional weight translated to additional RPMs on his passes.

“He was extremely gifted throwing the football when I got there, and he just kept getting better and better,” Yost said. “The more we practiced, the better he got.”

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Published May 31, 2020

BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.