LOGAN, Utah - Utah State head football coach Matt Wells held a press conferenceWednesday to discuss the 2017 Signing Class. A complete transcript of Wells' remarks can be found below.

Head Coach Matt Wells

Opening comments on the signing class:
"We look at this class and there are some similarities from past classes and then there are some things that are very specific to these kids individually. First of all, you look at the state of Utah and we got eight signees from the state. We'll always recruit the state first and foremost. You've got mission kids in there and the Polynesian pipeline, which is everything that we're all about here at Utah State. We have seven junior college players in this class. Those guys are recruited to come in and compete immediately for playing time. This class is no different, it consists of five mission kids, and we had a late addition this morning, which was great, great news for all of us. Very much a part of our foundation of our recruiting success is our mission program and we're welcoming some mission kids back this summer that will be on this team this fall. And the last thing is you look at, over half of our signees we had in camp or saw them in satellite camps out there, namely in the state of California. So, in state or out, we got a lot of live evaluation on these guys, which is important to us. That's a little bit of a snapshot of this class as you look at it.

"It was big for us to address some offensive line needs immediately, and we did that. A couple of JC kids, Roman (Andrus) and Rob (Castaneda), are both in right now and a part of us. Two JC linebackers in Suli (Tamaivena) and Louy (Compton), those two guys I know will come in and compete immediately. Suli will be an inside guy, Louy will start out as an outside linebacker, and he has tremendous pass-rush skills.

"Going back to the O-linemen, we signed two high school kids in Alfred Edwards, who is a tall, long, athletic tackle, and then Chandler Dolphin, an in-state kid that is mean and nasty, and who has a bright future here at Utah State. A quarterback that I know is very competitive and who has got a lot of moxie is Henry (Colombi), who was one of our very first commits and stayed true and loyal to us. You're going to hear me say true and loyal a lot because this year we didn't have much drama here in the last week, which is a good thing.

"You always look back at your body of work, and as I look, this is our fifth recruiting class, and the fourth full-recruiting class since I've been here as the head coach. It seems like some of the drama that we have had, even when we flipped guys, those kids either haven't panned out, haven't made it or not stayed at Utah State. So, it's the kids that have stayed loyal to Utah State to me over the years, and maybe even some of our earlier commitments here at Utah State, that end up being our best and most productive players.

"Carson Terrell is a tight end that I'm really excited about, and is another one that stayed true to us and loyal to us, and just nonchalantly said no to some people after he committed. He will come in and compete immediately for playing time. One of the neat things in that recruiting story is the influence that Dax Raymond had on that kid. To see one of your best players, and Dax is - I know he didn't play last year but he's one of our best players and will certainly be one of the top tight ends in the Mountain West - recruit a kid with passion and energy, and basically tell him he needs him, because Dax is a mature young man. We signed Dax in our very first recruiting class and finally are getting him back and all that and his better days are ahead of him. But Dax's take on Carson was, 'I need you here for me to be a better player.' That's an oxymoron for a lot of people, and they don't understand that, but that's a neat thing to see.

"I really like our corner spot. We signed three kids - two high school kids and a junior college. Coach Julius Brown and coach (Kendrick) Shaver did a tremendous job not only identifying and evaluating those guys, but all three of those guys had multiple offers to play other places. Deante Fortenberry from City College of San Francisco, Zahodri Jackson and Jarrod Green, I like those guys. We got live evaluations on those guys a lot in camps and in games, and we had all three of those guys in our camp. Two defensive lineman, Devon Anderson and Nami Tuitu'u from Mesa, the home of Kyler Fackrell. Those two guys absolutely will come in at defensive end and the one junior college player, Devon, has three years to play. Nami being a true freshman will come in and compete right now.

"We signed two kids from Centennial High School in Las Vegas, Savon Scarver and Jamaal Evans. Jamaal has been to our camp since he was a ninth-grader, maybe an eighth-grader. That's almost an in-state get for us as many times as Jamaal's been to Logan and he's a safety. He's a high school quarterback, but we also have evaluated him as a safety and a linebacker, and he can play multiple spots. Savon will be an outside receiver for us. He can stick his foot in the ground and he's a very good route runner, but he's got speed. He has really good track times if you've looked him up. Coach (Gregg) Gensel actually came by my office today and we were looking it up and were comparing it and he said, 'Matt, he'll help me,' and I said, 'Well, he needs to have good grades first.' We've already talked about that, so he's a possible two-sport guy once he gets here, but he's got real speed.

"Zahodri has got track speed and also runs track. So, we have some multi-sport guys. You want to talk about multi-sport guys? Let me go back to Carson Terrell, who is the first one I've ever recruited in 20 years that was a basketball player and a wrestler at the same. Now, he's got a little bit of an injury and he's going to be okay, but he's going to be out the rest of the year in wrestling and basketball. But that is a kid that was going from basketball practice to a wrestling match. I love multi-sport guys. The kid's a competitive, competitive guy.

"Our mission kids, Heneli (Avendano) is another wrestler and a really good heavyweight wrestler in this state. Izzy (Vaifo'ou), Kyle Van Leeuean, Josh Sterzer, Mata Hola, all those mission kids that we signed and then we'll send them out. We had all those guys in camp, again more eyes and more evaluations on them. Eltoro (Allen) has a lot of speed. He's speed guy and is going to fit in our offense really well. He was a 1,000-yard rusher and he split time at running back with another guy there at Riverside Community College. We've had really good success at Riverside and he has a sharp, smart mom, a really neat mom, a neat story and neat family. We had him in here a couple of weeks ago and committed, and he will absolutely come in and compete with Tonny (Lindsey), LaJuan (Hunt) and Justen Hervey, and he'll play. He'll play right when he comes in. Obviously, he's got to compete and we've got good running backs here, but we added another really good back."

On why he would take a junior college player with two years of playing time compared to a high school senior with four:

"It's when you evaluate your position and you think that that's a spot that either you need an immediate upgrade or immediate production at. Can a high school kid give it to you or could a JC kid give it to you better? And then who's in the room right now and do we lose many guys? Just like the O-line, we knew we needed to change the O-line and we need to make it immediate. It had to be a mix, two-and-two, so we took two high school and two junior college players. D-line, one-and-one. So, we had some immediate needs right there. When it goes down to the running back, it's who's the best available, who can we get our hands on right now because I would like someone to compete and play right now. So, that's kind of where you look. Quarterback, you've got a returning senior who's been very productive, I've got a kid coming off a redshirt year, Jordan Love, who I know is going to be very good, so we're not going to take a junior college quarterback, and we are not going to take a graduate transfer. We got two calls from two prominent graduate transfers out there, who are very, very good players. We made the decision are we going to develop Jordan Love or are we going take a graduate transfer? Well, we already have Henry coming and committed, so the decision is to stay with youth because I believe in that youth in the quarterback room."

On if he tries to get the best guys he can:

"You always try to get the best guys you can, because you're always trying to upgrade. To me, recruiting is trying to make it better in that room or at that position. But there's always positions that you look at and go, 'Okay, we have a lot of production coming back and we feel really good about where we're at in the Mountain West at that position right now,' so maybe we take a freshman if he's really good. Then, is he going to compete right now or is he going to redshirt, and you're okay with that. You look at a room that might be depleted by graduation and you look at the youth and the youth is not ready yet, or is maybe a year away from developing, then that's where your mindset starts going, 'Well, maybe we need a JC kid to plug in here.'"

On how he feels about the strong commits:

"We finished strong. Some of those commits, to be real honest, when you say they're late, it's just how their calendar worked out or they couldn't come in on their visit until later, so sometimes that may have been delayed. They couldn't come in December or they couldn't come Jan. 14, our first weekend out. But, we finished really strong, our staff really tried to put blinders on over the last three weeks, two-and-a-half weeks, and just go hard right after our guys. And really, even once you get some kids committed in mid-January, I always use the term post-up, we had to post-up at Lehi High School and stay there all day to make sure nobody came in. So, sometimes it's defending opponents from poaching. But, we finished really strong and we received good news this morning with Mata and didn't have any bad news in the last five days or so, and that, to me, is finishing strong."

On whether not making a bowl game helped or hurt in recruiting:

"It definitely didn't hurt us in recruiting one bit because of the homes we got in and the kids that we stayed on. I don't think it ever helps one bit if you're not in a bowl game. I'm not going to take that trade-off ever. That was the most miserable December I've ever had in my life, besides Christmas Day and seeing the look on my kids' faces. It was miserable, there's no way around it. That was the worst week before Christmas and it was the worst week after Christmas watching everybody else play except us. I just hope our players hated it as much as I did. It was not fun, and it'll never help, but it absolutely didn't hurt us in recruiting because of some of the guys that we've been on. It gave us probably a few more days in December and another recruiting weekend, but I'll take the trade-off the other way next year."

On if it's harder to get back physically after serving an LDS Church mission:

"That's always been people's thought, but it's just been interesting, and we had this discussion with several mission recruit's parents. Either we've been doing a better job or maybe the kids have done better jobs on their mission of staying in better shape. But that has always been the M.O., is it takes them longer to come back, especially on the O-line and D-line. Mohelika Uasike got here in late June and was 330-something pounds, and coach Scholz had a month with him before training camp and we brought him along through August slowly. Frank (Maile) did a good job of just inserting him and playing him, but not crushing him and built his reps up over the year. Now, if you remember back, he was in that 2014 signing class, and he turned down a lot of people to come to Utah State and he's also probably one of our best recruiters, too, during this winter. Dax Raymond came off his mission in May and was skinny as a rail coming back from the Ukraine and coach Scholz had him all summer and there he is playing right away as a true freshman in game one. So, it's probably very individual-related. Sometimes it depends on where that kid was sent. Did he get sick; how much did he eat? If you send those guys down south, they're going to eat barbeque and gain a little weight like Mo."

On how things are going with coach David Yost:

"It's been really good. David is a constant professional. He walked in here like he'd been in here a long time and was kind of like, 'Oh, that's how we do it? Okay, good.' He fit in really well with our staff, and he had a big hand in helping Luke (Wells) with Carson Terrell in getting and keeping him committed. Luke did a tremendous job with him for the last year, and coach Yost jumped right in. He saw all the offensive commits or the guys we were going after, so he was in a lot of homes with me and with our offensive staff and jumped in and that's another guy on our staff that's not the recruiting coordinator, but he's been the recruiting coordinator before. Julius Brown has been a recruiting coordinator before, but Luke's got that title right now. I've been a recruiting coordinator before, so sometimes when you've had that title and you had that experience and some of that responsibility, they just jump right in and they add so much more than I thought when I hired him, because that's not why I hired him. I hired him because of the scheme and the expertise and his quarterback coaching and all those kind of things, but it's been really good so far in recruiting and they started staff meeting this week on the offensive staff just with cut-ups and some of the installation and all that, so that will crank up Monday morning."

On if how he feels about Utah State's recruiting in the state of Utah:

"There's plenty of players in this state that I would love to have and they didn't choose us for whatever reason. There's always more, and we don't always get everybody we want. I'd love to sign the whole class from Utah, but I don't think that will ever happen because there's certain guys out of state that we like better than in-state kids. There certainly are a lot of in-state kids that I would've loved to have and they chose to go other places, so good luck to them. But, there are a lot of good players in the state of Utah. It's getting better and better, and it's getting very populated in Salt Lake International Airport. We've got a lot of visitors coming in from out of state. You just look at the list and so many kids are leaving the state, and when kids in Utah end up leaving the state, it just invites other coaches to come in. There are good players, there are really good players, and I'm happy that we got the eight kids that we got. I really am."

On his thought on the NCAA meetings to discuss changes to signing day:

"I supported it. I supported it to a December signing day, as an early signing, which would be the Wednesday in December that the junior colleges sign. So, yeah, I support it. Some of these kids would've already signed with us then, I'm sure some of them would've probably held out and figured it out in January. It will be interesting to see how it changes our recruiting and I really can't predict that right now. But yeah, I absolutely supported that. I don't want to see it go in the summer, none of the coaches did, and that was absolutely shot down. We don't want to see that calendar change, but coaches were heavily in favor of supporting the December signing day, so I think that'll pass."

On the depth of the offensive line this year:

"I wouldn't say the depth is going to be any better because we just graduated four seniors and you bring four kids in, including two freshmen, so the depth is about the same. Obviously, you're looking at quality of play and how well they play is what everybody wants to evaluate, including me. But just in terms of numbers and depth, we're at about the right numbers. We've replaced as many as we lost."

On if expects the number of offensive linemen to go up:

"We're right around 15 usually, which is about three-deep. Usually, it's give or take with 16 to 14, somewhere in that neighborhood."

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