I guess what you are arguing is that our current team has more depth than past teams. That may be true. We are very deep at RB and on the defensive line. We are not deep on the offensive line. I think we have more serviceable WRs right now, but the teams of the past probably had better WRs. I don’t think our secondary or LB units are particularly deep.
I disagree strongly that losing Huntley would be something this team could overcome. Huntley is the #1 reason this team is as good as it is. He’s the main thing separating this team (historically good) from the Utah teams of the past 5 years (good but not historically good).
Did we not suffer injuries in 2004 and 2008? I’m willing to guess that we suffered just as many as we do now. If anything, something that really stands out in our stellar years is that we’ve had good luck with injuries to key players.
Speaking of injuries, did anyone else see the stat last week that in 12 years of coaching at Alabama, Nick Saban had never before needed to start a 2nd string QB due to injury? He’s in the toughest P5 conference…injuries are about bad luck and not about conference affiliation.
The whole idea that every other week in the MWC conference is a bye game is an insult to our past and is born of P5 hubris. Is New Mexico in 2004 really that different from Colorado in 2019? I don’t think so. Sagarin ranks our 2019 schedule at #40 overall. Our 2004 SOS was #67, and 2008 was #56. The primary difference is that they gave us Pitt in 2004. Had they given us a top team, that SOS would have been much stronger.
In summary:
2004: if you have to pick one team in a head-to-head against another, you pick this team
2008: the most impressive accomplishment in Utah history, Sugar Bowl victory and a national title with an asterisk
2019: potential to eclipse both 2004 in power and 2008 in accomplishment.
Here’s what is going on in this discussion:
The “have nots” have quickly turned into the “haves”. We argued until we were hoarse in 2004 and 2008 that a non-BCS team could be considered to be as good as a BCS team. Now that we are in the P5, we use the same arguments, void of logic, that were used against us back in the day. The point of this is, I assume, to keep the “have nots” out of the running and to feel good about being a P5, but it is not honest and is not fair to the great teams of our past. The Pac-12 itself viewed our accomplishments as worthy of inclusion, not as inferior.
To justify our argument as a “have”, we use the fact that 2 of our first 3 Pac-12 seasons were not very good (ignoring that our very first Pac-12 team was actually good). Somehow, this is used as evidence that our MWC teams must not have been very good either.
The 2008 team played more top 25 opponents than the 2019 team has. That team was 3-0 vs the Sagarin top 30. Our current team is 1-1, and if we take care of business, that could end up being as good as 4-0 or 4-1 by season’s end (USC is very close to falling out of the top 30). The 2004 team was 1-0. We can never erase the fact that we lost to a USC team that has at least 4 losses, and that’s something that can never be true about the 2004 or 2008 teams.
