Johnson, a freshman, has shown he can move the team. He has a good arm, and once he’s a legitimate threat in the air his running will be deadly. With this spectacular defense play, and his youth, the coaches are really risk averse. Probably don’t trust his judgment yet.
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His 3 fumbles (all recovered) probably don’t help fill that trust bucket.
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Someone needs to keep Nate away from that popcorn machine on the sideline. 
1 Like
Just watched the highlights. I’d be ok with 3 or 7 point win for the rest of the season. 
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We had 15 possessions, they had 14. I’ve never seen a stat line like that. This was like a pitchers’ duel in baseball. Not a lot of highlights, but from an Xs and Os standpoint, a thing of beauty.
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Defensive POTG - Reid. Runner up - Elliss, who will cause nightmares for some of the UCLA OL.
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Offensive POTG - have to give it to Nate. Executed the offense, had a difference making drive at the end of the 2Q, no hero ball, none was needed the way our D was playing.
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ST POTG - can we pitch in to get Bouwmeester a gift certificate for a really good massage?
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Coach of the game - Scalley, for swapping Vaki and Tao Johnson, and calling an insanely good defensive game.
Tao Johnson making the switch from NB to FS is a bigger deal than it might appear. Playing FS in our defense is really difficult, a TON of things to account for. UCLA has 3 WRs who run between 10.3-10.5 100M, which put a lot of pressure on our back end. You’d never know it by watching today’s game, though.
Tao matches up better to not let that kind of speed result in big plays, and Vaki plays an undersized LB role as well as anyone. The silver lining is Tao already has what it takes to play FS.
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Just got home. Unloaded everything. My thoughts…we won. That’s all that matters right now.
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I did! We are lucky lucky lucky to have a D that, when it matters most, does what ours did today on those final 4 UCLA downs. As Gandalf said, “You shall not pass!”
1 Like
I may have lost count, but if there were 3 against UCLA, I think that’s 7 in 4 games. (I thought there were only 2 against UCLA). Remember when Whit pulled Terence Cain and put Jordan Wynn in, mid-game, as the starter? That was because Cain fumbled twice in one game. Right now we have no choice but to play Nate, but with so many fumbles I don’t think Whit would let him start any game if there were another QB option.
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Agree. In the past, you fumbled, you were out at least the series if not half. But when there is little choice, he has to picl them up. Kind of same with Thomas the past 2 years. Whitt is getting soft in his old age (jk, just a joke).
On the ESPN box score, says he fumbled 3 times and lost one. I don’t remember. But if he’s a runner through the line, 2 hands. A strip sack is maybe something different, but he needs to protect that ball!
3 Likes
In the war of attrition, JJ was the only player that went down yesterday, correct? We will miss the one D-lineman who was ejected for targeting for the first half of Fridays game but otherwise did anyone else get injured? Hopefully we get as many guys back as possible, especially on offense.
4 Likes
Love when defensive is dominant, especially when in a game where they need to dominate.
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Why were the offenses so incredibly inept?
Answer: the defenses
For the Utes on D, we played a ton of Cover 1 (one safety) with Tao as the center fielder and Bishop & Vaki adding to LBs Reid & Barton in joining the DL in making life miserable for their OL, Dante Moore and bottling up their run game.
We were playing almost exclusively inside leverage / man coverage, which takes away slants and other inside passes often used as the “hot routes” to get the ball out quickly when a pass rush is coming. Inside leverage aims to push the WRs to the sidelines, where the pass is more difficult to complete & the boundary is like another defender. Moore is going to be a great QB, but he didn’t have time for long outside routes to develop, and on flat routes to the outside our CBs could jump those routes, making the routes we were conceding high risk.
Overall, for our D, on a UCLA board, in defending their team, one poster pointed out the last true FR QB to win in SLC was Justin Herbert.
On the other side, UCLA’s defense was tough & super quick, not at all the kind of “Joe Williams escort committee” that UCLA’s defenses have been in the past. Their front was making it really tough to open creases, and the passes Nate threw were mostly contested - except the wheel route to Glover on “the drive”. If we threw the ball more, almost guaranteed there’d be turnovers, which would have put us in line to get a “L”.
To illustrate the lateral quickness of UCLA’s defense, how many times did we run a jet sweep to Parks or Mathews? I counted zero. That play works when there’s poor containment on the edge or the DL is stunting with DL & DE switching, and the defense doesn’t have great lateral quickness. Lud wasn’t going to run a play with zero chance of success. Put a different way, #20 LB Kain Medrano ran Nate down from behind when he tried to run wide.
Offenses can always execute better, and we shouldn’t have had to punt that much, but this game was going to be a defensive slugfest before it started.
9 Likes
This was pretty much the last straw for me on the jackassery that is NCAA refs and “targeting”… I saw ZERO intent on the part of the Utah player to try and target ANYTHING. The concept was decent enough, but when they are getting it questionably wrong so much of the time, on a broad basis across the country, it needs to be eliminated. If a video analysis cannot show very VERY intentional actions toward targeting, it is jut 100% dependent on the bias of that referee. And do not try to tell me in such situations where they can get away with it, refs dont apply their biases.
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which UCLA board are you viewing? Ive always had trouble tracking don boards that arent just beholden to SB nation, 247 sports, and other such platforms. Coogfans (U-Houston), CycloneFanatics, and Utefans are 3 of the few Ive seen that arent beholden in such manner, and therefore free to be a lot more honest and blunt. I consider us insanely fortunate that Chris started this board as independent and always kept it that way. Praise be to the fine folks that stepped up and rebooted this after the demise of the original site.
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The refs and the rule are not designed to judge intent. The fact is, if you lead with the crown of your helmet, it’s targeting regardless of where you hit the opponent.
There are two reasons for the targeting rule: protect the person being hit; and protect the person making the hit. Leading with the crown of the helmet is more for the latter than the former.
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There was a play yesterday when Nate dropped but quickly recovered the ball and got litteraly pancaked by a 260+lb Lineman. I thought he had broken some ribs. Now football is a rough game, but that seemed like a much more manevalent, intentional and injurious than the helmet hit to the chest. I thought it was unnescessary roughness at least or targeting a defensless player. The play was over. Watch the clip. Dude looked like he was belly flopping into a pool.
I want Utah players to play clean, play hard but NO cheap shots, and NO gloating while helping the guy up.
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I agree with you about the history of this board & Chris wanting to stay indy.
RIP, Webmonkey
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As we ran out the clock yesterday there was clearly some bad blood boiling up, specifically between UCLA’s #24 and Utah linemen. On our first kneel down it started, and in the next two 24 just sat out of the fray then strolled in to jaw some more. There also seemed to be a near brawl after the game ended. Did anyone catch what precipitated that?
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I saw the guy jawing away.
Super menacing dude
Congrats on the win.
Just win baby.
RR
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