My only concern

Football
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The last two weeks have been as dominating as I’ve seen Utah play in a long, long time. It’s been a blast to watch, and it seems that we’re peaking at the right time.

My only concern is that both of these performances came against teams who made last-minute decisions to bench their starting QBs and play guys with little to no experience in their stead. Our defense took advantage of that and dominated. We also played against two teams that have been decimated by injury.

None of that is Utah’s fault and we can only play the teams in front of us, but it does make me wonder if/how that level of effort will transfer over to a team with an actual pulse. My hope is that it just keeps trending up (and I don’t think AZ or CU are good enough to challenge Utah much regardless), but I have this nagging feeling that we’ve mostly just been dominating other team’s backups.

I’d love to be proven wrong over the next three weeks.

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You can make that argument. It is a rational one.

The momentum change happened at half against a QB who was (sincerely!) being touted as a preseason Heisman hopeful who was (again, sincerely) being called a “generational talent.”

Our team’s D really cut their teeth on Kedon Slovis, and pummeled him.

Thus far our troubles have been rooted in not dominating the LoS. That’s where our growth as a team will be evaluated.
IMHO.

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As upset as I was at the time about Daniels’ last minute change, that’s how pleased I am now that he did.

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Neither player was benched last minute, both QB’s were hurt, both ucla and Stanford knew those players weren’t playing all week.

Stanford chose to go the two QB route, but West was their starter at the beginning of the season. It’s not like they haven’t worked with him.

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I’m not worried about Arizona. Their starting qb isn’t much better than the Stanford backups.

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Football is a game of heart. It’s why the FCS schools in Game 1 often make us look lackluster. They want to win… badly.

The league games where the opponent really played with heart were Oregon State, ASU and part of the UCLA game. (USC played hard… until they didn’t.)

Do I think we coulda / shoulda won in Corvallis? It doesn’t matter, but we certainly had the talent to overcome a highly motivated opponent - we just couldn’t overcome our mistakes.

Compared to where we were playing in Games 2 & 3, this team has made great strides where we were getting hammered - up front.

There’s no shortage of heart from this year’s Utes, starting with the 4th quarter of Game 3. When the chips are down, how will Rising and Lloyd respond, bringing along their teammates? We know the answer, though we don’t yet know the outcome.

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Totally agree. Cuts both ways. As you know in spades, Utah had issues at QB. One who was touted as all everything quit. Utah’s starting QB started the season 2nd string. Utah has injury issues on the offensive line. Still. Utah has issues at WR with dings. In the defensive secondary it’s the same. Other kids have quit, entered the transfer portal. Plus Utah has had incredible adversity with the terrible loss of TJ and AL.

Finally, while the team has essential senior leadership the D in particular is packed with freshman, starting no less.

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That kind of speaks to my post of consistency. I kind of wondered if a youthful team was part, not all of the reason. Will some time solidify the teams performance?

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Not really sure what you’re talking about, tbh.

The OSU game was obviously a clunker, but Utah has pretty well dominated all the other league games and seem to be steadily improving.

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I’m also glad AZ won today. I’m sure they were giving extra effort so they didn’t have the goose egg for the season. Now they really have little to play for other than pride.

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