There’s some serious motivation problems with the O-line. I don’t think they’ll get called for holding this game. That’s not necessarily a good thing. Definitely will never get called for unnecessary roughness.
I would like to see our Oline get called for holding several times, every game. That means they care about protecting the QB. Coastal Carolina and BYU both had holding calls on their first drives that kept their QBs from taking a hit, fumbling, and/or getting injured. 10 yard loss and replay the down is nothing compared to loss of down, loss of yardage, loss of the ball, and loss of your QB for this season and possibly next season.
BamaFanNKY, could you please compare Alabama’s offensive line philosophy to ours?
What priority does the offensive line get in recruiting?
How often do you see freshmen starting?
How often do you see a player go from guard to tackle to center?
Does Alabama try to get the five best players starting regardless of position? Or do the centers stay centers, the guards stay guards, and the tackles stay tackles throughout their careers?
To me, the difference between a center and a tackle is as big as a RB to a WR. If a RB gets hurt, you don’t just throw a WR in at RB because he’s in the top six skill position players.
I’m wondering if the top programs do things differently.
Ever hear O-linemen say something like “it sure gets us amped up, it’s easy to block for 'XYZ”?
The offense is a symphony where the goal is to keep the opposing D on their heels. Everything starts up front - OL are the guys with the hard hats.
I think with Ty Jordan / Micah Bernard & a few new reasons to think we’ll see better QB play, along with a group of WRs that are making progress, with a NFL quality weapon in Kuithe… it may get easier for the O-line, who in turn will be motivated & find it easier to give a stronger effort.
Offense builds on the parts working well together. I’m optimistic we’ll be pretty good in '21.
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We had one of the worst pushes on run plays in the entire nation last year. Power Success rate was only 60%, ranked 89th. Stuff rate was 25% which was 120th out of 130 Olines. Stuff rate is how often your Oline gets dominated on a run play causing a tackle for a loss.
Ty Jordan still managed 7 yards per carry, somehow.
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man… Ty Jordan. I truly believe he would have been the best to ever play at Utah. So dynamic at such a young age. The things he could have done for this world. Such a tragedy.
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the more I watch football the more I realize that the teams that win the most have the best offensive lines. If you can’t pass block you will have no throw game. Run blocking is a different animal and a superstar player can overcome some of the O-line deficiencies. If we ever want to actually have a balanced offensive attack we need to up the O-line pass blocking!
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Quite right. Consider this, given the Ute’s offensive line play for like a long, long time, we actually don’t know how good the Utah QBs are or could have been. Poor offensive line play minimizes their output, reduces them to heroic plays against a thundering herd of defenses, renders them TO machines, and prone to injury.
No, I think this area has got to become a priority for Utah. The coaches can’t recruit great QBs and then fail to support them with a top flight OL.
I don’t really think this is true. I think our line did a great job with run blocking (our line typically does a great job with run blocking and a … less great job with pass blocking).
Why do you think the Oline did a great job with run blocking? Somebody watched the games play by play and compiled statistics on our Oline and the run blocking graded out at 89 out of 130, and 120 out of 130. That’s on a scale 1-130, where higher numbers are not good.
yeah… It’s obvious just watching our offensive line, then watching the line on the other team (against our usually superior defense), our offensive line is almost always worse, especially in the pass protection area.
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So what is the plan with the offensive line?
We ranked in the 100s, all the D-lines we are facing are returning all their players plus some new recruits. Our O-line didn’t pick up anyone who will break into the starting lineup.
So unless Harding magically makes the same players better, we will be even worse next season. And I haven’t seen that happen. In fact, people claimed last year our line would be improved because of returning starters and it got worse.
What is the plan? We just gonna let all the NFL talent at the other positions go to waste and win nothing again next year?
To be fair, they claimed that starters were returning, and then they didn’t return. That was the main issue IIRC. Either way, if the guys playing ahead of the guys who were supposed to start weren’t better, they shouldn’t have been starting. If the guys we had playing last year are truly better than the ones they replaced, we are in trouble.
I’ll believe that Harding can do his job adequately when I see a solid pass blocking group hold their own against two of the following teams, plus another pac12 team in between: Oregon, USC, Washington. If we get blown up at the line of scrimmage repeatedly by those teams again, Harding needs to go bye bye.
Yes, I know we don’t recruit the athletes that those teams recruit. Their defensive recruits are higher ranked than our offensive line recruits. I know that. Getting a better offensive line coach can go a long way toward remedying that situation. Many of our other position groups have closed much of the star rating gap between us and those teams. It’s time for Harding to step up or step out of the way (or get shoved out of the way, I don’t really care).
Did you see my post where I listed all the NFL players from Utah high schools? Utah is a breeding ground for NFL talent, especially in the trenches.
We should be doing much better than we are. We should not be a mediocre team losing bowl games or giving up 21 point leads.
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Huntley 2019 Highlights:
Play 1: Huntley delivers perfect ball to Simpkins on a play the Oline did its job. If you watch Charlie Brewer highlights at Baylor, every highlight has solid pass blocking, like this.
Play 2: Blown play, RT completely whiffs, Huntley evades, throws TD to Kuithe
Play 3: Blown play, LT completely whiffs, Huntley evades, throws TD to Nacua.
Play 4: Huntley fakes unblocked blitzer out of his jockstrap, runs for TD.
Play 5: Huntley quickly fires TD strike to Kuithe before untouched blitzer makes sack.
Play 6: Trick play, Covey pass to Huntley for TD
Play 7: Blown play, RT lets outside rusher blow right by him to double team inside rusher, RB can’t block two pass rushers, Huntley breaks tackle, throws 25 yd strike.
Play 8: Oline does its job, Huntley delivers perfect pass to Nacua.
Play 9: Blown play, LT gets ■■■ kicked, Huntley scrambles out of pocket delivers TD strike to Nacua.
Play 10: Oline does its job, Huntley TD pass to Thompson
Play 11: Oline does its job, Huntley TD pass to Nacua
Play 12: Blown play, Center whiffs, unblocked defender can’t get to Huntley before quick release TD to Dixon
Play 13: Huntley TD run
Play 14: Huntley rolls out to evade inside blitz, TD to Simpkins
Play 15: Oline does its job, TD pass to Nacua
Play 16: Oline does its job, nobody open, Huntley scrambles for TD.
Play 17: Oline does its job, TD pass to Nacua
Play 18: Blown play, mixup between Moss/Huntley, Huntley TD run
Play 19: Oline does its job, TD pass to Kuithe
Play 20: Quick lob to Nacua, TD.
I don’t have time to analyze entire video. Summary of first 20 highlights:
5 terrible plays by Oline turned into highlights by Huntley.
8 plays where Oline provided good pass protection.
4 plays where play design resulted in unblocked pass rusher, or there was mixup between QB/RB exchange
3 Designed rushes or trick plays.
These are the season HIGHLIGHTS. Nine of 20 highlights were either blown plays by Oline or mixups, or plays where Huntley evaded unblocked pass rushers.
Nacua is in a lot of these highlights.
Fire Whitt. Shutdown the program.
Say, do you run the fire whitt twitter account?
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I just want to see a functional offense to compliment an outstanding defense so a list of more than one conference championship can be engraved on Whittingham’s statue 🤷.
Don’t necessarily disagree with your point. That said, why would Utah kids stay in-state when they are being recruited by the likes of SC, Oregon, Stanford, and UCLA? Collectively speaking, Utah does not offer any advantage in academics or athletic traditions. Of course, those are not always priorities or key recruiting criteria. Just saying not easy recruiting star local kids.
Because UCLA is terrible at football, USC has a reputation of wasting talent, Salt Lake City is a better place to live than Eugene, and Stanford has much stricter academic requirements than the U of U.
I’m not convinced that Stanford or any other school holds their football players to the same general academic standards as their regular students. Maybe that’s the story they sale but I don’t buy it.
As for USC wasting talent? Sure us fans believe so but the average high school kid is effectively sold on the successes while being unaware of the failures. Their eyes are fixated on all the guys that made the NFL and all the Championships of the past.
Eugene vs SLC? I don’t know, never been to Eugene other than driving through. I think you over state SLC’s superiority, opinions vary. Does it really matter though? I’m sure these kids aren’t checking the chamber of commerce brochures obscured by all the NIKE propaganda.
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