I thought this article from Gordon Monson (who we all love to hate) was pretty much spot on. In a place or two he was too cute by half.
While GM touches on it, I do believe KW knows. But he has not had the needed skills to get it done. Looking at who is recruited going back to the 4* Cali QB who bailed early, and the parade of Offensive coaches, it’s clear to me that KW wants to pull the offense into a new paradigm. He is still working out the players, and as GM points out, competing with other programs for that talent.
KW just doesn’t want to sacrifice the defense and I don’t think he should.
Well, there’s only a finite amount of $ for each side of the ball … oh, wait, jk
Initially, I agree, but it’s also not completely independent either. Part of the defensive plan is to keep them fresh by keeping them off the field (ironic). So our offensive philosophy is game clock control, leading to a more run centered offense which isn’t always as easy to recruit to (esp. QB, WR). Side note: surprising that OL wouldn’t love to be in that system and we would get better recruits (ala old school Nebraska). We also focus on special teams (esp. punter), mostly for field position or to finish off long (time) drives with 3 pts.
Although Whitt loves a strong defense, he also knows they are going to perform better if the offense is out there for 8 minutes on a 17 play, 80 yard drive. Then the defense can go lights out bonkers and try to get a 3 and out. Or run the clock and punt deep and let the defense flip the field.
Kind of a paradox. Have a defense so good but try to keep them off the field. But the point is that offense is driving college football now. The other option is to outscore your opponent. But that comes at a cost of incompletions, taking risks (long throws) more often, and drives dying with little time off the clock and the defense tires late in the game. So different philosophies - seems like we are getting closer to having more explosive offenses that hopefully will score more points and then it will be ok if the defense gives up a little more.
There are maybe three or four programs every year that have a complete team, offensive fire power and defensive excellence. Lately they’ve been Alabama, OSU and Clemson. That’s it. The PAC doesn’t have a complete team very often. If GM thinks the only reason Utah isn’t a complete team is because Whit focuses on defense, he’s crazy. I agree with how Whit does it: excellent defense and find the Zack Moss and Ty Jordan to run the ball. It will win 75% of the games and that is fine.
Every time I see his name I get a pit in my gut. Not only did he have everything ahead of him, I feel like he had a legitimate shot to become the most decorated player to ever play at Utah. His talent was beyond special. Wasn’t there a story where Covey told his dad after the third practice of the season that Ty was the best football player he’d ever seen? Heartbreaking.
Good points. Pretty rare to be balanced AND great on both sides of the ball. Utah’s approach leads to a lot of wins, but it also seems like the games are closer or lower scoring which adds some nervousness.
On the opposite side, you have Mike Leach/air-raid type teams where it’s hard to recruit defense because they know they’ll be out there in a minute and a half when the offense scores or goes 3-and-out (and the offensive players get the glory for the 63-56 win).
In 2015 we started the season with the following players to play as defensive backs:
Corey Butler-Bird
Dominique Hatfield
Brian Allen
Boobie Hobbs
Justin Thomas
Reggie Porter
Ahmad Christian
Marcus Williams
Tevin Carter
Andre Godfrey
Jason Thompson
Casey Hughes
Jordan Fogal
Austin Lee
Philip Afia
Almost every one of those 15 players ended up being drafted, had NFL scouts look at them or transferred to another P5 team.
Our starting receivers that year:
True Freshman 160 lb Tyrone Smith
True Freshman 150 lb Britain Covey
Pass Interference specialist Kenneth Scott
Backups were Kyle Fulks and Bubba Poole who had a combined 0 catches between them coming into the season. We went into the season knowing our only real proven P5 receiver Tim Patrick was redshirting due to injury and we still didn’t move any of the talent we had wasting away on the bench on defense to offense until the end of the season. True story.
Pretty crazy, that’s 5 total WR’s that have transferred out of UW. Meanwhile they have Huard, the 5-star QB from Seattle coming in this fall and expected by many to start.
He’s definitely fast…thought he had a lot of good runs last year. Not sure about his shiftiness or lateral movement or his ability to read blocks/holes. Definitely a tough runner.
He had a couple of runs against Colo and WSU where I thought he displayed some pretty good shiftiness, not Ty Jordan, but more than Wilmore, Brumfield or Green.
It’s completely up to the O-line. Bernard has the speed and ability. Our Oline was one of the worst P5 run blocking lines in the nation last season, measured by power rate and stuff rate. Nobody noticed because Ty Jordan was absolutely incredible.