I don’t think the Florida perspective of losing a winnable game the other night is much different from my belief and that of many others that the Utes left a winnable game in Florida a year ago.
The game Thursday could have gone the other way. The Utes did nothing offensively in the second half. The Utes may not have scored in the second half but for the interception that set them up nicely. I don’t think the offense moved the ball inside the Florida 40 in the second half. Florida also left points on the field.
I disagree with those who claim this was some sort of amazing beat down of a great team. It was a good win.
The Utes will need to play offense for 60 minutes to come home from Waco with a W.
There’s another aspect of the game in the second half that doesn’t show up in the offensive / defensive stats: Bouwmeester’s punting.
We were up 17-3 in the third and driving north, with a nice south wind. We went conservative on offense / the Gators were stopping drives. (Lud probably didn’t want to put our QB2s in a bad position, and Florida got their bearings a little on defense.)
Enter #34, who put on the best punting performance since Wishnowsky. That was quietly a big key, allowed our D to keep up the pressure and force the Gators into long fields.
“We would have won if we had just performed better!”
That is not saying much and is true for virtually any game.
As for the Florida game- he has a point. I don’t remember ever being helped more by the opposition. Their OL penalties kept coming and coming. I also think that all of these calls were accurate. If Florida wants to win they are going to have to learn to be effective at the line of scrimmage without committing penalties.
A whooping 45 more people lol. Not that much of a difference. That game was actually less intense than the USC game last year. USC is a way better team than Florida is BTW. I think that the fact that Florida happens to be in the SEC made the game though. I mean, this wasn’t even close to Utah’s biggest home game ever (USC last year, Oregon in 2021, Washington in 2016, Cal in 2015 (College GameDay was there), Oregon in 2014, any of the other times against TCU or BYU (especially that 2008 season), etc. Utah’s game against Oregon in October this year is a way bigger game than that Florida game was.
Yeah, they just sold more standing room tickets. Whoopity-do. Home opener against 1st ever SEC team in the stadium for a grudge match … good start. Now a record against Weber when there’s hunting (i think?) - that’d be impressive haha
I happened to pass through the standing room only section a couple times during the game. It was almost all Florida fans. I admire their fanhood. They all seemed pretty well behaved, too.
So we probably owe the record attendance to the Florida fans who showed up. We should be flattered that those folks decided that the trip to SLC was worth it.
I am happy to hear some showed up, given the circumstances with the storm, and even happier to hear they were well behaved. I wish I could have come, but this time of year I never can get away, but yes, a trip to Utah is worth it.
Florida fans are pretty much in meltdown mode right now, but it isn’t because we lost to Utah. It was the way we lost as it seemed we were a very poorly coached and poorly prepared team. After the last three coaches, there is just so much suspicion and doubt.
Responding to the stat photo taken from a Gator site I believe, that is all well and good, but had we not made mistakes and perhaps scored a few more points, then Utah’s strategy changes, so while interesting, it is basically meaningless.
Again, congrats on the win, and honestly I do hope you run the table. Here is hoping you can get back to full strength soon as well. Rising is one hell of a player, and it will be great to see him out there on the field again.
I wonder how many travelled and how many were transplants to Utah or near enough (anything in left 2 time zones) that it was the closest they’ve ever seen Florida play
This is an extreme example, but it reminds me of the time Robert Irsay owned the Colts when they were still in Baltimore, and they were absolutely terrible.
He was hosting some friends up in the box, and called down to the coach and said “I need to provide some entertainment up here, so I want you to call a pass play on every down for the rest of the game”.
The coach obliged, and the QB checked out of a lot of plays, not wanting to die out there on the field.
Looking at the stats for this game is interesting. Florida fans say “we got 333 passing yards to their 165, we could have won this game.” I think our 105 rushing yards to their 13 is more important though. Only Mike Leach could win a game with that stat line.
I hope our D makes Baylor just as one-dimensional.
Our OL is not good right now, which is a shame with those two rbs we have. Utah is very good against the run though, but again you had some starters out on the DL…
As far as Mertz is concerned, he took what the defense gave him, which is what we ask of him. He did ok. Career yards for him, but misleading.
RR, there has to be a good way to help football fans understand the game plan changes based on the conditions, the score, time left, etc.
One real obvious example to illustrate the point is to suggest running a fake punt when you’re up 24-3. Everyone gets that. Just really, really bad strategy. (Or especially a fake punt when you’re inside your own 20. I can’t believe Kalani failed on another fake punt.)
LIke how ESPN has the % chance of winning. It’s too deep into analytics, and there are subtleties and differences of opinion about how much to alter approaches, but it would be cool to give two different percentages - one based on how the game has been called, the other based on the shortest path to victory.
Way back when Sitake was the DC at Utah, I asked him if something like Sabremetrics would come to college football. He said he didn’t think so, because in baseball there are mountains of data, which is a fair point.
But there has to be reasonably decent generic data in football based on field position, time left, point gap, etc.
A little explanatiion, as I am an inactive member of the LDS church, but the bishop of my ward used to play football for BYU…big mother too…anyway, he invited me to the fireside they had in Orlando, and I was way glad I did.
I know it is the team down south, but Sitake impressed me a lot.
He has a lot of skill, but I think in large part because they have so damn many illogical fanatics down there, I worry they’ll run him off in the next couple of years.
Superhuman patience is required for a head coaching job there, in either FB or BB. Steve Cleveland, who was also a good guy, took to going to the gym at 4:30 a.m. so he could get a workout in without multiple BYU fans approaching him with questions and lots of suggestions. He could not go out to dinner with his wife either.
