This season is pretty much a series of exhibition games. We have good players, they haven’t gelled yet, and we couldn’t really have expected them to under the circumstances. I think the rest of this season is about preparing for next season. It’ll be kind of like having three bowl games–we will benefit from all the extra practice and the game experience, and come back next fall battle-scarred, confident, and knowing what we’re doing.
Fully agree. With only 4 games, this “season” really means nothing.
Get some reps, get some experience, and we’ll be better for it next year.
Intellectually I get this sentiment. But emotionally, it feels like a cop-out or a coping mechanism.
I had hoped with as much time as we had to prepare this fall, we would have shown better. But then again, practice and preparation looked a lot different this year than in years past, so who knows.
Well, last season was supposed to be the time the offensive line needed to gel. Here we are a year later and our offensive line still sucks. When does the time to gel expire? When do we all just admit that we need a coaching change at that position?
If there’s no significant improvement this season we might see a change before 2021 spring practice.
What makes you so sure of that? Whitt did not mention the offensive line at all in his press conference. Just once I’d love to see him put bad players and coaches in their place instead of the constant stream of lies and question dodging.
It was obvious that the QB situation was not good last night. Rough night with turnovers. Utah needed to be better at QB to win last night. Not many Utah teams open the season in November against their best opponent in the division.
“We had a bad game, but at least the band sounded like a million bucks.” - Paul “Bear Bryant (after a rather ugly loss)
Ok, the band didn’t show up either. At least they had the COVID health order keeping them at home.
Let’s just get through the rest of this dumpster fire, get the kids their reps, and move on to next year.
I’m not sure of it at all. Just speculating. Seems to me that if the o-line remains porous on pass plays and keeps allowing our RBs to be tackled 3-5 yards behind the LOS, there’ll be a change. That can’t go on forever.
And we really don’t know how many guys have missed but chunks of the last 3 weeks.
And, everyone I know who has had Covid, even months after ‘recover’ still feels tired.
If we had a big outbreak and guys are ‘recovered’ that doesn’t mean they’re back to normal.
This season is just weird.
QB play was atrocious but honestly not unexpected. Offense as a whole left a lot of room for improvement. Defense? Overall ok, they were definitely carrying the team (yet again) against big physical players. Overall seemed ok. Offense, ouch.
Also, any insiders have any knowledge on Rising? Whitt won’t say anything as per “protocol”, looked like a shoulder injury reaching for the ball and getting smashed by a USC DL.
First games are first games… unless you’re playing teams that haven’t done any tackling in practice.
The turnovers were the most disappointing and the most damaging. In any given game, if you cough the ball up that many times, you’re a fool to expect to win. We were equal in first downs, we got more rushing yardage and passing yardage was 264-216. Total yardage was 357-335. (It felt worse than that, right? Yeah, turnovers.)
O-line wasn’t blowing holes open in USC’s DL in their 3rd game. But there were times when we had the defense on skates. Just like when a team’s trying to milk the clock, if the defense knows (or has a good idea what you’re going to do), then they have the advantage. Our first game, just trying to get new QBs and RBs get some game snaps, USC knew they could come at us hard, and that was successful in conservative play calling. Jordan Wilmore isn’t that bad, our O-Line - with a developed threat to throw downfield - will start to look better.
When Bentley starting to crack open the defense, things looked much better. Not where we want to be, but better. Nice to see what DeVaughn Vele looks like. Ty Jordan looks like he’ll be a nice weapon.
We won’t see a more talented defense this year, so things should start to look quite a bit better.
On defense, we played a lot of zone that confused Slovis, a credit to preparing a lot of newbies on the backend. There were a couple of blown defensive play calls IMO - sending Phillips on a CB blitz, the Safety is nowhere near close enough to contest Slovis throwing to his hot receiver, he romps for 40+ yards. And then a piss poor call to play man near the goal line, Phillips is covering Vaughn, pretty easy pitch & catch.
Defensive POTG - easy: Nephi Sewell. It’s like having Sunia Tauteoli at the apex of his production, but one who’s better in coverage.
New players who look credible: Phillips (9 tackles!), Broughton, Ritchie, Sione Fotu, Van Filinger, Devin Kaufusi.
Offensive POTG - Kind of a toss up. Bentley found some success, Ty Jordan led in rushing, Samson made big plays (like he always has).
Offensive newcomers who look promising: Jordan, Micah Bernard (vertical acceleration!), Bentley & Rising (hopefully he heals quickly), Vele.
We were told the offense might have to carry the defense. Losing Huntley & Moss made that an uphill proposition in Game 1 against a team as talented as USC.
Summary: The symphony didn’t sound too well, first game after a roller coaster year & struggle with Covid. If you would have told me that with the turnovers, and with Slovis, & the array of veteran offensive weapons USC has on offense that they’d only score 33, I would be a bit surprised.
Conversely, I expected a bit more out of our offense, but credit USC for bringing the pressure early, forcing turnovers, and then we found some success later. Clearly our offense will get better.
USC has described coming to RES as a “house of horrors”. We had no fans & a whole bunch of newbies, we weren’t able to rise to the occasion.
The biggest improvement is between Games 1 & 2. Let’s see 1) if we even get a game next week, and 2) how much we address the areas that need it.
With only playing 4 games (not to mention everything else going on in the world), I have zero emotional investment in this “season”. I said that long before yesterday’s debacle. Take whatever development we can get from this and move on.
Maybe that’s a “cop-out”, I don’t know.
Same here.
I believe that is the way the great majority of Utah fans feel about this season. We’re happy it’s happening, we wish the team well, but it’s just not as important or interesting or fun as it would be in normal times.
Jake was not very good at USC. Get through the season and hope Peter Costelli lives up to the hype and can start right away next season.
Looks like he put up some yardage at USC. Obviously that doesn’t tell the whole tale. Watching him last night, he just doesn’t throw a good ball. I thought almost every pass was going to be picked off.
He’s not an NFL talent, but on some of those passes the timing was late, and USC had the routes smothered. But just taking those shots opened up the offense more than what was happening before - those plays set the stage for Bentley to chew up yardage on the keepers up the middle.
On the TD to Nacua, Enis had his man beat, too. Thompson’s long pass was nice.
I can sort of see how camp may have gone in the QB competition: Bentley’s experienced, he’s had 3 years of the SEC to have a sense of where to go with the ball, when to take off, etc.
Rising is clearly more accurate, though reports of him throwing into coverage more during camp are the difference between a talented QB who is learning the ropes, and a cagey veteran who isn’t going to be on Mel Kiper’s short list, but knows how to run an offense.
I suspect the COVID limitations had something to do with it.