Thursday, September 18. 2014Red, Blue And Pigskin
Have you ever been busy in your day to day grind, and forget how close to a holiday you were? When you look at the calendar and realize that next Monday is a holiday you had forgotten about, there's this brief feeling of elation and happiness. I have to thing that's how all the football widows in the state felt this past weekend when they realized that neither Utah or Byu were playing on Saturday. It was as if they had found a forgotten holiday.
Utah State fans wish they could go on holiday after seeing Chuckie Keeton go down with another knee injury. Breaking The Curse
Byu Head Coach Bronco Mendenhall is now in his 10th season in charge of the Cougars. Going into last Thursday's game he was 1-8 on third games of the year, with the only previous victory coming in the 2008 shellacking of the UCLA Bruins. Despite jumping out to a 23-0 lead, the Cougars tried as hard as they possibly could, to continue Bronco's bad luck with 3. Stupid sloppy penalties, turnovers, and bad technique turned a 23-0 2nd quarter blowout into a 23-15 halftime slugfest. This was the first real test of the Cougar secondary and while they got a passing grade, it sure wasn't with flying colors. Houston QB O'Korn was able to rack up 307 yards and 3 TD's. Of course Byu will take that greatly over their last matchup against this team. Of more concern for Byu is that they seem to lesser opponents hang around. Against both UConn, and Houston the game should have been a blowout, except for the fact that Byu couldn't get out of their own way. Last Thursday night in addition to the 3 turnovers, Byu also had 11 penalties for 98 yards, many of them being mental mistakes. On the season, Byu is averaging over 10 penalties and over 100 penalty yards per game, which is very un-Byu like in the Bronco era. Vengeance On Their Mind Last year to open their season, Byu went to Virginia and suffered the most embarassing loss by any team in this state since a 2007 Desert Meltdown. While many Byu fans want to blame the weird weather delay during the game, the truth is, Byu let a Cavalier team that would only win 1 more game (against a Division 1-AA team) the rest of the season, physically manhandle them. Byu was dominated on both sides of the ball, and Mendenhall was outcoached from the beginning when he didn't have his team prepared, through the weather delay when Virginia came out with more fire, to the end where boneheaded play calling gave the winning TD to the Cavaliers. A year later and many things have changed. First, this game is in Provo and not in Virginia, and after a week when the local media has been hounding Byu fans for not showing up against Houston, I would expect an extremely packed house this week. Secondly Mike London has his team playing real well. The Cavaliers have already matched last season's total wins, and their lone loss was a quality loss by taking UCLA the distances before falling 28-20. The Cavs come into the game fresh off their upset of 21st ranked Louisville last week. Of course, as the other team from the state of Virginia learned last week, coming fresh off a major victory could lead to a bit of a letdown. For Byu, they brink have replaced Louisville as the 21st ranked team in the nation, and if they weren't already taking Louisville seriously before last week, you can bet they are now. Gameplan wise this Virginia team should look very familiar to Byu fans, as it's a pretty good replica of the 2010-2013 teams. It's a team that leans heavily on their defense, and only asks their offense not to hurt them too badly. One of the strengths to this Virginia team is their defensive line. Their defensive line is one of the more underrated, and one of the better lines, in the entire nation. After being pushed around and badly abused last year, it'll be really interesting to see how the Byu offensive line responds. After all the key to beating Byu is putting pressure on Taysom, and making him a passer. If Virginia can't pressure Taysom, they may be in for a tough go of it, because they still just don't have the offensive firepower to get into a shootout. Most Important Week While Byu has their hands full with an important revenge game this weekend, Utah plays, what I think, is probably their most important game of the year. Now I know it's a bit crazy to consider a non conference game in the 3rd week the most important, but for what Utah's goals are this season, this week may be the difference between accomplishing them, and not. While Utah absolutely would love to run the Pac-12 table, win the Conference Championship Game, and then defeat two more teams in the playoffs to become National Champion, I think we can say that's probably not going to happen. Instead, despite two blowouts in the first week against non-existent competition, the Utes goals for the season remain now, what they were to start the season: 6-6, and a bowl game. A win against Michigan puts the Utes halfway to their goal. And winning 3 games in conference is a lot more achievable than 4. We can break down the Utes conference games to Should Lose, Toss Up, and Should Win category. Right now their are two games in the Should Win category. At Colorado, and home for Washington State. In the Should Lose category we have home for Oregon, on the Farm for Stanford's Revenge game, the Overrated, and low on depth Usc Trojans. and At Ucla. That leaves Toss up games of home versus Arizona, away for Arizona State, away for Oregon State. Assuming the Utes win the two should win games, a win this week against Michigan means they only need to win 1 of the 3 toss up games to reach their goal. If they lose this week, the road gets a lot harder. Of course, the Utes were 3-0 in non conference play last year, and still didn't make a bowl. Return To The Big House The first step though remains, Beat Michigan. Michigan is a big interior team, and won't be able to be pushed around by the Utah lines the way the first two opponents were. They will be the first true test of this year's defensive line. Offensively, the Wolverines live and die on the decision making of Devin Gardner. Gardner is the type of qb, who when he's comfortable and in a groove, can really get the offense clicking. Fortunately for Utah, Gardner also has a history of being rattled, and when he's rattled his decision making becomes very poor. Gardner's job will be even tougher without his primary target 6'5" Jr Wideoout Devin Funchess, who is expected to miss the game due to injury. The Utes probably won't be able to matchup up size for size, pound for pound against Michigan either offensively or defensively, but where the Utes will have a distinct advantage is in the speed department, especially on the edges. Look for Utah to take advantage of their speed, and try to get WR's Kenneth Scott and Dres Andersen in one on one situations. Think back to the offensive gameplan that the Utes used against Stanford last year. Lots of short quick passes, meant to stretch the defense side to side, opening up the middle of the field. This could be a very big game for Bubba Poole. While I think DeVontae Booker should be the Utes starting rb, and shouldn't get less than 20 carries a game, this week might just be set up to take advantage of Poole's ability, especially coming out of the back field. The major key will be weather the great decision making Travis Wilson has shown during the first two games can continue against a team with a pulse. A couple Michigan fans summed it up nicely. Fan 1: Utah hasn't beaten anyone with a pulse. Fan 2: I hope we get a pulse. There seems to be an unreasonable amount of hope and optimism coming from Utes fans this week, but rest assured, despite their recent struggles beating Michigan at the Big House won't be an easy task. After all they are 11-2 under Brady Hoke at home, on undefeated against non-conference foes. That said, I have to like the attitude coming from the players, as it's clear they aren't intimidated by the Big House itself. It doesn't seem to have the same awe around it, as it did for our 2002, and 2008 teams. Of course yearly trips to the Rose Bowl, or the LA Coliseum can have that affect, but getting over the awe of the Big House before they every get there, will really help the Utes focus not on the field, but on the opponent. One Major Downside To The Playoffs I love the fact that college football is going to a playoff this year, but there has been one unforeseen consequence. Every media member, and their dogs, have found it necessary to inundate us with their weekly playoff predictions polls. Dealing with the AP and the USA Today polls this early in the season is bad enough, but trying to choose the 4 best out of 120+ teams, when most teams have played only 2 or 3 games (in the case of Cincinatti 1 game), and when a good chunk of those games are against teams like Sam Houston State, Idaho State, UConn, Fresno State, William & Mary, Troy, SMU, FAU, South Dakota State, etc. is beyond ridiculous. Can we at least wait till we have a reasonable sample size of both in conference, and out of conference games. We don't need every media member doing a Playoff 4 this early. Speaking Of Stupid Polls And despite the fact I just spent the last section railing against the idiocy of ranking teams this early in the season, I'm introducing a new feature. Quarter Polls. But unlike the media where I'm going to try and rank the top 4 of 120+, I'm only dealing with three teams: Utah, Byu, and Utah State. When 2 of those 3 teams have reached a quarter mark of the season (3, 6, 9, and 12 games) I'm going to rank who's the best. Consider it a way to early Beehive Boot primer. After the first quarter these are the rankings. 3: - Utah State (2-1). Coming into the season there were a lot of question marks surrounding this team. A home win against Wake Forest helped take the sting away from their season opener on Rocky Top, but losing Chuckie hurts this team. 2: - Utah (2-0). While they may not have the most impressive win of the year, the Utes have been the most impressive statistically, as well as the most consistent team. Travis Wilson looks to be making much better decisions with the football than a year ago. Now the Utes have to go out and do it against actual competition. 1: - Byu (3-0). They have the most impressive win by an in state team this year by going to Austin and pounding Texas. Sloppiness and inconsistency could be a concern, but not many on their schedule will be able to corral Taysom in the run game. Scheduling Notes The game time for the Utes home game against Washington State on September 27th has been announced. It will be a 6 p.m. MST kickoff and will be televised on the Pac-12 networks. Hopefully this means we can avoid the sun burnt heads that come from forgetting sun screen. This week the Utes and Cougars play at the same time, which means get those multi tv setups going. Of course, if you are a Byu fan and are in state, you really should be at LaVell Edwards Stadium so that there are more than 57000 like against Houston. But you do want to set your DVR's. Both games will be broadcast by the ABC family of networks. Byu will kickoff at 1:30 and be available on ESPN. The Utes will be on ABC (Channel 4) also at 1:30. Both games will also be available on Watch ESPN. Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry
|
Handy LinksItems of InterestCategoriesBlog AdministrationSyndicate This BlogPowered byTheme dropdownBookmark |