Thursday, October 2. 2014Red, Blue And Pigskin
It was all set up perfectly. The Utes had just passed a major test the week previously by winning a road game. They're up 21-0 just about 8 minutes into the game. Here they had their chance to have their first ever Pac-12 winning record, and really get a stranglehold on a bowl bid.
Sadly with the opportunity in their hands, the Utes dropped the ball. A Collective Failure
So how does a team manage to blow a first quarter 21-0 lead? It's not very difficult when an almost every player on a unit of the team manages to have their worst games in a few years all at the same time. Offensively there was only one bright spot for the entire game. That was Devontae Booker who rushed for 178 yards on 24 carries. Even if you remove his 76 yard touchdown run, Booker still had a good night. Enough so that he has taken over the starting job. But that was it. To say the rest of the offense was off would be an understatement. The previous week, the Utes manage to keep the Michigan offense from entering the red zone. This time it was Utah's turn to get that treatment. They couldn't find a rhythm all night, and whenever it seemed like they were about to find one, they would promptly kill the drive with stupid penalties, or Kaelin Clay (who had a good game on special teams, getting his 3rd Punt, and 4th overall return touchdown) would fumble the ball. Passing wise, Travis Wilson had a terrible night. He never seemed comfortable the entire game. Part of that was the offensive line, while they did a fine job opening up running holes for Booker, could not protect Wilson, and left him under pressure and under fire by an aggressive Washington State defensive line. As such Wilson never got into a groove and was erratic throughout the night. Wilson's decision making was suspect most of the night, especially in the run game. He never seemed to be able to get a read on the Wazzu defensive line, and therefore misplayed the zone/read for most of the game, letting Booker take it even when the line was crashing down on the running back, leaving a large hole for Travis had he kept the ball. Of course, even when he took the ball, he would misread the hole, and get stopped for a loss. When passing Wilson was only on target about half of his throws (as evidenced by his 18/38 stat line). There were multiple times where Wilson missed an opportunity to move the ball, or gain a first down, with an errant throw that would be way off target of his receiver. Of course, since this was a unit based crap fest, even when he did manage to get the ball right on target, the ball would be dropped. While some may want to blame the weather, Washington State had to deal with it as well and didn't suffer from drops. Overall it was just a dismal, horrific performance on the offensive side of the ball, but all that being said, late in the game, down by 1, Dres Anderson sped past his defender and was wide open. Travis spotted him and threw a beautiful pass. Dres catches it, he sprints untouched into the end zone, and the Utes are 4-0. But as is far too common for Dres during his career, he didn't catch it. Despite the terrible performance Travis Wilson threw the winning touchdown pass, Dres just dropped it. Not Just The Players The players weren't the only ones to have a bad night, as the coaching staff had a dismal night. Unlike most fans, who are blaming Whittingham for being too conservative, I'm going to go the opposite way and say the offensive staff didn't go conservative enough. I mentioned last week that the Utes absolutely did not want to get into a shootout with Washington State. I said this, not because they didn't have the athletes to get into a shootout, but because when you are playing a team that passes it as much as Wazzu does, you need to shorten the game. You don't want to keep giving them opportunities, because it is extremely difficult to pass protect that much. Especially if you play a man based defense like the Utes do. Eventually plays will be made by the offense. Of course, how do the Utes come out of the gate? Pass, pass, pass. They start with 6 passes on their opening possession. While it is understandable not to want to totally change your gameplan at the start of the game, once you have a 21 point lead, and especially when your running game is working so effectively, it's usually a good idea to adjust in game. Instead, as WSU started to chip away at the lead, the Utes would open up every drive the same way. Through the air. Maybe it wouldn't have been such an issue if Travis and the offense were having a good day, but they weren't. Now while I think offensively the Utes needed to be more conservative, defensively it should have been the opposite. Last week I posed the thought that while many would be tempted to say the play of the defensive backs would be the most important defensive matchup, in my opinion it was going to be the defensive line and their ability to get pressure on Halliday and make him uncomfortable. Sure enough to start the game, the Utes used a variety of stunts, and blitzes to bring pressure on Halliday. It clearly affected him, and was a big reason why Washington State simply could not move the ball in the beginning of the game. However, coming out of halftime, the Ute defensive staff decided to play it safe, and started to only bring pressure with 3 men, and drop everyone else into coverage. Now without the pressure in his face, Halliday had more time to make decisions, and eventually started picking the Utes apart. While the secondary coverage was actually pretty decent, considering the task, with no one to pressure Halliday, they eventually started to tire, holes began to open, and points started to be scored. At no point did the Utes ever go back to pressuring Halliday. Moving On, Or Here We Go Again Thanks to an offense that couldn't get out of their own way, and a coaching staff who went conservative defensively and aggressive offensively when the exact opposites were needed, the Utes managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They failed to secure their first ever winning record in Pac-12 conference play, and with UCLA up next are staring down the barrel of another conference opening losing streak. Oh yea to make things worse, Ucla finally found their rhythm against Arizona State last week. Ucla came into the season riding a wave of hype, with many picking them to be the Pac-12 playoff representative. Through the first three games of the season, despite being undefeated, had failed to live up to that hype as they narrowly escaped Virginia, Texas, and Memphis with victories. That all changed last Thursday as they finally woke up and put a curb stomping on the Sun Devils from Arizona State. Offensively the matchup the Utes need to worry about Brett Hundley. The Heisman Trophy candidate QB of the Bruins is the first of several dual threat QB's the Utes will face in the coming weeks. The Ute Linebackers especially will need to remain sound defensively. While Hundley has been sacked an amazing 11 times this season (especially when you consider he didn't play most of the Texas game, he still has an incredible ability to beat teams with his legs. In fact, it's been exactly that ability that has killed the Utes the last two games. The Utes have managed to contain the passing attack of the Bruins, and should likely do so again, although Hundley does lead the country with 20 TD passes, but they absolutely cannot let Hundley kill them when the play breaks down. Offensively we're going to learn a lot about the mental makeup of QB Travis Wilson. Not only is he, and the entire offense, coming in after an atrocious performance last week, but it was against Ucla that Wilson had his career worst performance last year, throwing 6 interceptions. It'll be interesting to see how Wilson reacts. So far through the season Wilson seems to be making smarter decisions with the ball. Even last week when his performance was so bad, his decisions weren't (at least passing the ball.) Not turning the ball over will be important, because the Utes do not want to give Ucla extra opportunities and short fields. That's how Ucla turned a 2nd quarter slug fest, into a route last week in Tempe. Not only do they not want to give Ucla short fields, but if they can keep the ball, the Ucla defense is vulnerable. They rank in the 100's in pass protection, and they are middle of the pack nationally against the run, so the Utes will have opportunities to make plays, assuming they can get over the Washington State loss, and not allow the Cougars to beat them twice. Let's Continue The Conversation Earlier in the week I tweeted my annoyance with the Utah fan base, and how I would like to push them all off the ledge they seem to be on after the loss. Which led to a comment from Rhett, that even though it was only 1 loss, wasn't it the pivotal game of the season?. While I gave my answer on twitter, I wanted to expand upon it a bit. First off, I'll admit to start the year I had Utah losing @ Michigan, and also had Washington State as one of the "should" win games of the year. Entering the season I also pegged the Oregon State game as the "pivotal" game of the season, simply because it was the first toss up conference game of the year for the Utes. It was also the most winnable game of the Ucla, Osu, Usc, Asu, Oregon, Stanford stretch. A loss at Oregon State meant that despite there being a couple other winnable games in that stretch, the greater odds were that the Utes could be looking at a 6 game losing streak Granted had the Utes lost at Michigan, like I predicted earlier, would have probably made the Washington State game more pivotal, but since the Utes won at Michigan, it gave the Utes a little room for error (which they promptly used up.) So now despite having lost one of the two "should" win games on the conference slate, in my opinion the Oregon State games remains the pivotal turning point of the season for Utah. A loss there and 6-6 becomes extremely, extremely difficult. But a win, could turn the point for the season, and give them just enough to snag one of the other toss up games. The truth of the matter is that most Utah fans, especially the ones who had them winning 6 games this year, expected them to be 3-1 at this point of the season. And yes, there are some things to be concerned about, simply because it's the same exact problems from previous seasons, especially the inability to finish tight games, but the Utes are exactly where everyone expected them to be 4 games into the season. < br /> View From The Red Zone I gotta give it to the crowd on Saturday because they were really amped up. It was the most electric crowd since last year's Stanford game. While I think some of that can be attributed to it being the first home game of the season against a team with a pulse, I gotta give credit to Curtis who pointed out that one of the nice things about weather like last Saturday, is that it causes the people who show up, to be people who actually want to be there. On a negative note, there was something visible for our seats, that turned out to be a harbinger of the undisciplined play we would see the rest of the night. On the second and third Andy Phillips kickoffs of the night, the ball was downed for a touch back. Usually when that's the case, the kickoff return team runs towards the returner, before veering off at the end. However on the 2nd kickoff, right in front of the official, Brian Allen, and Boobie Hobbs both went up to the returner and gave him a slight bump. On the 3rd kickoff, Boobie Hobbs did it again. On both occasions a personal foul for unsportsmanlike conduct not only would be justified, but probably should have been thrown. While the bumps may not have been much, it's the sheer stupidity, and lack of discipline that is the bigger concern, especially on a night where discipline was lacking. Of course that might also explain why Brian Allen is only on kickoff teams despite this being his 3rd year in the program, and why despite the hype the coaches gave Boobie Hobbs during camp, he hasn't really seen much playing time. One Game For The Boot For the first time since the Beehive Boot was created in 1971, it will be decided in a single winner take all game as the Cougars and Aggies will play in the only matchup of in state teams this coming Friday in Provo. While in state rivalry games usually have more excitement around them, especially the last few years when the Aggies have shown to be semi-competent, it's really hard to get excited for this years matchup. On the Aggie side of things, they really are hurting. Defensively they lost their best player early in the season when Tyler Fackerell went down for the year. Offensively there's rumors coming out of Logan that Chuckie Keeton may be done for the eyar, and will seek a medical redshirt. Even if he is back, the truth is he just hadn't seemed right so far this year. Outside of Keeton, this just really isn't a good Aggie team. Their offensive line is troublesome, they have no weapons at the skill players, and have been unable to establish any semblance of a running game this year. For the Cougars, the truth of the matter is we may never find out exactly how good this team really is, but we've seen enough to know that they are good. We've also seen enough to know that they are good enough to manhandle this year's Aggie team. This game is going to be a massive blowout. It's going to be a return to the old days of the Aggies being out of the game before they step off the bunch. And that's even with Chuckie Keeton playing. If Keeton's not there, goodnight Irene. This will be a good chance for the Cougars to get some much needed style points after the sloppier than desired victories of the past few weeks. Especially since the Aggies return to normal hasn't really been caught on to yet by national media. If Chuckie does play, the perception will be even better for the Cougars. Broadcast Info As the Utes jumped out to an early 21-0 lead, everyone's minds probably started thinking about a primetime matchup against Ucla on broadcast tv. Instead the Utes dropped the ball, and in response Fox dropped the Utes, opting instead for the Usc/Arizona State matchup. Fortunately for the Utes this drop wasn't as damaging as the ones Saturday night, as the Utes will end up on Espn kicking off at 8:30 p.m MST. Byu meanwhile continues their annual Conference Weekend tradition of playing Utah State on Friday (The first of three weeknight games over the next 4 weeks) kicking off at 8:15 p.m. MST, also on ESPN. RB&P Scheduling Info Next week I will be on vacation, so I'm not sure when RB&P will be out next week. It may also be cliff noted as well depending on how much I can do. Trackbacks
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