Defensive concerns

I think Utah has some playmakers on defense to make up for it. Which means in film they are seeing what offenses tend to do and then they recognize what is happening live. Winning breeds confidence and Utah made enough plays to destroy Oregon st’a offense.

I think Caleb Williams is the most dangerous and intelligent qb Utah has left. Oregon doesn’t worry me other than it being on the road. Nix tends to make the same mistakes and screw up big. 

I do agree that Utah’s offense needs to score 30 or 40 to take pressure off the defense. I think I expect 35 a game. With Kuithe out and the problems at RB I genuinely have concerns. When teams are forced to throw to keep pace it plays into strengths Utah has. 

I like Utah in every game rest of the way. Oregon and USC defenses are poop. 

Great take though. Thumbs up. 

What part of 29 points (that Florida scored) indicates to you that we couldn’t stop them?

our defense has not been great. We have a tendency to be overrun plays, but of all the problems to have on defense that might be the easiest to fix. If we can keep the same energy level but kick the discipline up a notch we’ll be fine.

I refuse to believe that DTR is anything but an average pac12 qb.

Expect UCLA to go at Fillinger with RPO.

Utah has won 11/12 in conference the last two years.

doomsday all you want, a damn win, is a damn win. Is Utah a perfect team? No, no they are not. I would argue though that they haven’t played a complete game yet on either side of the ball, but are close to the top of the league on O and D.

it’s sucks having a team this damn good, so that we need to find little telling signs of cracks in the team. 

are that a Playoff team, I personally don’t think so. They are the class of this conference though, and that’s not worth bitching about.

These are interesting points on the defense being possibly undersized, and the consequences of that.  If you are right, then its a good sign that Scalley subbed more size in the second half vs OSU.  It shows they have enough confidence in the 2s to at least try a different approach.  Remains to be seen if it will work.

I am not nearly as concerned about the secondary.  One of the reasons Boughton looks bad is because he is simply not Phillips and everyone is throwing to his side of the field.  For obvious reasons.  The problem is that anyone less than Phillips will inevitably get beat several times when they face that many attempts.  Is there a legit problem with Boughton?  Maybe.  We will soon find out.

One of the reasons OSU put up 400 yards is that they were on the field a lot.  We scored fast off multiple turnovers.  I wouldnt worry too much about the OSU yardage stats.  They had a decent running game, but it was hardly disastrous.  Also, red zone defense is still defense.  There have been many excellent Utah defenses that would give up yardage only to slam the door shut in the red zone.

Outside of Florida, the defense looks good.  Multiple analytics approaches agree on this.  We had run gap discipline problems vs Florida but the pass defense was actually quite decent all things considered.  We are extrapolating bad defense based on one truly bad game of run defense in our very first game on the road against an SEC opponent.

Ute defense historically has been tough in the red zone. Keep in mind, across all positions, Utah is still a very young team. I do agree thre is run stop weakness. IMO, LBs are collection of inexperience, lack of depth, and some talent deficiency. What happened to Calvert and Medlock?

I share concerns about the D as well. And the o line.

But this was surprising. I’m not totally sure how this metric is calculated.

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You bring up great points and I agree with a lot of what you’re meaning to say minus the doom and gloom aspect. There were multiple times in this last game that had OSU had an elite QB in, we would have given up some very big pass plays. I can see a cause for concern there. 

However, I feel like Caleb Williams is the only QB we will face that has the talent to be an elite QB. But he’s only a sophomore and imo hasn’t hit his peak yet. USC is also very weak in the trenches. Whit and Scalley know he’s tough to bring down and I think we learn from the Florida game and keep him contained.

DTR is in his 5th(?) year in Chip Kelly’s system. He just simply isn’t an elite QB that’ll burn us with his arm. He’s athletic as hell but is a mediocre QB at best. Whitt and Scalley seem to know how to prepare for Chip Kelly as well. He hasn’t beaten while at UCLA.

Nix is also nothing special. He can have great games don’t get me wrong but seems to fold in big moments. 

Lastly our defense is very young still. They seem to learn and grow each week. Rising is a great leader and most of these guys have played in a lot of big moments. The doom and gloom needs to stop lmao. We haven’t put together a complete game yet this season which doesn’t concern me but excites me. The Oregon games last year are the perfect example of how good we can be. Most of those guys are back this year. I’m very excited for this 3 games stretch. We are going to find out how good we can be. 

RBMW, wow a lotto digest, I think I’ll go throw up.