The area we can make the biggest improvement this season?

By Whitts own admission they didn’t adjust the schemes with a much bigger turnover of players. The offense and defense were complicated and took time to learn. Having 4-5 years to groom players it worked. Player development was the coaches calling card.

The NIL Portal era has changed that philosophy. Freshman and transfers need to be ready immediately to play. Defense hasn’t seemed to be as affected as the offense. When a coach makes a comment that a third year QB (rose) hadn’t grasp the offense and you start a true freshman your asking for trouble. Bringing in an OC that can simplify the offense will make it easier. RB and WR development has also been an issue. All those issues have been addressed. Whitt needs to let Beck be in charge.

For over two years now we haven’t been able to effectively pass the ball, run the ball, or kick the ball (It’s been longer for kicking). Unfortunately for us, those are the core functions related to scoring points. It’s not really an exaggeration to say that our glaringly obvious opportunity for improvement is being able to field anything resembling an offense at all. We’re not even talking positioning groups or depth or anything here, which would normally be the answer. We flat out need to field an offense. Any part of one.

Honorable mention: Special teams. We consistently lose the possession to possession field position battle these days when it used to be practically how we won in the mid 2010s. We can’t punt well, and we return them even worse. We returned the ball for 235 yards in 2023 and 2024 combined. Almost the exact total we had in 2022 alone. And adding those three seasons together comes within 20 yards of 2021 alone. Our dropoff here fairly well mirrors our dropoff in offense, only differing in that it started earlier.

The run game is paramount for us to succeed, especially in Beck’s offense. All we had last year was a run game, but even then, we struggled at doing that. I pointed out how thin we are at RB, so hopefully Dampier can take some carries off of Parker, to keep him healthy. I think we have the WR’s to play WR by committee, we don’t necessarily need a Dorian Singer to haul in all the catches. We just need to establish a solid running game.

I slightly disagree. In the past, Utah has had decent seasons with mediocre QB play when they had a strong running game. Last year the running game was fragile. A K-Whitt defense with a top tier running game, I like our chances.