How are ya feelin'? Not a lot of rah rah going on now

I’ve said that if there’s a time for Utah to beat USC on the road, it’s now! 

Cautious Optimism for me.  I know that USC is beatable, and I know that we have everything in our arsenal to beat them.  The staff, the players, the system, film on Darnold, everything is there for the taking.  The question is can we step up and take it from them?  I think we can, I hope we can, but we have to wait and see.

I think the Stanford loss just hurt, a lot.  We really had the game in our hands, and for whatever reason, Troy Williams struggled.  A lot of people question why Troy Taylor didn’t stick with the run, but I think it’s likely because our receivers were getting open and he wanted to punish that.

Just bought my tickets to the Huskies game 🙂

Losing Huntley destroyed the hype bubble. After Williams came in against Arizona everything slowed to a snail’s pace and became very predictable.

My fear is that USC seemingly has the ability to turn it on and off when they want to. They got caught on a Friday night up in Pullman, but when they are at home and know they have to bring it (i.e. vs Stanford), they still can be very dominant. My guess is that the Wazzu loss woke them up a little bit, and they will be motivated to come out and make a statement against maybe their top competitor in the south. They didn’t look great last week vs Oregon state, but again, I think they probably were still a little hungover from the wazzu loss and not that motivated to play a terrible Oregon State team. Hope I’m wrong, but I could see them coming out and going up 14/17-0 at the beginning of the 1st quarter. 

I did see Huntley in pads at practice today on the U’s periscope, so maybe he’ll be back. 

Man, I’ve been busy. Trying to spend more time with the kids. 

Im excited for this weekend. What an amazing game. We used to get these types of games once a year. 

I don’t think Utah wins. I do think Utah can win. I think we have a better shot than most. 

I’m excited to see Troy come out and battle. 

Im excited to see Darnold get eaten alive by our DL. Those guys are special. 

Tauteoli has been amazing. Guarantee you scouts will be watching him after last week. 

I expect Carrington and Troy to come out on fire. 

Should be a lot of fun. 

There’d be a little more optimism if we had beat Stanford, but even then most of us wouldn’t be expecting to beat USC on the road. There’d also be more rah rah if we were playing ASU this week instead.

I still think we can finish in the top 25 and we’ll battle USC and maybe even win this week.

Utes will win.

If we see Huntley, I think we win 28-27. If we see Williams, I think we lose 27-16. I’ve heard it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see Huntley this week, so I’m chalking this up to a loss.

We have to win Saturday to keep hope alive! We lose and the south is done. USC has an easy schedule to wrap up and ours gets harder with UW and WSU and a road trip to Oregon. This game is basically a 2 game swing if we lose because USC will own the head to head tie breaker. They would have to lose 2 of 4 against AU, ASU, Colo, and UCLA and we would have to win out against ASU, Oregon, UCLA, WSU, WU, and Colo. If we drop one of those games they would have to lose 3 of those 4 which I don’t see happening.

For that reason I’m very nervous.

With Williams we can’t score touchdowns, even from first and goal at the two. At home. So this week it’s play hard and try not to get blown out. Next week it’s re-group and beat ASU with defense and takeaways.

It’s tough right now with Anae part timing it, Fitz and Huntley out, we are a very average team. Hopefully others will seize the op.

You can lump me in with the nay-sayers. I had this game as a loss before the season started. I thought we would beat Stanford. The team just hasn’t given me much to be excited/optimistic about ever since losing Huntley.

We know what we’re getting in TW2: 50% completion rating and a deer in the headlights when any sort of pressure comes. I hope he can prove me wrong. Even with Huntley, I had this as a 10 point loss. With Williams? I’m thinking closer to 20.

Defensively, there isn’t much to be excited about for me either. We didn’t get a single sack (or really any pressure) against Stanford. No turnovers either. We were able to contain Love (mostly), but let their QB run all over us instead.

Even on special teams, I can’t be excited/confident when Wishnowsky comes out to punt because odds are the ball isn’t even going to make it to him. Matt Gay is a stud, however.

Me being wrong has been a trend this year, however. So maybe that continues.

I am hoping the defense can contain the Trojans, and get some scores to give the Utes a chance.  Getting a positive turnover margin will help a lot.

I, too, have been busy on other projects and have not been able to spend time thinking and researching Utah sports. But losing to Stanford was like a crisis to me because we seemed to either be breaking what had not broken down yet on offense and special teams, or we simply just grew worse before our eyes. Stanford came to play and looked solid defensively, and yet winnable offensively. But alas, we came out and played so vulnerable, bad, terrible on special teams — the long- and short-snapping errors; on OC, being unable to protect Williams; William’s poor play and adjustment choices in the red zone; etc. We should have won this game. 

From the beginning of the year, Stanford was my pick for the win and USC was the loss. So we may be facing two consecutive losses after this week, especially in light of how we played and failed to play against Stanford. Another reason why I’ve been in a slight funk.

BUt I must admit that if we play a clean game, and TW plays like he’s blessed by all the gods and fates, then we have a chance of upsetting USC!  I am hopeful. Go Utes! 

Gotta be honest, real life has completely overtaken any energy I can give to Utah football this year. Between kids activities, medical issues, and complete insanity at work (I sell to the federal government, so I’m sure you can imagine how well that’s going these days), I’m having trouble finding any time to get excited about football. I haven’t even had time to watch the last two away games, I’ve had to either listen to the radio or just follow along on the ESPN app while I work. I’m guessing tomorrow will be the same. I hate it when real life intrudes on my fun.

All that aside, I don’t have much confidence that we do well tomorrow. I hope they can prove me wrong and TW comes to play, but I think we’ve seen exactly what we get from him. 50% accuracy, missing open receivers, a couple dumb turnovers, and maybe a TD. That worked last year because we had the o-line play and running game to cover up those deficiencies, but that’s not the case this year. I’d probably pick USC by 14-17, and hope I’m dead wrong.