oooh a good question. In 2019 during the season Utah lost to USC and Oregon. First of all I will ignore the talent gap problem that exists. That’s a given and we will always be swimming upstream until we close that gap with the likes of USC/Oregon/Washington.
That said, I think both of those games had different reasons. The USC game was a fluke, imo. USC had to move away from their game plan and had their backup QB huckin’ bombs down the sideline all game long. We were simply outmatched there and USC stumbled into some success with that game plan. Additionally, I think alot of Utah players watched BYU beat USC the week before and probably did not mentally prepare adequately for the matchup.
In the Oregon game I think you also saw a similar mental problem, where Utah had just gone on an 11-1 run in the regular season, were ranked 4th or 5th, thought they were the s**t, and got their teeth knocked out in the trenches. On the players front, Whitt needs to make sure the team isn’t too high on their own success. Be mentally tough, be ok with adversity, and be ok fighting from behind. On the prep side, I think Whitt in the Oregon game did not give enough credit to Oregon’s talent in the trenches, and it seems to me he thought we would match up ok with them. In the future I hope he does a better job at scheming around the talent gaps when we play teams like Oregon/UW/USC.
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