Expectations

[ProudUte]

My wife heard some nieghbors talking football yesterday.  One man is a huge BYU donor, like hundred of thousands.  The other guys said to him, “Saturday had to be brutal for you?”  The donor said, “No, we had a lot of fun because I expected we would get destroyed by Wisconsin.”

It reminded me of the mid 1970s.  My buddy and I bought season tickets to the Utes in 1975.  We knew we were no good.  In fact we ended up going 1-10.  If my memory is correct, our only win was a 21-10 victory over New Mexico.  But, we always had fun at the games.  Why?  Because, we had no expectations of being good.  

So what are our expectations for the Utes this season?  For me, I have to keep in mind that we had 8 players picked in the NFL draft including 4 of 5 offensive lineman.  We are not Alabama and don’t have a bunch of 4 & 5 star recruits waiting in the wings.  In fact this senior class is made of of 2013/2014 recruits.  They were not our best recruiting years.  We also lost an amazing running back and a stud at safety.

We may have the most difficult PAC 12 schedule because we don’t play Cal and OSU.

So, initially expecatations for this season (for me) were not super high.  I am always hopeful, but the reality was that we had a ton of holes to fill and a very difficult conference schedule.  But, along came Carrington.  We announced a new starter at QB, we found a kicker that appears better than automatic Andy.  Also, the last few weeks proved that UCLA and USC are beatable.

For me, I am hopeful because of Carrington and Huntley.  They give us something we haven’t had since 2004.  But, we still do not have a running game.  In fact, we are not close.  If we can’t run against SJSC, how do we expect run against PAC 12 teams?  We couldn’t run against BYU and Wisconsin shredded them.  I understand that Winsconsin is one of the best running teams in the country.  Nonetheless, we have NO excuse for our poor running game.

I haven’t seen aything that leads me to believe that this team is capable of winning the south or even winning 9-10 games.  There isn’t a game on our schedule that we can’t win, but we make way too many mistakes to believe that we are a top ten team.  If we had last year’s offensive line and Williams back at running back – we could probably be a top ten team, but we don’t.

So, one game at a time.  Beat Arizona this week and show improvement in areas where we are struggling.

Go Utes!!!

 

[Anonymous]

I can never understand how/why people think this way. Everyone, so it seems, has to look forward, hurrying and scurrying to the end. I guess it’s so they can…I’m lying. I have no idea why they do it.

My expectation is that UTAH will play Arizona on Friday night. I expect our team to come out and play as hard as they can to reach their potential. Then I expect a week off. That’s as far as I’ve thought ahead.

I love this time of year. I love this team. I expect to be cheering like a madman for our guys for the foreseeable future.

[ProudUte]

I too, love this time of year.  I love sports, but my favorite by far has been Utah football and it has been for about 55 years now.

I hope we have a gameplan which will work against Arizona.  We have not played our best football against Rich Rod.  

[Anonymous]

I just simply love every moment of the season. I don’t look ahead because I don’t want to diminish that. It’s like. Christmas morning for 12 weeks a year. Thank the Great Pumpkin for football!

[sweetgrass]

I couldn’t agree more.

Fortunately the South doesn’t seem to be as strong this year, but the North looks stronger than ever. While we don’t appear to have a running game, our passing game looks legit, although I’m not sure we’ve faced a solid secondary yet.

[Utahute72]

My expectation that I hope we can somehow get to six wins. We seem to have a decent defense, but the fact that SJSU had some big gains in the pass game causes me to think we may be vulnerable there. On offense we seem to be very one dimensional and I’m very concerned that most of the offense is predicated on two players. PAC12 teams are much better than those we’ve played at being able to take away your strengths and force you to beat them else where. Not sure we can respond well to that.

[UM4G]

My initial preseason prediction was 6-6, I changed it to 7-5 recently but I keep bouncing back and forth. I think if they keep starting slow like they did against SJSU it’ll be 6-6.

I’ve been happier this season than in past season’s when I drank the kool aid and believed all the 10+ win season hype. I took a good look at where we had the most turnover and where the strengths and weaknesses are, and after looking at the schedule I feel like ~7-5 is doable.

It’s been more fun to watch the games too, instead of getting mad about mistakes or bad execution, I find I get more excited about seeing improvement from positions or players that I thought were going to struggle this season.

I see some fans across the internet are not happy with what has been shown, but I am happy, it’s been about what I expected with some positions exceeding expectations (kicker, QB, WR).