Morgan Scalley vs Oregon and Texas

[gUrthBrooks]

37 and 38 points allowed. 230+ rushing yds allows in each game with the season average being 81 rushing yards per game. Question is why the high increase in rush yards the last two games? Oregon was super confident that they could run on Utah before the game. Oregon radio guys were picking up snippets from the coaches that they thought they would run on Utah. Fans on the train to the game were saying, “hopefully we’ll be up by 3 TD’s mid way through the 3rd.” So what exactly were they seeing as the weakness of Utah’s defense. Did teams figure out Scalley’s play calling tendencies? Does he have a tell? With Utah’s strength being the run stop, I wonder if those big gashes created mental psychological breakdowns for Utah defensive players who hadn’t really been run on all season.

[Utah5410]

hmmm. That’s not fair. Utah was fine until they lost Blackmon. And then Hubert right after that. You out in a third string safety who ain’t played all year in both of those games against more talented teams is not about Morgan.

[Central Coast Ute]

Utah wasn’t fine with Hubert.

[Tednab]

Imo Oregon was more focused on beating Utah ; they already had the north wrapped up before Utah had the South . they were probably prepping for Utah game during the Azst and Oregon St ; knowing those games were practically pointless.. add that to the injuries spelt disaster for the Utes. Texas .. well .. they couldn’t give a rats ass about that game .. remember hearing about players spending more time hanging out than actually preparing; motivation pretty much gone at that point.

[gUrthBrooks]

In summary, your opinion is that if you lose a free safety, this will explain the rushing yards tripling for the opponent?

. Also, what’s not fair? I stated facts and commentary from the opponent?

[Gugstanley]

This was talked about by some national guys and Oregon. The feeling was Utah had holes in their run defense all season. Teams could not exploit it because Utah’s offense kept the team ahead in most games. Oregon figured it out and attacked leaving a nice blueprint for Texas.

[gUrthBrooks]

Question: where were the holes?

[Tony (admin)]

Wherever Oregon ran. 

[Ute2]

This thread is dumb because the offense left the d in a lurch in both those games.  

we couldn’t run it, not a lot of ball control and the d was ok the field a ton.  No wonder they got burned.

 

and it all comes down to an oline that was too young for the big time.  But they’ll grow up.

our coaches are really good and any inference otherwise is pretty dang wrong.  

 

[Crazyforu]

You bring up some good points, I haven’t re-watched either game for obvious reasons. The Oregon game, from what I can remember, had a comedy of things go wrong in the 1st and 2nd quarters. The offense had opportunity to do some things, then just kept getting bottled up at the wrong time.

Special Teams had the awful blocked punt, then you had the injuries on the back end on D. I don’t think Utah was figured out, I think Utah was just mentally broken in the 2nd half. My memory could be wrong, I believe that is when the damn really broke and the rushing yards started to pile up.

As for Texas, Utah was already broken from the Oregon game, was missing a couple high end draft picks on the back end of D (Blackmon, Johson), and just couldn’t get going. I don’t think Utah was figured out, by any means. That said, Utah had a few games where they started slow, relied on the ability to turn it on whenever they needed. Remember the Colorado game? Utah took WAY too long to get going, had some strange offensive flow that seemed to have zero sense of urgency. I think a big part of that was the struggles at offense line. Hell, Huntley was a miracle worker not to get killed by SC, they were in the backfield the second the ball was snapped.

All that said, it is easy to remember where Utah feell short last year, they also did some amazing things as a program. 

[Woohoo]

I’m no coach, but as a fan was disappointed that our gameplan seems to be “win the 1:1 battles”. Utah is known for being a tough, disciplined team, which is awesome. But when we’re facing the Oregons, USCs, etc. I wish we’d get a bit more creative and demonstrate we actually know our own weaknesses. Seems like we often get outmaneuvered and hold onto our ‘disciplines’.

Can you imagine if we’d tried to “ground and pound” or “win the 1:1 battles” in the Sugar Bowl vs. Alabama? That team TOOK that victory. The giant killer, underdog mentality that used to make Utah so dangerous seems to have been swallowed up beneath our improved program status.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE my Utes. They overperform in nearly every category. The program should be very proud of itself. IMO they need to figure out how to add that ‘electric’ factor to move to an elite program.

It’s also super easy for me to say all this from my couch. 🙂

[PNW Ute]

An Oregon blogger wrote a very good and detailed post on Utah before the championship game. I’ve linked the post below, the part of Utah’s run D is about 2/3 of the way down.

Basically, he thought Utah’s pass D was elite, but was not high on their run D, despite the statistics. He did a lot of video breakdown, and thought Utah was susceptible to the run, but teams tended to fall behind and give up in the run too early against Utah. He showed video clips of a lot of plays where Utah would give chunk yards in runs. Primary the Utes problem was over aggressive linebacker play, that often led to players filling the wrong gap or falling for misdirection. He thought Oregon could run the ball on Utah successfully.

 And, remember he wrote all this before Utah’s last two games. If he saw this weakness, you have to assume the Ducks’ coaches did too.

https://www.addictedtoquack.com/2019/12/5/20996245/duck-tape-film-analysis-of-utah

[gUrthBrooks]

Yes!!! This is what I was looking for. Thanks!

[Charlie]

Even a good defense with no holes can have things go wrong. The bad punt and injury put us in a hole we did not make it out of. It slipped away because it just happened. I think if we played 10 times without Blackmon getting injured, Utah would win a good share of 10. Oregon was a very good team and things did not work out for us that day. Oregon has some of the same bad breaks, likely Utah jumps on top of them. I actually think the line between Oregon and Utah was thin last year.

As to the Texas game, many teams struggle to play after loosing a conference championship game. Utah is one of the teams learning how to get up after such a loss. It would be interesting to see the general record for teams after a loss in a CCG. I expect it to be even worse when the team is in the running for the playoffs before loosing the CCG. If we had played Texas some other time of the year or after beating Oregon and more importantly, with all of our players – I think the results would have been much different.

When the same teams play each other twice in the same season it often produces very different results. Not because of learned weaknesses so much, sometimes because different results simply show up. We could have also easily lost to a team we beat last year if it had followed the Oregon game. Mindset matters.