Fifita is a red-shirt freshman.
There are a lot of reasons why Utah doesn’t have a good passing game. Part of it is Barnes/Johnson, part of it is line play, part of it is play-calling, part of it is the receivers. How much you want to assign to each is up to each viewer’s discretion.
Right now, Utah just is not good at offense. Yes, there have been injuries. But it also just feels like the current personnel doesn’t fit the scheme. Kuithe being gone shouldn’t decimate the TE room because he really wasn’t playing TE anyway. Where’s your blocking TE? It’s not King, even though he’s trying. Miki’s trying. Yassmin tried but just didn’t seem to be getting it. The freshman hasn’t seen the field as far as I know. So now you’ve got what should be the focal point of the Ludwig offense providing nothing in the passing game and not really being effective in the run game. Now you’re playing 9 on 11.
The O Line is probably the biggest disappointment this year. At least one of them seems to get beat on every play, which really isn’t out of the norm. But it’s the one that gets beat that seems to be the highest leverage. I remember a play where the line blocked down and to the left with Bills pulling. Bills is supposed to be the best run blocker and was in perfect position to lead. Instead the back got blown up by two guys with Bills blocking no one. The play was blocked downfield and to the backside. Our backs can make one miss but not two or more.
There are also too many free runs at the QB on passing plays and it is being done with 3 or 4 man rushes. God forbid they decide to blitz. You can’t run 7 step routes if you can’t keep guys off your QB. And if you are forced to play max protect while the D is dropping 6 to 8 guys, there aren’t going to be routes open unless someone falls down.
The receivers have been so underused over the years that they just aren’t receivers any more. By that I mean, the first thing you are taught as a receiver is when to look for the ball. And if it’s not there, move with the QB, find some open space and give the QB a good target. We’ve got receivers that seem to have velcro on their uni’s because they are permanently attached to their defender. Caleb Williams is able to move around and keep his eyes downfield because his receivers are always trying to find open space. Utah receivers, if they aren’t open immediately rarely get themselves open. They just keep running their initial route and don’t give the QB anything to work with.
And then you’ve got the usual mediocre at best QB at Utah performance. Rising and one year of Huntley have made some things happen. I’m not sure either of them at their peak could add 20 ppg to this offense, this year. There are just too many breakdowns everywhere. When guys are open, the QB is running for his life. When the QB has time, he’s got two receivers running routes against 5 defenders. And can we stop running the effing flea flicker every game? It fooled SC two fricking years ago and hasn’t worked since. Just spike the damn ball and go to 2nd and 10.
The problems are systemic at this point and I’m not the guy getting paid to fix them. Barnes/Johnson get the blame but that goes with the position. They’ve made their share of mistakes but it really feels like Utah has run out of ideas. I wanted them to spend the bye week figuring out what they did well and lean into that. Instead, they came up with Vaki who has had his Khalil Tate moment. And just like Tate, now that the other teams know what he can do, they will all scheme to stop it. Some won’t be able to and will look like CAL or SC’s defense and we’ll all congratulate ourselves that the staff was able to get things back on track. Until we see a game like today and we all say, “well, I guess it wasn’t fixed after all”.
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