Ranking Whittinghams strengths, how the fan perceives it

[EagleMountainUte]

1- NFL player maker. This actually doesn’t lead to success in the win column. The NFL guys help recruit talent and hopefully bring guys in. But success in the nfl doesn’t contribute on the field. 

2- Doing more with less. Despite tremendous adversary ie the location of a wonderful school in a terrible state. With terrible people and terrible government he does more with less desirable talent. Although Star rankings are complete and utter s**t in my opinion. You see more guys that Utah finds suddenly being sniffed out and gifted higher rankings. Whitt has performed well not having as much talent has led to a lot of success. Adding in the weird laws and weird culture you gotta give him a thumbs up.

3- Multiple seasons finishing ranked despite not stating the season ranked.  This sort of relates to talent more times kids see Utah ranked means Better talent.  

4- Have I missed anything because now I am at a loss.  He coaches a mean defense that has blown leads as of late albeit against arguably SUPERIOR talent.  Scalley takes the blame for that sometimes though.  Conference record is getting really ugly in the Pac12.  I don’t know when his mulligan ends I thought it was at five years or something like that.  He gets more mulligans for bad luck with injuries and bad luck for bad hires.  He has

 

[EagleMountainUte]

Oh yeah and a winning record against some of the worst BYU teams ever. Against a coach in Roscoe who has been doing more with less for years. The talent at most positions is far superior at Utah but Utah barely beats them. Reality is seven in a row gives Whitt a pass. Even though Utah has FAR outgrown BYU. 

[Puget Ute]

If the game vs the byu-P was in November this year we would have named the score. The team we saw last Sat beats byu 70 points. I guess we will see next year if this argument holds.

[EagleMountainUte]

That is an easy arguement to make considering how s**tty BYU became. 

[ragtownute]

The “if the” game is a slippery slope. BYU is undefeated against Utah using the “if the” game. 

[Utah]

He’s not perfect. I don’t hate your list either. 

BUT, what sort of mulligans does he get having to build a P5 team? Utah’s first year in the PAC-12 was in 2011, but that year, the recruiting class that came in was a G5 class. 

So, if 2012 is his first “P5” class, how many years until the team is a bonafide P5 school? Do you say four classes? Or five? Let’s be mean and say four classes. 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015. That means in 2016, we had our first, official, P5 team. And the 2017 class was our first official P5 school recruiting class. 

So, if 2016 was our first official year as a P5 school, then it was the first year we can judge Whitt as a P5 coach. What did he do that year? 

9-4. Not too shabby. Ranked. He had Utah’s best recruiting class ever. Rivals ranked that recruiting class as #25 in the country. 

So, we know that special teams and defense, there aren’t ten coaches better than him. Even his recruiting is looking to be “good enough”. Not great, but top 30, which is pretty great for Utah, especially with his ability to coach kids up. 

BUT, offensively…he’s lacking. 

BUT, look at our offense from this year: We will bring back 80% of our offensive production. We will bring back our OL. We will bring back the #3 QB in the PAC-12 in offensive production per game…and that includes two TERRIBLE games vs ASU and Oregon. 

Show me a coach who can recruit to Utah like Whitt can. Who can develop NFL players like Whitt can. 

Whitt’s biggest flaw has ALWAYS been QB and offense. Taylor’s offense was MUCH better in the red zone the last 4 games, and Taylors’ QB top 3 in the PAC-12 in yards per game. 

Holy Shoot. 

Is Whitt, in his second year as a full fledged P5 coach, with a full fledged P5 roster, finally putting it all together? 

Imagine if we can keep the coaching staff together. And then add in Andersen as an assistant Head Coach. 

We may never see Utah football as successful as it is right now. 

BUT, if Whitt can put it together and make Utah a school that local kids want to actually play for…

That’s why I’m ok with Whitt. He has done so much with so little. It’s also why I think people who want Whitt gone or question him…are being unrealistic. They think Utah is a much, much better place than it is. The reality is, we should be an eleventh place PAC-12 team. 

And Whitt has us arguably the second best team in the south. 

This year, 2017, was our first year with a P5 roster, a P5 level OC, with a P5 recruiting class. 

I’d say Whitt has two more years before we even discuss his seat. 

 

[EagleMountainUte]

Agreed Whitt should retire in 2020 or 2021 most likely you look for his replacement after we see what he does with this talent for two years.

 

Troy Taylor the jury is out for me on that one. I question him wanting to run Huntley so much and I agree Huntley pulled too many. But he had Moss all along just sitting behind Huntley. Utah could have controlled the tempo a little more and what I saw against Colorado is what I want. But it is hard to make that the measuring stick because no one wanted to tackle Moss all game. I am still mixed bag on TT. Obviously this was always a mulligan year for him Harding will be gone soon with a job offer so it is all on him 2018. He has to coach Huntley up in reading the defense. He has to make Huntley realize Shyne and Moss are the backs to take contact and can make plays. Throwing into the blitz more and recognizing it when he sees it. Sophomore mistakes and all coachable but it never seemed like Huntley progressed to me.  He was always great and the playcalling was just catching up to him. 

2018 and 2019 are going to be special for sure. 

[noneyadb]

I’ll repeat, last 4 seasons Utah had 18 losses, 11 by less than a touchdown. Whitt has been competitive while attempting to build a P5 program. Colorado won the South last year and looks terrible this year. Utah is in an excellent position going forward.

[rbmw263]

Kyle is top tier (bluebloods excluded) at beating teams that finish the season ranked. I don’t think people understand how rare it is for non perennial top 10 teams. Lot of teams beat ranked teams early that end up 6-6. we beat one or more teams that FINISHED in the top 25 in 13, 14, 15, and 16. for reference, byu has beaten one single such team (2006 tcu) in the last 21 years 

now, we are all aware of the price. Whitt’s amazing at getting us up for big games, but struggles to get us up for the lower half games on the sched. we beat teams we shouldn’t and balance with losses to far inferior competition. 

If you ask me, keeping in mind reasonable expectations of us being a team in the 20-40 range on average, I would take that over never beating teams better than us while never losing to teams below.  it may be marginal but the positive exposure these high profile wins bring is greater than the negative that comes with bad losses. imo. There is frustration in both scenarios but winning those marquee games is infinitely more exciting. Remember how amazing that Stanford win was? imagine having one win over a ranked team in 20 years. frustrating AND boring.

[ragtownute]

This argument is not complete with including how many teams we lost to that finished in the top 25. 

I would be curious to see that data. 

[Tony (admin)]

I think special teams is a strength.

[EagleMountainUte]

Coverage has gone down since Jay Hill left.  But overall Whitt has found gems to kick the ball. 

[ironman1315]

Oh please, Utah is a Ute fan through and through.