First off, this is a very winnable game. Utah is a good team right now and the mistakes that occurred in the Stanford/usc games are fixable. The question is always what timeframe will it take to fix that. Right now this team is living and dying on turnovers because of offensive issues. We can’t seem to get over that redzone TD issue. Good news is ASU allows scores 83% of the time in the redzone which is very average. Almost every site/line that does predictions has this as a utah win by 7 pts. Which means if we make one or two mistakes like in usc/furd games we could also easily lose this game. Heres the site if you want to look for yourself- prediction tracker
Some stats
ASU offense
SCoring offense – 29.3pts/game (60th in the nation)
Rush off 115yd/game (113th in the nation) 2.8yd/attempt (129th)
pass off 288/game (25th)
ASU Def
TOMargin 0 (59th), int’s .3/gm (115th)
Pass def 267/game (110th)
rush def 174/game (82nd)
sacks 3/game (6th)
scoring def 31pts/game (99th)
Yards per point Differential .25 (77th)
Utah offense
SCoring offense – 31pts/game (54th in the nation)
Rush off 162yd/game (68th in the nation) 4.4yd/attempt (72nd)
pass off 269/game (35th)
utah Def
TOMargin +1 (15th), int’s 1.5/gm (8th)
Pass def 230/game (77th)
rush def 119/game (30th)
sacks 1.8/game (78th)
scoring def 20pts/game (30th)
Yards per point Differential 3.6 (30th)
We are statistically a superior team in almost every category even with adjustments for SOS played. ASU ranks in the bottom half of the pac12 in every defensive category except sacks.
The only common opponent we have so far is Stanford.
ASU lost 24-34. 214 rushing. 195 passing. Sacked 3 times. no sacks on def. 2 ints thrown. gained 1 fumble.
Stanford. 328 yards rushing. 173 passing. + TOmargin. no sacks allowed.
Utah v Stanford. loss 20-23. Utes had 144 rushing, 238 passing. -2 TOmargin. gave up 2 sacks.
Stanford had 196 rushing. 188 passing. 0 sacks given up. 2sacks on def. TOmargin +2
In that small data set Utes outperformed defensively and essentially equaled ASU offensive with 1 more TO.
I think we will win this game 30-24. I think the game plan against the blitz will be quick passes which hopefully will force Troy to get the ball out on the first read. I like Troy and he can definitely make plays but he seems stuck in the mental evaluation of each play too long and so he seems paralyzed at times which leads to early pocket departure and delays in throws on timing routes. I think if he just played a little looser and more intuitively he would actually be far more effective. This is going to be another year of nailbiters in the pac12 and this game is no exception.
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