Tuttle 3rd String at Indiana

[Italy88]

Did not expect this. How long until his dad tells him to transfer again?
Jack Tuttle

[whitlessham]

Really screwed the pooch with Wilson…

[AgouraUte]

@whitlessham – we got rising which is a much better trade off. Wilson put up mediocre numbers in his seven games played last year against 6 G5 teams and they lost to the only P5 team they played against. He will get exposed in the first four games of the year and then do phenomenal against the G5’s on their schedule. Don’t buy into the Zoob hype

[Anfernee]

Wait. Ham is the one OBSESSED with recruiting stars. And the reason we couldn’t get Wilson was we couldn’t recruit another QB, which was the part of the deal for getting Tuttle. So if we had gotten Wilson over Tuttle, he’d be bemoaning us losing out on the “4 star stud” for some random kid who loved Utah growing up.

[Central Coast Ute]

Exactly. Everyone has tape on him now. Zoobs tend to over hype their QB’s. Same thing will happen to Wilson that happened to Mangum. Have two good games, everyone thinks he’s God, then he falls flat on his face.

[ProudUte]

I don’t know anything for sure and neither does anyone else on this board, but I think Zach Wilson is a good QB.  He does not appear to have the weaknesses that Mangum had, that were exploited by BYU’s opponents.  I am not saying that Wilson is the next Steve Young.  However, I believe he does have talent and seems composed.  I know that we Utes make light of his 100% passing in the bowl game because it was against a very poor defense.  Throwing for 100% Bingham High would be an accomplishment.

Was Utah wrong for not recruiting Wilson? No.  Is Rising better than Wilson? Way too early to know that.  Is Huntley better than Wilson? Tough call.  Huntley has better receivers and a much better running back.  However, Wilson may have the better offensive line.  

I hope the Utes defense gets to Wilson and he struggles to get anything going against us.  That will not make him a bad QB.  Every year recently, Tom Brady has a game where you think – his time is over and he needs to hang it up.  Then, he comes out the next week and throws for 400 yards.

[Sweetness]

All right, I’m gonna call Aguora out here.

The only game in which Wilson wasn’t very good last year was his game against Northern Illinois…and I don’t think I need to remind you or anyone else here how our offense faired against them either.

He had a propensity to take a few too many sacks, but otherwise the kid was really good for a true freshman.

He wasn’t the reason they lost to us last year. The reason they lost is because guys 1-22 we are vastly more talented than they are.

I’m not going to come out and predict a heisman campaign for the kid, and his 18/18 against literally one of the worst pass defenses in the country (120th) gets so much more run than it should, but there’s no reason to try and minimize what the kid did last year and play the P5 card.

It’s very rare a true freshman comes in and puts up those kind of numbers and makes the kind of plays and decisions he did. Minimizing that just comes off as unnecessarily arrogant to me and is a bad look.

If anything, it would be nice to have him on our roster for the sake of BYU not having him. Without him, they’d be staring at another 3-9/4-8 season.

In short, give credit where credit is due.

[ironman1315]

Here are Wilson’s stats: https://www.espn.com/college-football/player/gamelog/_/id/4361259/zach-wilson

Here are his wins and pass efficiency defense of the teams.

NMSU: 90/119

UMass: 119/129

Western Michigan: 122/129

Hawaii: 112/129

Not exactly a murder’s row.

Now, let’s talk about the Utah game. He was rather efficient…in the first half. When Utah put the clamps on, Wilson had a passing rating of 41. Wilson is good. But he isn’t great. I am not certain he is better than Shelley.

[ProudUte]

Well said.

[Utahute72]

Wilson is a good, not great QB. I will say that 18/18 or whatever was an outstanding effort. As some coach once said 18/18 against air is impressive. You do have to give credit to the BYU coaching staff for handling Wilson last year. They let Magnum get beat up by the tougher part of the schedule, then put in Wilson and let him grow against the weaker part of the schedule. These first four games should tell us a lot more about how good he is.

I think the comment about Huntley having better receivers is off base. In one preseason article Huntley was ranked as one of the most underrated players because of the inability of the receiver to catch the damn ball. His on-target percentage was much higher than his completion percentage, an indication of where the problem is. Still I don’t seem him as accurate as say Smith.

I do think that Rising appears to be a better trade off for Tuttle than Wilson, but then Rising has yet to take a snap.

[Tony (admin)]

Many of the drops were due to velocity issues. So the accuracy argument is slightly flawed unless those point blank 100mph fastballs are accounted for.

[UtMtBiker]

12 of 26 against a terrible New Mexico State defense was very good?

[AgouraUte]

I very well could be wrong on Wilson. I just don’t think it’s worth rehashing how we made a recruiting mistake. This is a live and learn type situation that you have to move on. I think the coaching staff has learned from the Wilson/tTuttlr situation and likely won’t make the same mistake in the future.

[UteThunder]

The coaches most definitely have NOT learned from the Tuttle mistake, or rather, the Tuttle mistake is one they have made before. There have been multiple times since we joined the Pac-12 that the Utah coaches offered a QB who committed on the condition that we don’t sign any other QBs in their class only to have that QB switch his committment at the last second. There was one who ended up at ASU, I believe, and Jack Sears ending up at USC was another, IIRC. I think another one ended up at Washington.

Hopefully the coaches have finally learned, but this isn’t the first time they have made this mistake.

[Chidojuan]

I don’t know the Jack Sears story, but Jayden Daniels didn’t have any conditions that I’m aware of, he was just a silent commit who flipped. What happened with Sears?

[UteThunder]

I can’t say for sure on any of them, but I distinctly recall a large part of our problems at QB have been a result of these kids committing with the condition that we not recruit any other QBs that year. We oblige and then at the last minute they flip and sign elsewhere leaving us without a QB in that class.

[Ma’ake Kava]

Wilson’s a good QB, who – all things being equal – will look great vs OK defenses, and will look poorer against really good defenses.

If he had serious playmakers to distribute to, Wilson could be a *REALLY* good QB, but if they can’t get separation, his numbers will suffer, or worse, he’ll get baited into throwing into coverage and be a serious negative.

[Craig]

Agreed. 

I woud love to have him on our roster and Utah was his school of choice since he was a small child.

I really feel worse for him being at BYU though, than us missing his talent for 2020,2021 etc.

Instead for playing Stanford, USC, UCLA, Washigton etc he’ll be playing U Mass, Toldeo, Liberty and the like.

And unfortunately for him most predictions say he’ll be 0-3 against Utah going into his senior year.

He has real talent, but he’s suffering more than we do.

I feel bad for him.

[Charlie]

The good news, soon we will quit talking about ’18 and have the current year to focus on. To jump ahead, I think the Utah QBs are well set up to start the current season well. I also feel the Y QBs walk into the season with significant uphill climb. I am encouraged our injured QB has not been on a pitch count, is quite experience and will be a point of focus by top level teams playing Utah. Our backup has already had his growing pains against top level competition and can be viewed as ready if needed. Next year, we are expecting a battle between two good QBs to become the next starter. Looking ahead, I think it will be USU that will present the possibility of QB envy. Hopefully we won’t notice.

[whitlessham]

Curious, how would you know that is a Risen over Wilson is a better trade off?  Has Risen played a college game yet?

Unlike defense and RB position – I don’t trust kwhitts recruiting decisions when it comes to WR and QB’s.  Risen might turn out better but I would chalk it up to dumb luck.  

[AgouraUte]

I meant that Rising is a better trade off than Tuttle. We need kids on the team that want to be here for the right reasons, versus being the center of attention. I spoke with Rising last night at Fan Fest, he realizes that he’s gonna need to put in his time and they may not play for a couple of years.

[whitlessham]

Yes, I get that Risen wants to be at Utah and tuttle didn’t.  But Wilson REALY wanted to be a Ute.

Just saying it was a big miss – it happens.  I just don’t beleive Kwhitt has a clue regarding QB talent (or WR).  

[DrJazzy]

And you would have cried about Utah recruiting another 3* Utah kid, so Whit can’t win basically ever with you. 

Sound football analysis, you seem really smart at sports. 

[Dwight89]

There’s a few fallacies with your premise, whitless:

1. Hindsight is 20/20. At the time every single program on the planet would have taken Tuttle over Wilson, including BYU. IN FACT, Wilson went to BYU chiefly due to a lack of offers anywhere else. It’s not fair to condemn Whitt for a decision 129 other FBS programs would have made. 

2. Just because someone wants to be a Ute doesn’t mean they will be a great player. That, in and of itself, is a terrible reason to recruit someone. 

3. We really don’t know enough about Wilson yet to even know if he would start over Shelley or Rising, so it’s much too early to get your panties in a wad anyway, dude. 

[Central Coast Ute]

Are you claiming Huntley wasn’t a good recruit?

[ironman1315]

[DrJazzy]

You can’t have it both ways…you are always railing on them for recruiting 3* Utah kids so it makes no sense to get upset when they do go after and land a top QB recruit with huge offer list.

Obviously hindisght. But Zach looks really good and has a lot of potential. Him being from a Utah family and growing up a Utah fan especially hurts…but can’t play the hindsight game, it was the right move at the time based on Tuttle’s recruiting ranking. 

[Hellhound152]

He also believe that Whitt is what is keeping Utah from pulling in top 5 classes every year.  You cannot place limits on what makes sense to Pace as it relates to the Utah sports programs.  He is Anton Chigurh, a man with a code that only makes sense to him.   

[Utah5410]

I bet if Tuttle transferred he would play right away. Oh wait.

[UteThunder]

Good.

After the way he exited our program and the fact his recruitment landed Wilson at BYU, I hope Tuttle never plays a down of college football.

We don’t know how good Wilson is yet, but he definitely looked better than Mangum last year and it sucks that he dreamed of playing for Utah but is now playing for BYU. As for Rising, we won’t know for a year or two if he is better than Tuttle or Wilson. It’s nice to have him, but it’s possible he never plays a down for us.

[EagleMountainUte]

Good life lesson. Sometimes even your parents don’t know what’s best for you. You have to find your own way in life sometimes. 

[Hellhound152]

Wilson aside, how did everyone and I mean everyone get it so wrong with Tuttle?  The kid had offers from everywhere, the elite 11 staff loved him, and most recruiting sights said he was undervalued at 4 stars and likely would have got the 5th star had he flipped to Bama or SC.

It is one thing had he just suckered Roderick/Taylor but the entire system?

[UteThunder]

Part of the problem is found in your post. “recruting sites said he was undervalued at 4 stars and likely would have got the 5th star had he flipped to Bama or SC.“

Too many kids get an inflated rating based on who they are recruited by or commit to. In reality, I think Tuttle was probably a middle of the road 3 star QB who had been identified by a lot of schools so his star rating went up. When that happened it was like a snowball rolling down the hill. In other words, his hype built off of his hype which just garnered more attention and “validated” him as a high level recruit – higher than he actually was.

[Central Coast Ute]

According to OnlyU he’s an extremely talented kid physically, but he’s a head case mentally. As far as elite 11 goes, he can look really good in 7 on 7. When you put the pads on, it’s a different game and much different from high school ball. His recruit rankings were probably spot on based off of what people can see. Sometimes kids don’t have what it takes upstairs to make it although their body is perfectly capable.

[Duhwayne]

Utah’s Jake Heaps. Thank God he never played a snap here.