Utah's offense we all see the problem but how can it be fixed?

[Anonymous]

1. Fire Whittingham. A lot of people want this to happen. I disagree with this solution because I just don’t know who we replace him with. I also don’t agree with firing a coach coming off perhaps the third best season in Utah’s history. This was an amazing season with low expectations coming into it and Utah tripped up losing Booker to injury. I think Whitt is a top ten head coach but he has a giant weakness and that is offense.

3. Get more talent. This takes time and I am not buying the talent reason either. It is clearly coaching. Utah could have the best talent in the world but it won’t matter because it will placed on the defensive side of the ball or it won’t be coached up. Wilson had a lot of talent and athletic ability but hell he got worst in the passing game as the season progressed. You watch the film and you can see why Utah’s wideouts can’t get open. With single coverage they can’t get open. Eight in the box and Utah wideouts can’t get open. Scott a like 6 year guy couldn’t get open against BYU wideouts. It is so amazing to me to see slow BYU wideouts get open but Utah’s are faster and can’t. Minus Covey they all are garbage. Talent will help but we need coaches.

3. Hire an offensive mind and implement a plan. Utah needs to do something else. Expecting a different result with just hiring another coach isn’t working. What is Utah recruiting? Spread power run read option pistol wishbone video game offense. It is like me when I play football I look through the playbook the computer gives me and I say yep let’s run that play. Looks good on paper. But it is a cluster in reality. That is Utah. Establish an offensive system, and recruit players for that system. That attracts talent. You ask any of Utah’s recruits and see if they wanted to be a part of that offense against BYU? Nobody would want it. So I just figure some of those players are coming to Utah for different reasons. Utah needs to get rid of Roderick keep Hardy on the Oline and hire a QB coach. Hell maybe Norm Chow will come back. I personally thought that was the best looking offense Utah ran. With Hays at the helm even.

What are your solutions? What is Whitt or Chris Hill going to do?

[Tony (admin)]

Regarding offense, play calling, and talent: I’m not sure what came first, the awful offensive strategies or the lack of talented players in positions needed to execute a decent offensive strategy.

I swear most of the play calls toward the end of the season seemed to be geared away from making the big mistake, a.k.a. the USC pick sixes.

I still contend that if we are a power team who relies on a great defense and a power offense, we should be running a pro set instead of whatever the f we are running now. Go Stanford style.

[Anonymous]

I’ve said all along that Wilson had a low ceiling and he reached it. The best they could do was to coach him out of turnovers. Wilson is terribly inaccurate. He is not a QB who can throw receivers open. Hell that one 1st down catch by Tyrone was simply amazing. Full layout stretch in the air to haul that terribly overthrown 10 yard pass, yet no defender within 5 yards. Wilson is not a QB who makes his receivers better.

Watched one play where Wilson held the ball way too long and took a sack. A quickly thrown ball had Scott open for 10 years and a first down, but Wilson doesn’t have the confidence to throw that because he doesn’t have the accuracy and fears the INT.

Look we’re done with Wilson. They did all they could with his abilities. His ceiling was low and they had to coach within that. IMO they did a damn fine job, but it made for frustrating watching.

What do they need to do? Hope that Sitake takes Arod and then they go after this Cramsey guy at Montana St who’s reportedly a Spread QB guru. He just interview last week for the HC position at Montana St, so could be available. His Transferring (out) QB Dakota Prukop had offers from Oregon, Alabama and Michigan and Cramsey developed him at a FCS school. Get Cramsey now!

[Anonymous]

@westslopecutthroat. I still feel Wilson was mismanaged. I just hope we get a pro set style offense and recruit to that. Utah gets the big body lineman and runs a pretty damn good downhill run game.

[Anonymous]

I’ll give you the fact that we could use some better QB coaching.

That said, I saw 4 years of excuses for Wilson and no improvement. First it was that he was just a true Freshman. Then a true Sophomore who threw as many INTs as TDs. Then a true Junior who’s head was screwed up by Dave Christiansen. Then he was a total head case his senior year without Dave Christiansen and under the guidance of Aarod who recruited him. Oh let’s not forget the excuse that he never had any receivers who could get open.

Fact is, I watched him hold onto the ball with receivers open Saturday. He’s afraid to throw over the middle, and justifiably so. Those need to be quick passes with confidence. He hangs onto the ball and then LBs jump the route to disrupt or intercept. The defenses were quicker with their reads than Travis was. Coaches won’t tolerate turnovers. So it became a circular feedback loop to the point that Travis was just ineffective with anything over the middle, completely eliminating that option from the game. There was one play where he did read the blitz correctly and quickly dumped a sidearm pass to Joe Williams to save the play. Unfortunately, that was the exception.

Check out Tyrone Smith’s lone reception at 1:48 in this video:

https://www.facebook.com/uathletics/videos/10153788535255960/?theater

No defender within 5 yards, but Smith has to jump and completely lay himself out to catch an overthrown ball. That completion was good for 15 yards, but no YAC because the ball was overthrown. Wilson never made his receivers look good, not by a long shot.

[FormerUteSax]

I agree we need a QB coach, but I also think we need a new receivers coach. We’re always told the “throw” game struggles because the receivers aren’t getting open, find a coach who can teach them how to get open.

[Tony (admin)]

First thing I would do is analyze what has NOT been working. Then I would make an effort to change that. I know, I know. It makes too much sense.

[UTE98]

I know, how about we get a really good defensive coach to scout our offense, look for our strengths then play to those strengths and keep the opposing defense on their heels. Oh, wait, we already have a good defensive coach, why can’t they provide feedback to the offensive side of the ball? What happened to all those practice reports where our offense was moving the ball against our defense? Were we that good against our own defense but other defenses were able to shut us down? I’m confused.

[Tony (admin)]

There’s no secret to scouting our offense. Doesn’t have to be complicated at all. If our coaching staff can’t look at any film of the season except the Oregon game and know what we need work on, they’re idiots.

[Utah man forever]

In Viet Nam the US brought in a team to examine how to lower the number of lost helicopters. They started counting the hits on returning aircraft and began armoring the places without hits on the returning aircraft. It worked because they had isolated the problem and devised a way to correct it. Utah could perhaps use the same technique: bring in an independent specialist (ie. coach or team) to analyse what needs to change and make the offence more effective. Utilize people such as UM and known offensive gurus not their own people.

I also agree that recruiting to a offensive scheme (players and coaches) would be a big advantage and optimizing the offence to fit the players within said scheme, this is also very important.

[Anonymous]

Great bring in an outside advisor who’ll tell you that you’ve recruited poorly at the QB and WR position. You’ve played with a G5 level QB tha past 4 years who can’t read pss defenses. We all know this, so why waste the time on the outside advisor. Now if that advisor could recruit two 4 star or higher QBs and three 4 star or higher WRs every year, he’d be worth the money.

[89ute]

What gives me solace is taking a step back and look at the monumental task of entering the Pac-12. What we are seeing is a building process with limited resources. Remember the revenue progression? It was something like 0-50-75 then full percentage? Imagine how hard it was to recruit during year one and two? I don’t know what the budget was, or what it is now, but I’m betting it’s something like comparing vacations of a family that brings in 45k a year to a family that brings in a million a year.

I’m impressed with what our school has done in 5 years. Football and basketball are knocking on the doors of Pac 12 championships while being totally handcuffed financially compared to our conference mates.

So back to fixing the offense. I think it’s being fixed now. Whitt knew his best chance to compete was to build the defense and special teams. If we had Phil Knight type resources it wouldn’t take as long as it’s taking. We have a nice Florida pipeline that has been and is being laid. It costs a hell of a lot of money to recruit Florida compared to California. Airfare alone is three times as much. That’s sending coaches there plus bring kids in on visits. This is just one tiny piece of the pie.

We entered the conference when every other program decided to “step it up” in terms of football. Every program is dumping millions into facilities and coaches. Before Harbaugh, Stanford was perfectly content to suck hind tit in football. Look how much that has changed, and it’s not just Stanford, it’s everyone in the Pac-12. Every program, every AD, every president and chancellor has caught the vision to dump resources into bringing home a Pac-12 championship.

That is what we are up against and it could not be built all at once. Whitt has built a very good offensive line. It might play out to be the best in the conference next year. Now look at the QBs coming in. I’m excited about the offense next year.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by 89ute.