I have been watching Utah football since the 1964 Liberty Bowl season. I was hooked watching that team with Roy Jefferson. I have suffered through some bad seasons including the 1975/1976 1-10 seasons. But, expectations were low then. Up until this year the most disappointing season came in 1969 when Arizona kicked a last second field goal to win 16-14 and prevented us from winning the WAC championship.
This is just my opinion and I do not expect anyone to agree with my thoughts. But, this last season left a bad taste in my mouth. It is not our worst season (not even close). If you would have said we would go 8-4 in August, I would have said that’s a pretty darn good season. But, back then we expected UCLA, Stanford and Oregon to be very good teams and we also expected Arizona and ASU to be much better than they turned out.
Our best win and maybe only qualify PAC 12 win was USC. It was a good win and a nice comeback. In the end you could say all of our losses were by a TD or less. That is indeed true, but many of our wins were less than impressive as well.
I’m very disappointed in our overall defensive play. We knew that linebacker would be a weakness this year. But, they were somewhere just just better than horrible IMO. We had a very good defensive line, but the linebackers and corners disappointed IMO. The safeties had some very good moments and that was expected. But, there were also some bobheaded mistakes.
Our offensive line started very bad, but came on and then ended a little weak for some reason. I have no explanartion for the Oregon game. We should have been able to run for 250 yards without a sweat.
Running back started bad and then we got a string of bad injuries. But, Williams came back and made RB an unexpected surprise. Overall, RB turned out better than I expected.
Wide receivers turned out to be about what I thought they would be, just average for our conference.
I am very siappointed with our QB play. I think we threw for something like 57%. That is not close to where it needs to be. Willaims has a much stronger arm than Travis ever had, which led to a number of huge plays. But IMO, Travis was a better overall QB than Williams. We were horrific in the Red Zone. At least Travis could run the read option inside the 20. Troy seems like a very good young man and I wish him well in life. Saying that, I truly hope that Huntley or the new recruit steps up and is good enough to take the starting position. I do not think that Williams is capable of leading us to a PAC 12 championship.
I am so disappointed in our offensive play calling. There is NO creativity. I’m not suire if this is our coordinaors’ fault or to blame KW. The bottom line is that we are never innovative on offense. Do we need a new coordinator? I don’t know, but I will say that we need a true QB coach (someone who has played the position.)
I had higher expectations for our defense. I think Scalley made some big mistakes. However, this was his first season. I suspect he will learn from his mistakes and will be much better next year. At least I hope so.
KW makes the most of his players and is in some ways an amazing coach. But, I do not like his style. You cannot play close games week in and week out and expect not to lose. This was very evident in the Cal and Oregon games.
I am so unhappy about the way we play in November. We should have destroyed Oregon. There was no excuse for that debacle. Had we won that game – the Colorado game could have been much different. We lost heart when Oregon caught that pass in the end zone with 2 seconds to play. That loss, was one of the most painful losses for me. It was certainly the worst losss IMO since the 1994 New Mexico game.
It was not the 8-4 record that made this season so painful for me. The PAC12 turned out to be much weaker this season and with two weeks to play we controlled our own destiny. But, we ended up losing both games and end up in the 6th PAC 12 bowl game and only 6 teams made it to bowl games. NOT GOOD!!! We had a lot of studs on this team. Many will play in the pros and likely three juniors will be leaving early. Yet, we did not capitalize and win the South. Very disappointing to me.
I know there were a lot of injuries early in the season and I can see how a loss to Cal may be related to the injuries. However, we were quite healthy when we had two games to play. We had the chance right in front of us and once again we did not deliver in November. Honestly, I put most of this on the coaching staff and not the players IMO.
Again, this is just how I feel about this season. I do not expect anyone else to agree with me.
Go Utes!!!
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