Wow — Moa picks Tennessee

[UteFan Vineyard]

too bad

[AZUTE]

I’m shocked. This hurts

[Utah#1]

It doesn’t hurt and you shouldn’t be shocked. Some people on here weeks ago told me to go pound sand and kick rocks when I said, this dude isn’t worth wasting time over. If he wanted to play at Utah he woulda committed already, but he kept changing his commit date. They had predictions on X Twitter that he was like 93% to Utah. When he didn’t commit and kept changing his dates, those X Twitter posts disappeared. Don’t know why some of us Utah fans put a lot faith in these kid coming to Utah when the writing was on the wall. Something about Tennessee lured him there whether it was NIL money, Tennessee, his family, who knows. I think two subpar coaching seasons by Whitt and the moved to the Big12 hurt Utah more than some of us care to admit. Last season the seven games we lost were winnable games even with Wilson at the helm, but that ain’t gonna get it done. Losing Rising a true leader hurt the program and we had no backup QB leader to fill those shoes. Hope with this new OC and offensive personnel, they can return to back to their winning ways again.

[Hoban Washburne]

💵💵💵

[UteFan Vineyard]

Rivals had them at less than 1%. Apparently they have no idea what’s going on

[SLC-UteFan]

Next man up.

I never got my hopes up for him anyway because when he delayed i just had a feeling it wasn’t going to be Utah.

[UtesRule]

Poop!

[Hoban Washburne]

Maybe we can sink the same money into 2-3 solid recruits and hope one pops?

[RustyShackleford]

Did Ben Moa have a bad time at Utah? How do you have three sons and none of them end up at Utah one way or the other?

[Ute Dub]

One of the sons wanted to play DE, and Utah projected him as a DT…so there wasn’t mutual interest there, ultimately, and the kid went to BYU, right?

[RustyShackleford]

All I know is if Utah is projecting you to be something on defense you listen. Harvey Langey comes to mind.

[SLC-UteFan]

My opinion is that until Utah can have a few seasons where WRs have consistent production in the offense (catching the ball, not just blocking LOL) this will continue.

However Utah picked up Creed and Merriweather in the portal. Both solid WRs that had 247 high school rankings of 94 and 95 that I honestly was surprised they chose Utah. I was thrilled with that and that exceeded my expectations on the transfer portal that Utah picked up.

[Yergensen]

Best of luck to him.

If it doesn’t work out, maybe we get him 2nd time around. Everything is fluid in college football.

[Central Coast Ute]

If it doesn’t work out, why does Utah want him?

[Yergensen]

Huh? With that logic we shouldn’t take most of the players we take from the portal.

[wally]

Bummer but I hope he transfers back to Utah in the future!! I am happy that it seems our staff doesn’t burn any bridges with kids these crazy days!

[chinngiskhaan]

meh

[SLC-UteFan]

This really is the right attitude.

If he rips it up at Tenn I won’t notice.

Some are commenting that we have a chance to flip him around national signing day. Well, count me out of that hope. Even if Utah runs through the conference and wins in Arlimgton, I would still doubt he would consider flipping to Utah. I mean we all know the SEC >>> Big 12 and that itself makes it highly unlikely. Besides (correct me if wrong) but wouldn’t he have to back out of NIL deals, thus making it more unlikely he’d flip? Meaning, I’m sure Tenn is aware that Utah and others would try to flip him so I would guess Tenn would try to lock him up through NIL if possible (again, I don’t know how all this works so maybe I am wrong.)

Good luck to him. And that’s all that I will say about him.

[Holladay Ute]

Not surprising, but disappointing given Rivals (and our own sources) said it was likely we’d get him. When he delayed his decision, I assumed our odds went down a lot.

It sounds like they were recruiting him as a WR (so I’m assuming that’s what he wanted to play). Would he have made a big instant impact in 2026? Unlikely. And would Utah be able to turn him into a great WR at the college level? Maybe, maybe not (which has to be why he ended up choosing TN…they have a ton of WRs they’ve sent to the NFL). I would’ve loved to have the talent on our roster and I’m sure he would’ve eventually been a good player for us. In the meantime, Utah just needs to be scrappy at the WR position and generate a good (doesn’t have to be great) passing game w/ high three-star recruits. If our new offense can produce a solid passing game in the next year or two, we may start to get players like this once in a while (a 5-star skill position player). I think it’s encouraging that we were in the final two (and the frontrunner for much of it).

I really wanted him, but mainly b/c it would’ve helped quiet BYU fans from beating their chests on the recruiting front. By the way, they were beating their chests about his brother (Aisea Moa) a couple years ago and then he just barely transferred to Michigan State (and never did anything for them). You never know how a high school player will pan out. Utah needs to be successful consistently recruiting a handful of 4-stars out of high school on the OL, at RB, and on defense. Everywhere else I hope we can fill in w/ solid transfer portal adds and mid/high 3-stars that we develop. I think this formula would produce similar results to what we’re used to.

[Central Coast Ute]

There is no more developing 3 stars. If a kid is good, you put him on the field. If not, you cut him and bring in someone from the portal to take his place. Doesn’t sound nice but it’s what the players wanted. Morgan Scalley even said the other day development is a thing of the past. You can’t put all of that time and energy into a kid just to have him bail for another school.

[BeachUte]

I’ll also throw out that Utah doesn’t have the financial luxury of developing a player anymore. You can’t invest all the time and energy taking a three-star recruit and turning them into an all-conference star because other programs are going to throw a ton of green their way and Utah likely won’t be able to compete with a lot of them. They for sure will keep some but what we saw this last off-season will be the norm: unheralded players blowing up and getting picked off. To be fair, Utah will do it to some poor program too.

But we’ve got to be of the mindset that a new recruit is here for two seasons and two seasons only. You can’t be developing them for those two seasons or you’re getting very little in return at that point. And if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll get two more seasons out of them.

[Holladay Ute]

I agree w/ a lot of the underlying points you’re both making, but I still think development of high school recruits (many of which will end up being 3-stars for Utah) is an important, if not essential, part of building a good team.

Important players we developed as 3-stars out of high school on last year’s team: Micah Bernard, Johnathan Hall, Tao Johnson, Connor O’Toole, Karene Reid, Junior Tafuna, etc. We only won 5 games last year. Without these players, we might’ve only won 1-2 and there would’ve been a lot more blowouts than just the Colorado game. If we include 4-stars we developed out of high school, then add Spencer Fano, Caleb Lomu, Smith Snowden, Lander Barton, etc. (i.e. all of our best players this coming year). Sure, these obviously played and made important contributions their freshman year, but they were still freshman and needed development to get to where they are today.

Look at BYU’s team last year. Mostly built from under-appreciated 3-star high school recruits that they developed.

And I also disagree that it’s not worth developing a 3-star athlete into an all-conference player. If they get to that level, then we will have gotten a fantastic ROI on them even if they leave after their sophomore or junior year. This is no different than what used to happen where you might develop a great player who leaves for the NFL after his junior year. Keanu Tanuvasa was still a positive ROI for us based on the three years we had him (particularly the last two). Cam Calhoun is maybe the prime example of a guy we helped develop who then jumped elsewhere for the money (but we only had him for one year so it wasn’t a massive investment on our part).

You just have to accept that some of those guys you develop will inevitably leave. If you’re losing most of those guys, then yes I agree. What other good players did we lose to the portal who we invested a lot into development?

[Holladay Ute]

FWIW, I do think it’s important for Utah to focus “development” efforts on certain position groups, while avoiding others.

We are good at developing offensive lineman, running backs, and players on defense. That’s where I think Utah should focus most of its high school recruiting resources. If you’re going to spend time growing players, grow them in those places.

As was said below, we are not good at developing WRs. And it’s probably not worth it for us to develop QBs either. So those are places where I think you go all-in on the transfer portal to buy players who can make instant impacts.

[2008 National Champ]

I’ve been saying since Utah got in to the Pac-12 that it’s unbelievable that Utah is the only school that brings in WR’s and they ALL underperform. All you have to do is look at a school like WSU where they routinely bring in high 2*, low 3 *’s and they become all conference. It’s not the skill level of the player, it’s how you utilize them. And since Utah has only been interested in downfield blockers for the last 15+ years, it’s no wonder that room has consistently underwhelmed in the passing game.

[Bob]

Ute football has lost in almost every measurable way over the past two years. Injuries, recruiting, transfers, conference realignment, and of course, actual game losses. I try to stay optimistic but I feel like we’re in a bizarro world right now. There has been an uptick in hype over the past month with several “experts” and oddsmakers touting the Utes as bouncing all the way back to a conference championship. I’ll believe it when I see it, but those same experts were saying Moa would end up in Utah with some touting 100% confidence. It feels like we are at a turning point where things need to change fast or Utah football is going to fall into oblivion.

[BeachUte]

I hate to say it but it feels like pure hubris all around has cost Utah – from the coaches, to the players and to the fans. It’s been an awful look since Utah was forced into the Big 12. Our fans thumped their chest, Whitt hinted at Utah not being a permanent member of the Big 12 (when he made that comment about expecting Utah and UCLA to play again due to conference alignment changing again) and so many people suggesting Utah was on deck for the Big 10. Well I’m guessing any interest from that side has cooled significantly. On top of that, the hubris of coaching, specific to the vquarterback position, has really set Utah back. And all of this at the worst possible time since there’s already a huge amount of uncertainty in college football right now and the teams poised to take advantage of it are the ones with some level of stability and success, which boggles the mind because that was Utah up until 2023.

It just shows how rapidly everything can come undone. We just gotta hope it can be fixed just as rapidly… but I’m not so sure. Utah feels broken right now.

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