2008 National Champ

Taylor was also the last in a long string of what of felt like a new OC every year and his scheme was radically different than what anyone was used to. There was always going to be a certain segment of the fan base that didn’t like how he did things, but if we are being honest, that’s going to be true no matter what happens.

2017 Taylor took a…[Read more]

The option route you speak of was for Vaki to either continue his route across the middle like he did against SC for the TD or settle in the open area. Once he turned in he committed the QB, not the other way around. If he wanted to settle against his coverage read, he should have stayed at the apex of turn. Vele has a habit of doing that also.…[Read more]

Fifita is a red-shirt freshman.

There are a lot of reasons why Utah doesn’t have a good passing game. Part of it is Barnes/Johnson, part of it is line play, part of it is play-calling, part of it is the receivers. How much you want to assign to each is up to each viewer’s discretion.

Right now, Utah just is not good at offense. Yes, there…[Read more]

He’s got a good scheme. At Utah, I had two main complaints: 1) he seemed to come up with a new formation package every week, which he doesn’t do anymore and 2) he would go away from what was working for no apparent reason.

I remember the 2017 game against Stanford. Moss and Henry-Cole were running all over them and Utah was down 3 late in the…[Read more]

People say that every year after Utah loses a game and it’s never true. I keep hoping Ludwig will recognize that he doesn’t have the players to run his preferred two TE offense and dig into that playbook of his that’s supposed to have over 1,000 plays.

When your line is getting beat, do them a favor and call some hot reads or screens. I can’t…[Read more]

Vaki is playing out of position and it’s shown the last couple of games. I’m actually not sure what his best position is on D. When they blitz him, he does well. And he’s decent in coverage but not what you want from a Free. Where he’s really struggling is when he needs to set the edge. Maybe he’d be better off moving back to nickel?

The…[Read more]

Yup. I thought they’d go for two.

And how bad was that last 4th down play? Catch that damn ball and you are driving for the winning points. How do you not get dirty on that one?

The first pick was 100% on Vaki. The second one was a great play by the defender.

The problem is the routes, not the passer. It doesn’t appear as if any of the calls have option routes because they run the same tree no matter the defense. If you want to run a stick route, you need to either have a route over the top to draw to put the defender…[Read more]

The problem is that they aren’t good at either run or pass blocking so you can’t lean on either. 3rd and short, 4th and short the runner is getting hit in the backfield. But they keep running those plays as if the line is getting 6 yards of push.

Interestingly, the one 4th down they converted today was also the longest pass of the game.…[Read more]

Stanford scores to cut it to one point.

ASU has a good D Line so Utah will struggle on O. But they have a much worse offense. 24-12 Utah and everyone who watches the game will want to know why they are watching 1970’s vintage offensive playcalling in 2023.

UW is gettable but you have to play a complete game. ASU very well could have won last week in Seattle and Stanford is giving them everything they can handle tonight.

There isn’t a team in the league that doesn’t have flaws. You just have to exploit them on the correct day.

I like the optimism. But is Utah really going to pin it’s championship hopes on two guys who haven’t played a down so far in their freshman year to be lockdown corners?

Still need to get into the top 11 and that’s going to be tough if the secondary and OLine don’t get figured out.

without trying to restart the Barnes/Johnson, who is worse debate.,, Johnson was 8-23 in the Oregon State game you are crediting to Barnes.

Ultimately, both have played passably against bad defenses and terrible when up against a competent DLine. We see QB’s wilt under the Utah pressure D almost every week. I’m not sure why some expect the Utah…[Read more]

When you get beat like that, it’s not any one thing. Tip your cap to the other guy and go figure out how to do better next week. Because you just got beat in every phase of the game by a damn good team.

^^^ This didn’t age well

Not predators as much as an invasive species that makes a lot of useless noise and never leaves a place as good as they found it.