(Red) Back to winning... but at what cost?

The Utes started another winning streak this last Saturday after handling Louisville. Easily the most complete performance of the year for the guys in Crimson. First off the defense. The defense has been a little maligned this year after giving up some big plays to the first 3 opponents. The coaches took the defense back to basics and it excelled. Utah only gave up 80 yards on the ground, the week after giving up 200 vs Oregon. The only substantial rushing yards Louisville got was off their Qb and his scrambling. The front 7 shut down the run all day long. In the pass game they gave up 180 yards. I'll take that any day of the week. The DBs are struggling a little bit right now, they are still developing but they are making progress. They have the speed to run with any wideout in the country, now they need to develop their ball skills. So often they are stride for stride with the receiver but they never look back to find the ball. I know this is a Coach Whitt philosophy, and traditionally that has improved as the year has progressed in the past. I expect that to be the case this season. The safeties are just studs. Robert Johnson is without a doubt the best safety in the league. He is always around the ball and making plays. This game he recovered a fumble by throwing it in the field of play so it could be recovered by his teammate, very similar to what happens in basketball when someone saves the ball. And the linebackers are playing awesome right now too. Sly is always in the back field, and Kepa Giason and Mike Wright teamed up on a play where Kepa tipped a pass in the air and Wright picked it off deep in Louisville territory. The front 4 were plugging holes and pressuring the QB all game. Koa Misi is 100% and it shows. He was running down running backs and wide outs all game long when they tired to run laterally. He caused the fumble that RoJo recovered by chasing down a wide out on a sweep and stripping the ball. He also has some slobber knocking hits. The one negative on the line is the loss of Lei Talamaiveo. He broke a bone in his leg and could be done for the year, that definitely hurts the depth. The Dline is deep though so i'm not all that worried.

Special teams look to be stabilized. Luke Mathews is going great fielding punts, his only problems were last game was he didn't follow blocks on returns when he could have busted off some big ones if he would have. So frustrating watching that. Our Punter Sean Sellwood is a stud. Very Louie Sakoda like with his punting. He kicked some bombs in this game. Like him a lot. Blocked a field goal to open the game, which swung the momentum of the game, that is now 3 blocked kicks this year (2 punts, 1 fg), and we were getting close to punts all game long. And for FG kicking, looks like Joe Phillips has grabbed that job. He kicked a great 48 yarder before half that was big.

Offense was explosive but hit or miss. They opened up the game with a 3 and out. But after the blocked FG they marched 80 yards for a TD on a Matt Asiata 24 yard TD run. After the RoJo fumble recovery Cain hit Reed on a 50 yard TD pass just a few plays later. Cain actually started the game 9/9 and was very effective. Overall for the game Cain was 17/22 for 202 yards, 2 TDs and 1 INT. He really let the game come to him and he played great. The rushing game was also very good, even when Asiata went down. Eddie Wide ran for 120+ yards on 19 carries. He averaged almost 7 yards a carry. He ran very good out of what Utah called the "Asiata Formation". Thats just a direct snap play, and he ran very well. When I was at the game it didn't look like he was getting much on most carries but rewatching the game he was getting good chunks of yards every time he touched the ball. He may have lost yards only a few times. Cain ran the ball very nicely too, mostly on designed runs. But he ran great and gave the defense a lot of problems since they had to defend him running as well. I will address the new running back situation in a different post. The wide receivers played so much better in this game. They redeemed themselves after a bad Oregon game. Aiona Key got into the action a little more which is good. David Reed was a stud as always. Jereme Brooks had a great 3rd and 15 play that got the Utes a TD after receiving a swing pass from Cain and making some tacklers miss.

Play calling was very good in this game. I can see Dave Schramm (Offensive Coordinator) evolve as a play caller. He simplified things for Cain a little bit to help him develop and Cain flourished. I'd still like to see the wide outs get some more running plays on sweeps and such, but I figure that is still to come.

Overall a very pleasing game (minus some injuries).
The question is was the game to costly with some season ending injuries? It is part of the game, and I will analyze the impact of the Asiata injury in a different post.
Next week : BYE


Colorado St vs BYU - I was not able to watch this game at all so I'm going off statistics and some second hand information. I know BYU jumped out to an early lead due to a lot of errors on CSU. A great blocked punt really helped. Max Hall did throw 2 interceptions. I do think that is 15 interceptions he has thrown since last years Utah game. 15 picks in 6 games is a cause for concern. BYU did score though, there is never question if they are going to score. One stat that is startling was 117 yards of penalties. The combo of penalties and turnovers are a concern. They penalties are something that can be fixed. The defense also gave up over 400 yards of offense to CSU. Now I don't know how those yards were obtained but those are a lot of yards to a non Spread offense team. And 370 of those yards were through the air. BYU needs to fix that quick, just like the turnovers, because some of these MWC teams can move the ball. Namely TCU and Utah. I don't expect BYU to lose to the second tier MWC teams but they need to work on those issues to be competitive with TCU and to beat Utah. Again my opinion on the game is kind of weak because I didn't see it but the stats weren't great. But hey a win is a win and that's all that counts. And for that BYU and Utah are both 3-1. Right where I expected both teams to be at this point. I do expect a lot of improvement from both teams over the coming weeks.
Next Game USU-
I expect BYU to win this game pretty easily. I do think USU will give them a scare for a while but BYU will score a lot of points on them. USU has a good back that will give BYU some problems and Gary Andersen is a genius and will come up with some looks to confuse Max Hall, but like in the Utah/USU game USU doesn't have the horses yet to win, but it may be interesting for a while until BYU pulls away.
45-21 BYU

(Blue) Where do we go from here?

Well,
Lets review. Colorado State lost. Louisville lost. This isn't really surprising for those of us who pay attention to these things. But from what my associate Red tells me, Asiata tore his ACL and for all intensive purposes has just died(College football speaking). That sucks for them. He was just barely told last week that he was the leading rusher in the MW and now... not so much. But it's a win. Utah controlled and that's good, showed some cohesiveness that they were needing, but lets see how well they adjust their offense to include Eddie Wide. He looked good from his stats, so we'll see.



Our guys... Defense was good but kind of inconsistent. Liked the blocked kick. I also liked the turnovers that were generated. However, we have a big soft underbelly and people pass short up the middle with a will against us. And Logon, one of our corners, does some amazing stuff for his size, but gets regularly worked on the deep ball. What bothers me most about that situation is that he is a really obvious desperate looking pass coverage guy for the long throws so he always gets caught for pass interference. Which sucks. But we had some STELLAR hits(often after several missed tackles by us :( ). Lastly looks like Johnson is back and doing his job well, so that is key.

Other side of the ball. *sigh. Hall, you're fired. I know, I know, you are a good design quarterback, and when everything is going great with your scheme and the opposing defense is spread out and not that fast, you do great. But lets not forget one key element to good quarterbacking: you're not supposed to throw the the other team. Sorry, that's just how foot ball is. But aside from his customary picks, I liked to see some successful scramble. That is great. Unga was monstrous, and good. Pitta was really good. Offensively, things went ok, but not quite running at optimum.

End result of these games is that we both go will go on to MW play, probably dominating but with question marks for TCU and possibly UNLV. We will both get better, and I anticipate some close games for the MW Championship. Too bad that's all we have to live for. Just for the record: I HATE Boise State. Red can extrapolate more of that probably. Ask him.

Now, just for giggles, I couldn't find anything online suitably clever to answer Red's little BYU poster slight (although I admit that I have always found the Salt Flat picture series kinda gay looking) so I went ahead and made a few of my own. I want you to vote for your fave. These pics are courtesy of "The Oregonian" a paper there that ran these pics with glee.

(Red) A funny pic from Utefans.net..

Sorry to my Cougar friends. But this made me laugh. Thought I would share

(Red) The end of the streak... and the end of perfection...

November 2007, that was when the Utes lost their last game. Since then it has been a 16 game winning streak for the boys in Crimson. The Oregon Ducks ended that streak this weekend. At the time I was very discouraged, border line depressed, especially at the point the Utes were down 28-10 in the third quarter. Before we knew it however the score was 28-24 after some great defensive plays and the offense getting into a rhythm.  A couple late interceptions sealed the deal and the Utes could never over come the hole they dug themselves into.
The game started out very ominously when Oregon returns a punt for a touchdown after the first Utah possession. For the remaining of the half the Utes were rather inept when it came to moving the ball. I have to blame this on a couple factors. First off, Matt Asiata was shaken up from the previous week with a bad shoulder. From the get go it was rather evident that Asiata was very hesitant when taking the ball and hitting the hole. So when it was 1st and 10 the running game started off very weak and for the first half the Utes were always in a 2nd or 3rd and long type scenarios. It also was showing with the play calling that Offensive Coordinator Dave Schramm was trying to protect Matt as well by putting much more responsibility on Terrence Cain, our starting quarterback, who was starting in his 3rd D1a game. Cain started out the game 3/4 and it was down hill from there for the rest of the first half. He finished the half some bad like 6/18 or something like that. The wide receivers were also very disappointing, they couldn't get separation from defenders and had some dropped balls that really hurt drives. Other than the Utes returned punt they gave up, special teams had some big plays. Namely Aiona Key, kick blocking expert, blocked a punt and gave the Utes the ball on the Oregon 19 yard line. On the ensuing play Cain rushed in from the 19 for a touchdown on an awesome read option play to tie the game at 7. That would be the end of the scoring for the half for the Utes. For the next seven possessions the Utes went three and out and for a couple reasons as started before (inept running game, bad wide out play, some bad play calling). The defense was rather disappointing in the first half, Oregon didn't really do a great job putting a sustained drive together, but where the problem was, was in big plays. On the second scoring drive for the Ducks the Utes allowed about a 60 yard pass down to the 8 yard line on busted coverage of a corner lined up wrong. These plays have happened over the first 3 games of the season and they appear to be fixable, the inexperience at the corner position is showing up early and I do expect improvement as the season progresses. The real problem was at the end of the second half when the Utes recovered a muffed punt deep in Oregon territory. The most painful part of the drive was when we moved it to the 2 yard line with 2 seconds remaining in the half and the Utes had a choice for a field goal or to go for it. I was all for going for it because it would have cut it to 21-14 and the Utes would have all the momentum. Give it to Asiata and let him bulldoze his way in or run an option. No they ran some fade pattern to Reed in the corner of the end zone. Low percentage, bad play and it was incomplete.
The second half the offense finally got moving more. Asiata was running with more authority. The wide outs were making plays. And the defense was forcing turnovers. Utah scored 17 points in the third quarter, both offensively and defensively. And there for a while it looked like they were going to pull out number 17 in a row. With the score 28-24 they were driving when Cain was picked off on a bad throw. The d held Oregon to a field goal. At 31-24 the Utes were driving again and at the Oregon 40 yard line when Cain barley missed a wide out on a deep route that turned out to be picked off, ending the threat. Robert Johnson was a stud in the second half. 1 pick in the endzone, a fumble recovery for a td. He finally showed up after being rather quiet the first 2 and 1/2 games.
In summary of the Oregon game. We lost. Cut and dry the Utes did not deserve to win. That being said. If the Utes convert on that goal line play at the end of half who know what could have happened. The Utes had 7 straight 3 and outs in the first half. Another scoring opportunity in the first half when Cain missed Brooks for a TD by under throwing him, no points on that drive. And those 2 late INTs just sealed the deal. With all the bad play the Utes were within 4 points in the fourth and could have won it. But a loss we will take. It can be a growing experience for this team, in particular our 2 new coordinators and our new offensive personnel. And for the experienced members of the team it can renew their hunger to win, it can remind them what is required to win. If the Utes do not correct these issues they will lose 2+ more games easy. The point here is that issues the Utes have are correctable. And this team has fight. It could have gave up when down 18 points on the road in a rowdy Autzen Stadium. But they didn't they fought. They got close. That shows up with Cains total numbers, they weren't impressive at all but he did recover pretty well with completing 20-41 balls and almost 200 yards and a TD on a great play that had broken down. Not to mention the 70 yards rushing and the TD. Cain was actually a one man band on offense for much the game (He was responsible for around 270 of the 300 yards the Ute put up). Inconsistent at times, but he's still got the potential to be a great one at the U.Who knows, with more experience they win that game. That is something I'm excited to see develop as the season continues.

We all want our teams to go undefeated, I have been extremely fortuniate to be a part of 2 undefeated seasons (2004/2008) and BCS runs, but the truth is to go undefeated is very difficult and you need to have a lot of things go your way. Last year the Utes had those things go their way, this year the inexperience is not allowing for those things to break the Utes direction. It has been an awesome 22 months of winning, now it is time to refocus and start another winning streak starting Saturday against Louisville (preview coming later in the week).

As for reaction to what happened in Provo. I know I'm going to sound like a douche saying this but I saw it coming, maybe not to the extent it happened.  But I told my counterpart Blue throughout the week that if FSU was to win they would have to pressure Hall, and their speed was going to be a problem. I predicted it in the summer a FSU win over BYU. I said in another blog BYUs defense has yet to be tested. OU didn't attack the weakness of BYU and Tulane just had no shot. That weakness is speed. FSU has always had speed on both sides of the ball. And in the highlights I caught it was obvious BYU was not ready for it. Some of the Hall picks were with corners breaking on the ball and cutting off the route. The FSU offense ran over, threw, under, where ever it wanted. That is BYUs weakness, speed. It creates pressure on Hall and he turns the ball over. On defense they just are not athletic enough currently to keep up with people in space. Now I would have to watch the game thoroughly to get a better read on the game. But I could guess the coaches did the players a massive disservice by not adjusting properly. That has been the problem with the Y for the last couple years. People have caught on to what they do and the Y coaches are yet to adjust, whether in games or during the week they are convinced it is execution. BYU executes as good as any team out there, so I would say if that is the problem, it's not a huge one. The problem is they are slow. BYU will still win 9 or 10 games, they just need some more horses. I'll tell you what at this point, combine the Utah athletes and mentality with the precision of the Cougs, scary team it would be.

So here we are both teams 2-1. BYU ranked 19th, Utah unranked (although really close in the coaches poll). It is gut check time for both teams. How do they respond? That shows a lot in terms of character.
Right now we are riding TCUs coattails for a potential BCS bid. But Blue did bring up an interesting quandary. Do we root for TCU to go unbeaten and leapfrog Boise St. or do we want our own teams to win the title. As a selfish Ute fan I want the title. It is a 4 year cycle of evaluation for the BCS to see if they add another conference, thus allowing more money for the league. I just don't see the WAC competing with the MWC just based off of Boise St. The rest of the league is horrible. I'd say also BSU is 4th or 5th in the MWC if they played in our conference. So for now we just sit, wait, and watch to see how things pan out.

(Blue) When the S@#$ hits the fan...

Today the sun arose, and thus began the dawn of our discontent. Yesterday was a dark day all over the Wasatch front and frankly, I think the weather reflected the mood after the games. Which games? The UofU/Oregon and the BYU/FSU games of course. Lets just say that I disliked FSU before, and now I really can't stand them. For all that, the blame for this terrible loss falls squarely on the shoulders of BYU. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, this seems to be SOP for BYU, get within touching distance of something great, than screw it up royal.

Lets review: Week one, amazing victory against #3 ranked OSU. Nobody gave us a chance, but we got it. Than a slow start against Tulane, but wailed on them for a big win. Now, the best part about all of this was that both these games were on ESPN and FOR ONCE there was a lot of positive talk nationally about us. Perhaps it was the Cinderella story feel to it that people seem to enjoy, perhaps we were coasting on some hard won conference respect the Utes gained last year. Either way, we were finally in a position to beak into the top five nationally for the first time in like, forever. Probably the nineties. Anyway, then what happens? We come home(where we are usually good), and get CREAMED by FSU. Now the referees REALLY didn't help, but I'd say that was the least of our troubles. Biggest issues: Hall is crap(sorry man, I am sure you are a nice guy, but I have never been all that for you since the beginning and you constantly prove my disapproval right) with 3 interceptions and general ineptitude by being flustered. Our defense, which has been really tough last two games, just couldn't do anything against their O line and no cover ability. That let them do pretty much whatever they wanted. And finally, our kicking game sucks. Seriously. We pretty much gave them two first downs every time we kicked it off.

A separate issue I have with BYU is the following: FUMBLES. Now look, I played one year of football when I was like 11. But one thing I learned, and I suppose everybody else who plays also learns. TWO HANDS ON THE BALL! Seriously, I had the misfortune of witnessing our game personally, and I predicted accurately almost every one of our turnovers just by how reckless and sloppy the play before was going. So yeah.

As for the Utes, that was lame. I don't like Oregon. And the fact that the boys in red could have pulled it out and then crapped out is really lame. I saw a few highlights and it seemed that turnovers equally toasted both of us. Sorry guys, seems like the streak is over. But I think that is probably a good thing. There is enough going on in players heads already that that kind of extra pressure can't do anything positive (much like our retarded theme last year- Perfection).

So what does this mean? Basically it means that for our conference, TCU is the last hope. And for either the Red or the Blue to get the conference (which is pretty much all we have to live for at this point) we have to knock them off. So I'm torn. Do I want to drag TCU down to our level so we can win the conference? or do I want them to beat us so the MW(Mountain West) can at least make a respectable national showing? I can't decide, but the way we are playing, it probably doesn't matter what I want.

The thing that burns me worse of all is that all of those critics who say that all of this other conferences are so much inherently better: Pac 10, Big 12, ACC, etc) and that the MW can't hack it; well now they feel completely justified in their opinions. That really bites, because I know it's all BS, but ours is a difficult position to defend when we have a weekend like this.

So in reflection, if we were to look at the MW as a team, these two games were indicative of how that team is fairing. There is great great potential, and we should be putting touchdowns on the board, but on fortunately, we choke and give up a big turnover. Maybe the MW could be rolling. Should be. But we just threw a pick and had it run back on us for a multi-million dollar touch down. (for those of your that aren't sharp, that is reflective of the good bowl money we won't be seeing now)

(Red) Before I get to a game blog...

I need to address something... these uniforms that Oregon wore could possibly be the most awful uniforms I've ever seen. They have some sharp looking stuff... but really? Very poor effort on the uni front.

They may even be worse than...

... even my blue friend was embarrassed by these.

Welcome - from the Red Side!

This blog is going to be composed by 2 fans (and students) of 2 rival schools, Utah and BYU. We will be doing opinionated break downs of each schools respective match up, their own match ups, and maybe even random match ups throughout the country. So yes, this is a college football blog that will have differing opinions on a lot and similar opinions on maybe a few. There is one thing we can agree on for sure, we are both in it together for the respect of the Mountain West Conference. This is a really cheesy line but, we win together and we lose together. I hope who ever sees and reads this blog enjoys it, spreads it, contributes to it, and helps us improve it. We love our teams and we want to share that.
So...
Go Utes!
and on the behalf of the blue side... Go Cougars!