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Official Utah Utes Football 2012 Thread

SaltyDawg said:
I think Utah had Pac 12 caliber players on offense. John White was one of the best running backs in the conference. Utah also had several good receivers last year who sucked this year.

I find it hard to believe Devonte Christopher could go from NFL caliber to not even Pac 12 caliber, while coincidentally every other receiver on the roster had a similar regression. Reggie Dunn was grossly under utilized. He should have had several passes every game.

These guys aren't unknowns, they were Pac 12 caliber players last season.

I think the coaching staff totally blew it this year on the offensive side of the ball.

I'm pretty confident that if Utah and TCU had traded coaching staffs before the season, Utah would be going bowling.

Not to put it all on the coaches, the players certainly deserve a lot of blame too (starting with the most inconsistent kicker in college football). But the coaches on the offensive side of the ball were definitely not Pac 12 caliber this season.
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most inconsistent kicker in college football? Uh hell no that title goes to byu's kicker justin sorenson.
He even managed to miss 2 xtra points in the last game
 
SaltyDawg said:
I think Utah had Pac 12 caliber players on offense. John White was one of the best running backs in the conference. Utah also had several good receivers last year who sucked this year.

I find it hard to believe Devonte Christopher could go from NFL caliber to not even Pac 12 caliber, while coincidentally every other receiver on the roster had a similar regression. Reggie Dunn was grossly under utilized. He should have had several passes every game.

These guys aren't unknowns, they were Pac 12 caliber players last season.
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lol You can go to any college team out there and cherry pick some good talent. I'm talking as a whole. Thought that was obvious but guess not. So let's make it clear this time. Generally speaking Utah is near the bottom of the Pac12 when it comes to talent . . . clearly.
 
I think it's pretty clear:

#1 Utah needs to improve its' recruiting.
#2 Utah GREATLY needs to improve its' coaching.

It's one just one thing. It's both.

Utah would still be near the bottom of the Pac even if it had Oregon or USC talent on it with the way plays were called, defensive strategies, and players used.
 
CONAN said:
lol You can go to any college team out there and cherry pick some good talent. I'm talking as a whole. Thought that was obvious but guess not. So let's make it clear this time. Generally speaking Utah is near the bottom of the Pac12 when it comes to talent . . . clearly.
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I'm not cherry picking talent. I'm listing examples of players who were clearly Pac 12 caliber last season, but clearly not this season (Christopher, Anderson). And players who clearly were Pac 12 caliber this season but never had any plays (Dunn).

Utah has had 2 recruiting classes as a member of the Pac 12, and another recruiting class when everyone knew they would be joining the Pac 12. If they don't have Pac 12 caliber players by now, that's 100% on the coaches. I still think they do have Pac 12 caliber players though, they just aren't using them right.
 
SaltyDawg said:
I'm not cherry picking talent. I'm listing examples of players who were clearly Pac 12 caliber last season, but clearly not this season (Christopher, Anderson). And players who clearly were Pac 12 caliber this season but never had any plays (Dunn).

Utah has had 2 recruiting classes as a member of the Pac 12, and another recruiting class when everyone knew they would be joining the Pac 12. If they don't have Pac 12 caliber players by now, that's 100% on the coaches. I still think they do have Pac 12 caliber players though, they just aren't using them right.
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Yes you are cherry-picking. My point is that Utah is near the bottom of the Pac12 in terms of talent. You name a few players that are talented. That's fine. That doesn't change my argument one bit. You can have some talented players and still be a bottom-talent team overall. Stay in context if you quote me.
 
Reggie Dunn may have been under-utilized, but he had as much to do with that as Johnson did. Dunn seemed to drop or fumble almost every pass thrown his way early in the season. I was a big Dunn supporter and told anyone who would listen that he should get more touches, but it became obvious that he wasn't doing anything with the touches on offense. The two guys who really should have had more touches were Luke Matthews and Kelvin York. Matthews is one of the least appreciated Utes in memory, but all he seemed to do was make plays when his number was called. York had injury problems, but when he was healthy, he should have been getting the carries while JW4 was getting back to health.

It will be interesting to see how the safeties are next year if Rowe can stay healthy and if Blechen can get through the year without "breaking the rules". Pass the dutchie from the left hand side.
 
CONAN said:
Yes you are cherry-picking. My point is that Utah is near the bottom of the Pac12 in terms of talent. You name a few players that are talented. That's fine. That doesn't change my argument one bit. You can have some talented players and still be a bottom-talent team overall. Stay in context if you quote me.
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You would never know those players I named were talented based on this season. My point is the roster is likely full of talented offensive players that don't appear to be talented because of the crappy offensive system. And my lesser point is the Utes have had enough recruiting classes as a member of the Pac 12 where they should have Pac 12 talent.

After 2.5 recruiting classes, if they're really near the bottom of the conference in talent, that's on the coaches.
 
SaltyDawg said:
You would never know those players I named were talented based on this season. My point is the roster is likely full of talented offensive players that don't appear to be talented because of the crappy offensive system. And my lesser point is the Utes have had enough recruiting classes as a member of the Pac 12 where they should have Pac 12 talent.

After 2.5 recruiting classes, if they're really near the bottom of the conference in talent, that's on the coaches.
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That is a factor but I don't think it matters as much as just having raw talent to work with. Look at Stanford. Lose one of the best QBs in school history along with other NFL talent. Whatever, reload and on to another BCS bowl. USC? Down goes their NFL QB and they bring some scrub who nearly beats the #1 team in the country. Granted, those are top Pac12 teams but they just reload and go. I don't see Utah as having the starting talent or the depth of most of the Pac12. Look at Texas A&M going to a new conference and doing well. It's because the talent was comparable.

What really changed when Utah went to the Pac12 anyway? Really nothing but the competition. And now it's gonna take a little time for that to come to fruition. And I'd love to hear any coach say that 2 years of recruiting is plenty of time to turn around a program.

Look, with better coaching Utah maybe makes a bowl this year. But that's it. Give this group to whatever coach you want and they still are not sniffing a BCS bowl this year.

Some years it's just not there and you got to come to grips with that. There is no "what ifs" for the Utes this year. It is what it is.
 
CONAN said:
That is a factor but I don't think it matters as much as just having raw talent to work with. Look at Stanford. Lose one of the best QBs in school history along with other NFL talent. Whatever, reload and on to another BCS bowl. USC? Down goes their NFL QB and they bring some scrub who nearly beats the #1 team in the country. Granted, those are top Pac12 teams but they just reload and go. I don't see Utah as having the starting talent or the depth of most of the Pac12. Look at Texas A&M going to a new conference and doing well. It's because the talent was comparable.

What really changed when Utah went to the Pac12 anyway? Really nothing but the competition. And now it's gonna take a little time for that to come to fruition. And I'd love to hear any coach say that 2 years of recruiting is plenty of time to turn around a program.

Look, with better coaching Utah maybe makes a bowl this year. But that's it. Give this group to whatever coach you want and they still are not sniffing a BCS bowl this year.

Some years it's just not there and you got to come to grips with that. There is no "what ifs" for the Utes this year. It is what it is.
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This is my problem with you. For every 100 posts of garbage that comes from you, there's 1 intelligent post that makes me question if someone else is posting all that garbage under your user ID. I couldn't agree more with your last post.
 
CONAN said:
That is a factor but I don't think it matters as much as just having raw talent to work with. Look at Stanford. Lose one of the best QBs in school history along with other NFL talent. Whatever, reload and on to another BCS bowl. USC? Down goes their NFL QB and they bring some scrub who nearly beats the #1 team in the country. Granted, those are top Pac12 teams but they just reload and go. I don't see Utah as having the starting talent or the depth of most of the Pac12. Look at Texas A&M going to a new conference and doing well. It's because the talent was comparable.

What really changed when Utah went to the Pac12 anyway? Really nothing but the competition. And now it's gonna take a little time for that to come to fruition. And I'd love to hear any coach say that 2 years of recruiting is plenty of time to turn around a program.

Look, with better coaching Utah maybe makes a bowl this year. But that's it. Give this group to whatever coach you want and they still are not sniffing a BCS bowl this year.

Some years it's just not there and you got to come to grips with that. There is no "what ifs" for the Utes this year. It is what it is.
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I'm not saying Utah should have made a BCS Bowl this year. I realize they aren't an Oregon, Stanford, or USC caliber team.

However, Utah absolutely is an Oregon State, UCLA, Washington caliber team.

You ask what changed when they joined the Pac 12? The offensive coordinator and the defensive coordinator, for starters. I think the defensive coordinator actually changed a year or so before joining. But the defense was actually worse even before joining the Pac 12, and has gotten better with time. The offense has consistently gotten worse every year.

I'm also not saying Utah needed to "turn around the program" in 2 years. I'm just saying there is no excuse for not having any offense whatsoever after 2 full recruiting classes as a member of the Pac 12, plus another recruiting class when everyone was pretty sure they'd be going to the Pac 12. At what point do we finally hold the coaches accountable?

Utah didn't need to "turn the program around" or anything drastic like that. They just needed to at least maintain what they had and not regress.

Utah spanked UCLA a few years ago by almost 40 points. Utah blew out UCLA last season. This year Utah couldn't move the ball on anyone, with the exception of a few flashes here and there.

They got worse. At least on the offensive side of the ball, Utah was considerably worse than last year. And that has nothing to do with the level of competition because they played all the same teams as last season. None of those teams are defensive powers anyway.

There are several players on Utah's offense who were terrible this year. Many of those players were very good last year, and even better the year before. I think it's pretty rare that a college kid would suddenly lose his talent. Even more rare that several of them would, all on the same team. More likely is the team didn't properly utilize them to make the best of their talent.

I want to reiterate though, I'm not putting it all on the coaches. There were enough dropped passes, fumbles, stupid penalties, bad throws, etc, coming from the players. I'm just saying the free ride the coaches have enjoyed is not warranted. Utah was regularly beating Pac 12 teams before they joined, and beat several last season as a member of the conference. They got worse this year, and that can't just be written off as new conference talent increase. It's probably more related to the 25 year old inexperienced offensive coordinator.
 
SaltyDawg said:
Norm Chow sucked too, no doubt. But the offense was a lot better last year that it was this year.
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Interesting. I remember you liking the hire at the time while I thought it was awful. I also remember you thinking Utah would be a good team this year while I had my question marks.

Seems like you know ****.
 
Gyp Rosetti said:
Interesting. I remember you liking the hire at the time while I thought it was awful. I also remember you thinking Utah would be a good team this year while I had my question marks.

Seems like you know ****.
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I didn't "like" the hire. I was happy they got rid of Chow, but I was pulling for A Rod to get the job, and had many disagreements with fellow Ute fans about A Rod. I was optimistic that BJ would work out, and I still think he will in the long run. But there is no denying that he was a disaster this season.

Did you think Utah would be worse than they were last season? No? I guess you don't know **** either.
 
SaltyDawg said:
I didn't "like" the hire. I was happy they got rid of Chow, but I was pulling for A Rod to get the job, and had many disagreements with fellow Ute fans about A Rod. I was optimistic that BJ would work out, and I still think he will in the long run. But there is no denying that he was a disaster this season.

Did you think Utah would be worse than they were last season? No? I guess you don't know **** either.
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You liked the Chow hire and I never had faith in Utah in the Pac-12 like you blindly did. So yeah, I know something and you know jack.
 
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