Wednesday, October 17. 2012Red, Blue And Pigskin
You know it wasn't that long ago, that teams in this state were fielding Heisman trophy winners, or candidates (Ty Detmer '90, Alex Smith '04), All-Americans (Smith, Sarkisian), and #1 Overall picks (Smith) at the quarterback position. Now we're relegated to fullbacks who can't throw (Riley), QB's better suited for the option game (Riley, Hill), Division 2 castoffs (Hays), or True Freshmen who are tentative, indecisive, and clearly overwhelmed by the game (Wilson).
What makes the situation all that worse is that for both Utah and BYU, the QB who most led each program to their most recent highest points, are the offensive coordinators, and neither one seems to have a full grasp on their own job. This past weekend the program whose struggles are least because of the quarterback punted on the present to focus on the future, while the the program whose struggles are mostly because of the QB stubbornly grasps onto a broken present. The Future Is Upon Us
Last week I made the case why the future should not be now. Utah's coaching staff disagrees and made the decision to go with the future in true freshmen Travis Wilson. Wilson's performance in the UCLA game showed exactly why it was too early to make the switch, and why the problems with this Utah team are not because of the Quarterback. Wilson played like you'd expect a highly touted true freshman to play. He showed enough flashes to prove that he may eventually be able to consistently lead a team, but for the most part was indecisive, tentative and overwhelmed, while showing the game was moving too fast for him, which prevented him from reading defenses, or sometimes even making decisions. To be fair, as the game went on and Wilson began to fill more comfortable he started to play better. Statistically, this was the best game Utah has seen out of a quarterback in over a year. Wilson broke the 200 yard passing barrier, something Hays has never done as a starter, and the Utes were drastically improved on their third down conversion rate. But there was also the bad. An interception killed the first drive of the game because Wilson tried to force the ball into double coverage, and another interception that was dropped, because he didn't read that Scott was clearly covered and threw it to him anyways. But despite all of the good and the bad from Wilson Utah was in exactly the same place they've been for most of this year. This game was still winnable for Utah, despite not having an offensive touchdown for the first 55 minutes of it. What ultimately doomed Utah, and what has hurt Utah all year long, had very little to do with the play of Wilson, but more with the play, and decision of those around him. Feed The Beast As a coaching staff, if your team is led by a Quarterback who is limited in what he can do with the offense, traditional wisdom says to take the pressure off of him by using your run game. This is especially true if your running back is coming off of the best season in your program's history. This is especially true if your running back is rushing for a greater than 4 yards per carry average. After all 3 rushes of 4 yards is a first down. This is especially true if your backup running back is rushing for a great than 4 yards per carry average. After all 3 rushes of 4 yards is a first down. So can someone explain to me, why the freak John White IV only had 11 rushes in the entire game. Why in the word did he only have 1 rush in the second half, despite having ran 10 times for 44 yards in the first half. And would someone please explain to me, that if you are going to be dumb enough not to give the ball to White, why aren't you giving the ball to his backup York more than the 4 times, for 18 yards he got during the UCLA game. Last season, when Wynn went down and the QB situation was even more precarious than it is now, you know how the Utes eventually turned the campaign around? They fed the ball to White! Granted this season White was injured for a while, but it's clear from his running against UCLA and USC he's not injured anymore. Plus his backup York, has been running extremely well the past couple weeks. It's time to keep feeding the beasts. Now moreso than ever. Travis Wilson is a freshman prone to do freshman like things. What better way to ease Wilson into a game, and take pressure off than with the running game. Forcing 3rd And Long Is Supposed To Be A Good Thing, Right? The Utah linebackers are bad. They are constantly out of position. They get tangled up in blocks to easily, and worst of all, they fall for jukes way to easily. This is all extremely evident when the Utes are playing against a Quarterback who can scramble like Brett Hundley did this last week. 3rd and 10? No problem, Hundley rushes for 9 yards, making the Bruins decide to go for it on 4th down. (They converted.) 3rd and 14. Hundley rushes for a first down. Whenever the Utes get a rushing Quarterback to 3rd and long, not a single Ute fan feels comfortable about them preventing the first down. By the way, the first UCLA TD was a 12 yard rush from Hundley. Fortunately for the Utes the Beavers don't have a rushing QB. This week the Utes face the Oregon State Beavers, who are being led by backup QB Cody Vaz. The Beavers do not employ a spread offense, like the types that have hurt the Utes all season. Instead they employ an offense very similar to the pro set offense, that Utah actually had good success against with USC. They also don't have to worry about first round draft picks at RB, WR, and QB. Of course just because they aren't star studded, and are playing with a backup QB, doesn't mean the Beavers aren't a really, really good team. Isn't that right BYU? Beaver Blackout This past weekend those very same Oregon State Beavers played beat BYU. This game was BYU joining the groups of teams latching onto the The blackout uniforms BYU had though were at the same time really cool, and seeming just a little off. Some Oregon State, State of Utah trivia for you. In two weeks the Utes will debut their home blackout helmets during their annual This week's game against Utah was originally scheduled to be a Peaking That didn't take long did it. 1 drive, 2 minutes and 31 seconds into the game, out went BYU's quarters without touchdown's streak. It didn't end there. The Beavers kept moving up and down the field against the Cougars for most of the game. The Beavers became the first team to rack up 300 yards of total offense against the Cougars since... the Beavers did it last year. Backup QB Cody Vaz completed 62% of his passes for 332 yards and 3 touchdowns. The Beavers, who are not a strong running team, ran for 118 yards and averaged 4.2 yards per carry. What happened to BYU's top 5, and highly ranked defense? For one, the Cougars finally faced a top flight offense. So far this year, they've gone against offenses that haven't been installed, struggling offenses in transition, and just flat out bad offenses. This was the first time all year they faced an offense that was actually halfway decent. More importantly it was an offense that was really good in the passing game, and was able to actually test the weak spot in the BYU defense, it's secondary. BYU's defense excels in the front 7. Where it still struggles is in the defensive backfield, and the Beavers attacked them there early, and often. Once that got the front 7 on their heels they were never able to fully recover. Fortunately for BYU they were able to, surprisingly, muster an offense that was able to answer score for score, during the first three quarters of the offense. In fact, it wasn't until BYU settled for a field goal with 8:55 left, that this game felt like the Beavers took control. Some late game turnovers allowed the Beavers to blow it open. This was by far the best offensive performance of the season by the BYU offense. Riley Nelson played within himself for most of the time, and did not resort to his usual dangerous gambling self, except for a one major instance as the Cougars were driving late in the first half. That all said, there is absolutely zero excuse for Riley Nelson throwing the ball 51 times in any game. That was just pure stupidity by Doman, and was just asking for the eventual turnover meltdown to come their way. What's not so good for BYU is that this offensive performance also rates about as close to perfection as it can run in it's current incarnation. It doesn't get any better than that on Saturday. It's also not a performance you can expect to see very often. Riley will not play that way very often. His true, dangerous, self will come out. It will also only matter for two more weeks. Touchdown Jesus And Golden Domes This week the Cougars travel to one of the historic places in College Football, South Bend. While the Cougars as a program have played at Notre Dame before, none of the current players have. Notre Dame is one of those colleges that a lot of players grow up dreaming about playing at. This year, they're also really really good. Especially on the defensive side. The Fighting Irish currently ranked #2 in total defense, led by super stud line backer Manti Te'o. We talked a bit about Te'o and his BYU history last week. Te'o has been the tackling leader for the Irish for each of the past two seasons. Te'o is the best linebacker in college right now, and is also a darkhorse Heisman contender. He'll never win it of course because he doesn't play on the offense, but that doesn't mean he might not deserve it. What's especially troubling for BYU is that the Irish are 10th in the nation in turnover differential. They must be licking their chops at the turnover machine that is Riley Nelson. Offensively the Irish are not world beaters. They've had to platoon their two quarterbacks throughout the year, and are still looking for the consistency at the position. They are very balanced however, and average nearly 400 yards per game. This is a game that'll be very difficult for BYU to win, though it's not impossible. Especially since this has all the makings of a possible trap game for the Irish coming off of the Stanford game and having Oklahoma the next week. They just really have no margin of error. Trackbacks
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