Utah’s new offense under Dennis Erickson has certainly been a hot topic of conversation during spring ball. In the annual Red-White game Saturday at Rice-Eccles Stadium, that offense showed great promise as the teams combined for 63 points and 797 yards of total offense. The White team came out on top 35-28.
Quarterback Travis Wilson and running back Karl Williams led the White team. Wilson finished 13-of-17 for 210 yards and three touchdowns while Williams rushed for 108 yards on 19 carries as well as three touchdowns. For the Red team, Adam Schulz was 9-for-20 with 245 yards, two touchdowns and an interception. Kelvin York ended the day with 79 yards on 13 carries.
“Overall, it was a very positive scrimmage,” Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham said. “Very positive end to a very productive spring ball.”
The play of the running back corps was an area Whittingham was especially pleased with. In addition to the outings from Williams and York, Lucky Radley and James Poole also had solid days.
“All four running backs did a nice job,” Whittingham said. “It’s going to be tough to determine that depth chart with all four guys playing effectively.”
Williams is confident the quartet will be a powerhouse backfield that will help make the offense dangerous in the fall.
“We were competing today,” Williams said. “We want to be the four backs that will get [that] yardage. With Kelvin, Lucky, Poole and me, I feel like we have a lot of diversity, and I think we can do a lot of things with the backfield that we have.”
For an offense that has been touted as being up-tempo, Saturday’s game began rather slowly as the White team took nearly six minutes to draw first blood. It picked up from there, though, as Schulz and the Red team took just two plays to reach the end zone. The last three touchdowns of the first quarter were made within a minute and a half of each other. Kenneth Scott was Schulz’s leading receiver with five catches for 97 yards and a touchdown.
Erickson was particularly complimentary of the performance the offensive line and the running backs put forth Saturday.
“We got to identify what kind of a team that we are,” Erickson said. “We made a lot of improvement but still got a long ways to go. But our strength right now is we are running the football extremely well.”
Whittingham was pleased with how the spring went overall. As Utah enters what Whittingham called the “third quarter” of the football year, he said summer workouts will be more crucial than ever before.