With the Utes still more than a week away from taking the field again, head coach Kyle Whittingham is using the bye week’s practices to prepare for emergency situations.
“You never know when someone is going to be pressed into duty,” Whittingham said. “In emergency situations, you need to have at least some experience lining up in some spots. We use the bye week most years to do exactly that: to get some guys a few reps in positions they may be pressed into duty at.”
Utah is mixing and matching lineman groups to make sure the players are comfortable, if they happen to be called upon to play there.
Whittingham has often used the bye week for this, but after the offense’s showing against Fresno State last Saturday, it’s one of the few things the offense has to work on. Against the Bulldogs, the Utes racked up 59 points and seemed to move the ball at will. Not all was perfect to Whittingham, but he seemed to struggle to find weaknesses.
“We missed some blocks,” he said. “The blitz pickups, though they were very good, weren’t perfect. “
That was the end of the list.
Whittingham said the offense can always improve, and he never leaves a game completely satisfied with his team’s performance. The Utes made it hard for him to find faults on the offensive side Saturday.
New helmet to debut at Michigan
The Utes revealed a new white helmet on Monday, much to the delight of the team. A video of the unveiling showed the team in an excited bliss and Whittingham revealed they have been waiting for this for a while.
“It’s been a request for a couple years now,” he said. “We got it done this year.”
The Utah players seem to unanimously approve of the new helmets, but what does the head coach think?
“Uniforms are not really a big deal to me, but they were really excited, so I’m going to have to say they were more excited than I, but I think it looks pretty sharp,” Whittingham said.
The Utes will don the new helmets for the Michigan game on Sept. 20 in an all-white combination.
With the white helmets, Utah now has a number of different color combinations to choose from, but Whittingham says he’s not prepared to get in on the decision on what his team suits up in.
“We have the white, red and black now so I guess there are a lot of options,” Whittingham said. “But I let the leadership committee decide what we’re wearing each week.”
Off the field, onto the recruiting trail
With no game to play on Saturday, Whittingham is giving his players the weekend off. The same can’t be said for him and his coaching staff.
Whittingham and company will be hitting the recruiting trail over the weekend.
“We’re recruiting, it’s still undecided where I’m going to head, but we’re sending everybody else out to their primary areas,” Whittingham said. “They’ll all hit the road, they all being everyone but the coordinators and myself [Wednesday] night. And the coordinators and myself will go out this weekend, Friday and Saturday.”
Defense still looks to get better
The Utah defense made a big leap from their week one performance that ended with members of the Idaho State offensive line calling the Utes soft. Utah opened up the game, forcing five consecutive 3-and-outs, and Whittingham hopes to see another jump forward against Michigan.
“There’s still a lot of detail work, loose ends I guess you could say, that need to be cleaned up,” he said. “We played a lot better, but there’s still many things that we need to address, and it would be nice to take that big of a step again, but we’ll see what happens.”
Whittingham was impressed with the way his team started last Saturday’s contest and attributed it to how they prepared.
“We studied film, and they had the passion,” Whittingham said “We always talk about success is when preparation meets passion and energy on game day. They prepared well during the week and had passion and energy on game day, and that was the result.”
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