Your 2014 Utah Utes — the most boring, but entertaining, team in college football.
After an impressive victory over No. 20 USC on Saturday night, the Utes now sit at 6-1 — bowl eligible for the first time since their inaugural season in the Pac-12. And when you break it down, Utah is just a single point away from a top-10 ranking, playoff consideration and owning the driver’s seat in the Pac-12.
That said, the sad thing is until Saturday night, no one really knew how good this Ute squad was. Each Pac-12 game Utah has played has come down to the last drive of the game. They’ve won three games against conference foes, and in all of them the Utes have barely gotten by.
But that’s just it — they got by. And as the final seconds ticked away on the scoreboard in Rice-Eccles Stadium on Saturday night, it became clear that this team is, in fact, legitimate.
Utah will not dazzle you with a high-powered offense, nor will it completely shut down an opposing team’s offense. But what the Utes will do is play until that final whistle blows. They will leave everything they have out there on the field, and if they are going to lose a game, they won’t go down without a fight.
In a day and age where fans demand high scoring, Utah is the exact opposite of that. The Utes haven’t been running a specific offense all season long but have done a great job of adapting to whatever is thrown their way.
I know it’s hard to believe, since the quarterback was literally carried off the field after the win over USC, but it wasn’t long ago that Wilson looked incompetent on the field. He couldn’t move the chains, and the team elected for backup Kendal Thompson.
We all know how Thompson led these Utes to a huge victory over UCLA at the Rose Bowl, but the dual-threat quarterback didn’t last long either as Wilson earned back his spot just a week later halfway through the game against Oregon State.
In the week heading into this one, head coach Kyle Whittingham hinted that both signal callers would get playing time in the game against USC, but Thompson never saw the field. This has more to do with what the coaches saw in the Trojan defense than Thompson’s ability or inability to run the offense, but this team has been in a scramble at this position since the start of the season.
For the time being, it seems Utah has solved the quarterback issues thanks to a positive performance from T-Willy, but that can all change in this week’s practice or next weekend at Arizona State.
Maybe this was the “real” Utes. The experiment at quarterback was good in the sense that it got Utah to a 5-1 record before the USC game, but maybe T-Willy is meant to be the quarterback. I could see Wilson staying on the field from here on out, finishing off the season by just managing each game.
That said, the same could have been said of Thompson just three short weeks ago.
Despite finding out a little bit more about this football team on Saturday night, there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered.
The one thing that is certain about the Utes, however, is that they are grinders and they will entertain you. From impressive outings from return man Kaelin Clay to seemingly impossible punts by Tom Hackett to Devontae Booker barreling over defenders, there will be no shortage of exciting plays from Utah. But can this team really make a run at the Pac-12 title?
I’m not sure I’m ready to declare this team the best in the entire conference, but the Pac-12 better be looking out for Utah.
@GriffDoug