Christian Stringer: Hi and welcome back to the Home Stretch, The Daily Utah Chronicle sports podcast. My name is Christian and I will be your host. Today Kyle Garrison, the assistant [sports] desk editor and football beat writer for The Chronicle, will be joining us. Today we will be talking about the current state and future of Utah football. Kyle, thank you for joining us.

Kyle Garrison: Thanks for having me.

Christian Stringer: Let’s get right into it. So what has been the main concern with the offense over the last three weeks in your opinion?

Kyle Garrison: In my opinion, it starts and ends with the fact that Cam Rising was the biggest part of this offense for the past couple of years and the Andy Ludwig system has been geared towards Cam Rising’s specific skill set. That’s great and all. But with his absence you have a freshman quarterback who’s 18 years old. He was playing high school football last fall and the offense is not geared towards his skill set. He has a great arm. He’s more of a pocket passing presence. He’s not as good as Cam Rising, getting out on the edge and making plays. And I feel like the offense that Andy Ludwig has built here over the last 10 years started and ended with a mobile quarterback and a guy who’s good at making plays with his legs. Isaac Wilson isn’t bad at that, but I think over the last three weeks you can just see … he’s getting too overwhelmed. There’s too many reads he has to make. And Cam Rising is a 25-year-old senior quarterback. He’s played for five years in multiple different systems at Texas and at Utah, and Isaac Wilson is not that yet. I think that there’s a lot of potential for Wilson to start becoming more of a mobile quarterback and be able to fit into a system that Andy Ludwig has built, but at the end of the day, he’s not going to come in and he’s not going to be a game-breaker like Cam Rising was the two years where he had success at Utah. So again, we got to figure out a way to incorporate Isaac’s specific skill set and just what he does best, instead of trying to mold him into Cam Rising and let him be himself.

Christian Stringer: Yeah there’s definitely going to be some growing pains. Anytime we’re starting a true freshman it’s not going to be an easy process transitioning an offense that’s been built around a guy for the past literally seven years, excluding injury. And you mentioned Andy Ludwig in there, OC, for those of you guys who don’t know. Yesterday — we are recording this on Monday, Oct. 21 so on Sunday the 20 — he announced that he will be stepping down as offensive coordinator for the University of Utah. So with Ludwig stepping down, what can we expect this offense to look like down the stretch of this season?

Kyle Garrison: So yeah, like I said, more Isaac Wilson-geared … making sure that he’s comfortable, he’s getting the correct repetition and he is able to go through his reads. He said after the game on Saturday, there was a lot of time where he was felt a little overwhelmed, and he was just missing throws, he was missing open guys. He was trying to fit it into tighter windows than he realistically needed to. So I think we’re going to go back to the base offense. I think it’s going to start and end with Isaac. He’s the future of this team. We have put a lot of eggs into that basket, and I think that that’s going to be just a key part of the future of this team: making sure he’s comfortable, making sure he knows the offense in and out. And giving him the opportunity to kind of take over as the as “the guy” for this team. And then I wanted to touch on just the red zone offense that has been a huge concern the past three weeks. Even including the games that we won — Utah State, Baylor — we had a ton of opportunities to score points and they always ended in Cole Becker field goals or fourth down conversions that we were not able to get. So one of the biggest concerns, especially with how Andy Ludwig ran his offense, was there wasn’t a ton of play action. There wasn’t a ton of getting Isaac Wilson out on the edge and letting him have the option to either run or pass the ball. It felt like they didn’t want Isaac to have to make tight throws and force him into interceptions in the red zone. So the play calling was very stagnant, very complacent and there was not a lot of play actually. There wasn’t a lot of threat with Micah Bernard in the red zone, and he’s been one of the best power backs in all of football this year. So being able to get him on the goal line and get him touches on the goal line was something that I didn’t see the past couple of weeks. So I think now that Andy Ludwig has stepped down, that red zone offense needs to change its identity. What we were doing was not working, and so you have to go back to day one and you have to go back to square one and completely shift what you’ve been doing because clearly it hasn’t been been working. So another thing, just sustainable drives, that has a lot to do with red zone offense but against TCU, it felt like we would get a first down, and then the next play we would try and run play action and Isaac Wilson would get sacked. Or he would get pressured early and he would have to throw the ball away. And then you’re behind the sticks, you’re behind schedule. And with a freshman quarterback at 18 years old, you need to find ways to get into second and five and second and manageable, so that he has the ability to check down to a tight end in the flat instead of having to go over the top every single play. He’s just not built for that yet. He’s got so much to learn, it’s a huge learning curve for him. And in order to have sustainable drives, you got to get him in comfortable situations especially early on in drives in your own territory, because against TCU, we had maybe a handful of plays in opposing team territory and that’s a problem. As a Utah program, we’re used to moving the ball and imposing our will at the offensive line, allowing our run game to open up the pass game and that just hasn’t been the case so far this year. And like I said, the sacks have been a big problem. I don’t think that falls on Isaac Wilson. I think that falls entirely on the offensive line and that kills drives. You cannot expect to be put yourself in second and 18 and third and 18 and find success, especially with a young quarterback in an offense that is a shell of its former self. You got to find ways to sure up the offensive line, especially the right side that’s been so dominant this year has to be better.

Christian Stringer: Yeah absolutely it’s ironic that we’re talking so much about Ludwig, because if you guys remember from our last football podcast, I actually ended up praising him a little bit for his new and fresh play calling, but that was back in week one and two and part of three, maybe. And since then it really does feel like our offense has gotten a little bit stale. We’re not doing a lot of motion we’re not incorporating a lot of new players, a lot of depth pieces that we have, a lot of future pieces that we’re going to need to keep with so many seniors on this current roster. And speaking of that, what skill players need to get more involved in the offense now that this season has turned into more of a developmental year?

Kyle Garrison: Yeah so I think that the offense itself is going to become more of a base offense. You’re going to see more of a pro-style spread offense with you know, three wide receivers. You’re going to see Dorian Singer and Money Parks and maybe even Luca Caldarella get more involved. And I think that having multiple running backs that can make plays is going to be a huge thing for this team. Especially considering Micah Bernard is kind of the heart and soul right now of this offense, and he’s not going to be here next year. You know, he’s going to graduate, and you’ve got guys behind him like Dijon Stanley, like Mike Mitchell, who are very young players and have a huge ceiling, a very high ceiling that you got to tap into. I know Dijon Stanley, early on in the year, was a massive part of this offense. He was, you know, take-you-over-the-top, take a real wheel route to the house — I know he did that week one. And now it seems like you will throw Dijon Stanley in … maybe for a screenplay. We’ll get him an end round or something. And it doesn’t break open right away, and then we go away from it and then we don’t see Dijon for the rest of the game. So, now that it’s more of a developmental year, a guy like Dijon could see the field a ton more. You could even throw him in the slot position. He’s so explosive out of the back field, he’s such a tough cover for any linebacker. If you can figure out a way to exploit mismatches with guys that are not nearly as quick as him, you’re going to find success because we’ve seen it come to fruition early on in the year, and I think that you just have to stick with it. You can’t just get away from it as soon as it goes south, because he’s such an explosive player that there’s no reason he shouldn’t be getting more than one touch a game. Especially considering how much this offense has struggled. A guy like Dijon, a guy like Mike Mitchell, they have the ability to make plays … why not test it out? And I get it, I know Micah Bernard is a stud, and we need to utilize him. But it hasn’t been working because we can’t open up the playbook, the passing game, just because teams are so focused in on Micah and they know exactly what we want to do. We want to run him off the right side of the offensive line. We want to get him in space and let him eat up chunk yards. And if that isn’t working, the offense is just stagnant. And there’s guys that can help alleviate the pressure off of Micah Bernard, and that starts with Dijon Stanley and Mike Mitchell and just some of those younger running back pieces that we have in that room.

Christian Stringer: Yeah and as you mentioned, those are two guys that I actually explicitly mentioned as being big helps in the beginning of the season. Dijon Stanley, like you said, breakout game against Southern Utah took two wheel routes to the house, led our team in both rushing and receiving that game, and then we just don’t go back to him for the rest of the season. Doesn’t make a lot of sense. Mike Mitchell too, I thought he was a great interior runner. I mean obviously, Micah Bernard has been phenomenal this season. I really hope we get to see him play on Sundays one day. But like you said, it helps to alleviate that pressure. Different personnel give the defense different looks to look at. You know, just keep people on their toes, as opposed to this kind of stagnant offense we’ve been running. That seems, a lot of the time, we’ll get up there, we’ll run it, we’ll run it, we’ll pass it, we’ll punt the ball. And I don’t like that cycle. I think we need to switch it up. We need more big plays — I mean even the big play against TCU, where Money Parks caught that touchdown, I haven’t seen something like that since maybe that Kuithe touchdown a couple weeks ago. And it’s just it’s nice to see something like that. You know, it shows us a glimpse as to what our offense might look like in the future if we stick with some of these big play guys and keep our offense moving, and unique, and new and fresh.

Kyle Garrison: Exactly, and again like you said, early on, these opposing defenses, they know exactly — they watch film, they study just as much as we do. And they go in each week and they say look, there’s a select eight different personnel sets they want to use and they’re going to run this, this and that out of those sets, so they’re able to gear their defense to make Isaac Wilson uncomfortable. Wilson talked about it in the press conferences. TCU did a great job. They disguised a ton of coverages, disguised a ton of blitzes. They were stunting their linemen. They were making Wilson uncomfortable. And if you’re an offensive coordinator, the deep shots that take a long time to progress — the four seconds, five seconds where he’s standing in the pocket — that’s not going to cut it. He’s not a quarterback that is geared towards stepping up in the pocket and making a throw. It’s really, really hard to do. So we have to figure out ways to get the ball out of his hands early, and it starts and ends with these playmakers that we know can do things with the ball in their hands. With Dorian Singer, we need to find a way to get him the ball on a drag route or a slant route and let him make a play with his legs. I specifically remember against Arizona State, Cam Rising missed Dijon Stanley in the open field, and then we went away from it entirely. That’s what we needed to do, get a mismatch. Let Dijon Stanley make a defender miss, and go get to the end zone. Because there just hasn’t been that explosive play this season, except for like you mentioned, last week. And it worked great. It was awesome. It was — the route combination was Dorian Singer, he was kind of on a little shallow post. And then Money Parks was on the route over the top and they had the attention of the safety because of Dijon — or because of Dorian Singer, excuse me. And then it allowed Money Parks to be open over the top. And we know both Dorian and Money are extremely explosive receivers. We’ve seen Money take the top off of the defense multiple times throughout his career and that’s something that we need to stick with. But again it starts and ends with the run game. You got to be able to figure out a way to disguise your passing, and be able to utilize the play action and just get, like you said, first down and second down make plays down the field instead of just run, run, pass, punt. Because that’s kind of been the blueprint of this offense this year. It’s clearly not working.

Christian Stringer: Yeah, something definitely needs to change. We’re going to rewind a little bit and talk about kind of how we expected this season to start off. You know, coming into a new conference, in the Big 12, there’s definitely some parallels to the Pac-12, and with that being said, we kind of expected to to be at near the top of the conference. And for you guys that don’t know, we are now currently on a three game losing streak. All three are conference games … that does not help us whatsoever. So in your opinion, after coming into this season with such high expectations when did things exactly start to go south?

Kyle Garrison: Yeah so I think there was a couple different things. The first Rising injury with the hand was a big shot to this offense. I remember specifically Kyle Whittingham came into that press conference after the Baylor game, and he said — you know, we were up 23-3, I believe at halftime. And when a guy like Cam Rising goes out, you cannot allow your offense to just completely crumble because of one player. When you’re a power program, you’re a program that is very well-respected around the country, you won the Pac-12 two years in a row, you made the Rose Bowl, you have been a very successful program overall in the last 15 years … it’s next-man-up mentality. And I know that’s a cliche in football, but it’s very true. It rings true especially with this team, specifically with how young they are. And so I think that Baylor game itself was a big indicator of how this offense looks. Without Cam Rising in the first half, there was a time where I thought potentially we could win that game 48-0. I thought that our defense looked incredible. Our offense was keeping the defense off the field with extended drives. And you could just see right when Cam Rising went out, the difference in this offense. And again, like I’ve said, Cam Rising is not this whole team, but I think just with how much Andy Ludwig relied on Cam to be that guy, it turned this offense into kind of a shell of itself, because nobody around him had the confidence that they were gonna get the ball. No one had the confidence that they could make plays just because it was … I don’t know, it felt weird. You could just sense it in the stands, in the crowd, everything was just a little bit off. The timing was a little bit off. And you can just see, especially in the red zone and the inability to have sustainable drives, this defense is getting no help from the offense whatsoever. And even though it’s not like we’re allowing teams to put up 45-50 points — and that wasn’t the case in Baylor, we only allowed them to have 17-20 points, whatever it was, but our offense didn’t score in the second half. So yeah, that Baylor game was just a definitely a kind of a shock. But again, you go into Oklahoma State and you get the win when we thought Oklahoma State was also going to be a contender in the Big 12, and then you kind of had that confidence. And since then it’s just kind of been a downward spiral.

Christian Stringer: Yeah, I would have to agree that Baylor is exactly when it happened, all the points you said I could touch on further, but instead, I’m going to shift it a little bit. And I think another big issue with this team is transparency. I think after Cam got injured, if Isaac is going to be our guy for the next four weeks, we need to publicly say that and announce it and give that man the starting spot that he clearly deserves. I’ve seen a lot of growth in him. You mentioned the Oklahoma State game. I thought that game was a big game for him. Yeah, Micah rushed for what, 180 yards and kind of carried us. But in an atmosphere like Stillwater, Oklahoma, it’s never easy. Playing against Gundy and his team over there, that’s a big win for Isaac. And after that, I still wish that we kind of stuck with him and gave him that confidence boost as opposed to saying, you know, “Cam might be starting” and you know, “We might be playing Cam again.” Let’s give Isaac the role that he’s earned, and let’s see how he can really do with it when we really go full force into him. And yeah, another thing you mentioned that I want to bring back up is that our defense has been playing great this year. I’m so under the impression that we have one of the best — specifically run defenses — in the league, excluding that Arizona State game. But the biggest problem is that when our offense can’t stay out on the field, our defense is out there all night long. They don’t get fresh legs, they don’t get a little quick breather. They are back out on the field after a quick three and out from our offense, and that does not help them whatsoever. I mean, I really think we saw it in that Arizona State game. Skattebo simply wore us down. He’s a brutal runner. He’s an aggressive runner. He goes right up the middle. He’s going to hit you in your face. And that happened to us over and over and over. And the more it happened throughout the night, the more yards Skattebo was getting on those runs. And that’s when the game really started opening up for them. I noticed it a little bit with TCU. I think we struggled a lot with when Savion Williams got those Wildcat looks, he would just run right at us. And the more and more they did it, the more we let it happen, because our offense wasn’t giving our defense any breaks whatsoever.

Kyle Garrison: Yeah and when you look at TCU, and you look at teams like Arizona State, they’re clearly undersized, compared to us. But when your defense is on the field for 42 minutes a game, it’s really, really hard to continue to neutralize that offense, especially when you have guys like Skattebo. And we did a great job against Ollie Gordon, but there are great running backs in this conference and there’s great running attacks. These offensive attacks are geared towards scoring a lot of points in the Big 12. And clearly this offense is not built to compete with a team that scores 24-30 points. And this defense again, give them all the credit in the world. They’ve had their backs against the wall all season long. They’ve not been able to play defense with a lead … it feels like in weeks. And for a Morgan Scally-led defense, where they rely a lot on blitz packages and a lot of guys coming off the edge and flying off the edge and fly into the ball, it’s really hard to continue to do that for 90 plays in a game when you’ve had to make 15-10 big tackles … it’s just hard. You get guys like Karene Reid — he’s coming off of injury, but he played a great game on set on Saturday. He did a great job. He filled gaps in their run game. They didn’t have a ton of explosive plays, but they were able to stay ahead of the sticks. And like you said, as the game went on and they wore down that defense, more chunk yardage plays started to come, and then you get that fourth down late in the game, they run the Wildcat, and it’s a pretty easy conversion for them. So I think that this defense has so much potential and a lot of young guys. And we’ve been a solid defense for years. It’s been great, they’ve done a great job of next-man-up. You know, you get guys that go to the league like Clark Phillips and Cole Bishop, and you got to fill those positions. You got to fill the role of Jonah Ellis, and I think that guys like Zemaiah Vaughn and guys like Van Fillinger have done a great job of filling those roles. But again, it starts and ends with the ability to sustain drives, keep our defense with fresh legs and allow them to be that blitzing, hair-on-fire defense that we know and love from the Morgan Scally system.

Christian Stringer: Yeah because that’s one thing I think, even though our offense is going through an identity change right now, with leaving that Cam Rising era, kind of bringing in some new, younger guys … our defense should be able to stay the same. You know, we still have that mastermind Scally behind it. We still have a lot of similar personnel like you mentioned, a lot of guys stepping up. I think Tao Johnson and Smith Snowden are a couple other guys in our secondary that have really stepped up this season. I think our defensive identity, as that team that will beat you in the trenches consistently every game, should be able to remain the same in the future. And speaking a little bit of the future, we’re going to talk about Isaac Wilson for a little bit. So is Isaac Wilson the long-term option for quarterback, or do you think he will get challenged this offseason for the starting job?

Kyle Garrison: I mean no job is ever safe in college football, especially in the ever-changing landscape. It’s become the transfer portal. You get freshmen guys like Isaac Wilson who are coming in and starting day one. I mean you look at DJ Lagway from Florida, he’s starting day one as a freshman quarterback. It’s a different game in high school now than it was in the past. You know, I felt like a guy would come in as a freshman and he would sit behind somebody for two years, but now they’re kind of throwing them into the fire and letting them have those growing pains. So I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that Isaac Wilson is getting those reps. I think it’s really, really helpful for his development. And you know, especially, what’s going to be the big contributor to that is what is the offensive coordinator situation looking like. If you get a guy who Wilson is comfortable with and who Wilson has experience with, then I don’t see why he wouldn’t be the starting quarterback next year. Again, transfer portal is a big thing … we don’t really tap into the transfer portal, especially at the quarterback position — we kind of like to build from within. So I think Wilson’s got that job, but we’re gonna have to see some stuff from him in over these next five regular-season games where we’re seeing development and we’re seeing growth, and we’re seeing him his ability to go to multiple reads and not just go to that first read, eye it down and throw it there, because there’s been a lot of balls that have skipped into the grass, and there’s been a lot of times where he’s just hasn’t looked as comfortable as we know he can. And again, I’ve said it a million times. I’ll say it again. He’s so young. He’s 18, he’s going to develop — I think that he’s the starting quarterback for this team for the future.

Christian Stringer: Yeah, I’m going to have to agree with you. I’ve become a big fan of Isaac Wilson. I think I’ve seen him mentally grow a lot in these games. His confidence, you can definitely tell, has been higher and higher with each snap he takes. I think a lot of that is evident in when he scrambles, when he gets out of the pocket, he’s committing to those runs a little bit earlier than he has in games prior. And I think that’s a big deal, because having a mobile quarterback is always going to be a positive, obviously. But one thing I will say is I actually wouldn’t mind if we kind of tapped into the transfer portal a little bit. You know, we are a very appealing team for a lot of transfers out there. We are a Power Four team. We are a historic franchise. We have always been good, and we actually are in a bit of a QB pickle right now, and that could be enticing for some of these transfers. With that being said, I would like that to happen. But I want to see Isaac beat that guy out, beat whoever we get out, show him that we believe in him, that we are behind him. And I think with more time, he’s going to start to learn a little bit more about that Utah football culture, how important it is to our fans, how important it is to the players and the coaches and everyone who comes and supports this team. And I think like we said, that’ll just come with time. He’s an 18-year-old kid right now out here playing for a massive Power Four football school. And of course there’s going to be a learning curve, there’s going to be some growing pains. I would like to see us tap in, maybe get some transfer portal guys, maybe recruit at quarterback position to see that Isaac can show how much he wants it in the offseason, when he grows after having half a season under his belt. I think it’d be great just to see if we can experiment with some different things, see what works.

Kyle Garrison: Yeah I mean, I totally agree. I think that healthy competition is great for a young quarterback, because especially if next year, it’s a sophomore year and he’s like, “Okay, this is my team. This is my offense.” Nobody’s breathing down his neck, especially in the offseason. It might make him more more complacent, and you might see him kind of go back to those poor habits that he had last year. But you bring a guy in and in the spring game, you have two guys going at it. It would be really nice for Isaac to be able to beat somebody out, gain that confidence, but once that season starts that quarterback competition needs to be over. It needs to be wrapped up. It needs to be done, because it is impossible — if you’ve ever played sports before, it is impossible to play your best and play free and play loose when you have somebody breathing down your neck. It’s very, very hard for a young guy to be able to psych himself up enough where he has the confidence and knows that it’s his job to lose and he can kind of do whatever he wants with this offense. I just don’t think that’s going to be the case if there’s a potential … if Kyle Whittingham early on in the season says, “We still don’t know who the quarterback is going to be, it’s going to be a competition until day one,” I don’t think that would be good for Wilson. I think that the competition should start and stop before the season starts.

Christian Stringer: Yeah, I’m going to have to agree with that. That kind of goes back to the transparency thing again. I just think we need to figure out what our identity is and really go for it. You know, whatever OC we get needs to be able to build around, not our current identity, but whatever our new identity will be. Hopefully we can figure out what that is as this season progresses. Speaking of this season, I got to bring up the game everybody’s thinking about: we play BYU in two weeks, the Holy War. It’s finally back [after] a couple of years we took off. And of course, this year, BYU is on an absolute tear in the Big 12. They’re actually looking kind of like what I thought we would be looking like halfway through the season. So BYU undefeated, No. 11 in the nation — I know I’m kind of putting you on the spot with these questions — what do you kind of see in that game that everybody’s waiting for?

Kyle Garrison: Yeah, so I like how you said BYU looks like what we thought Utah was going to be. I think that’s a great way to put it. They look like a veteran polish team with a quarterback that you know, he throws those couple picks here and there, but he makes up for it. He can move the ball down the field at will. You know he’s sitting at a 59% completion percentage, 16 touchdowns, seven interceptions, you know, 1600 yards already this season, and he’s been great for BYU. That is going to be a problem. I mean like we’ve said, that defense is is built to withstand long drives, and get fourth down stops in the red zone and force field goals. But when you have a quarterback like Jake Retzlaff, who is a veteran guy, who’s been in the system, who knows this system and has played all year from from day one to now … he’s only getting more comfortable. And that’s scary, that is really scary. They do a great job of spreading the ball around to different receivers. They’ve got like 10 guys on the team that have had a receiving touchdown this year, nobody with more than four. They’ve got weapons everywhere, and I think we do too. I think that our roster compared to BYU stacks up very well, but I think that their coaching staff and the job they’ve done with Retzlaff and gearing the offense toward his specific skill set has allowed them to find success. They also are very, very balanced in the run game. They’ve got a ton of dudes with over 20 carries this year. Their leading rusher right now is their quarterback. So if we can contain Retzlaff, if we can make him hit tight windows, I don’t see a reason we can’t upset them. In Rice Eccles, a night game, Isaac Wilson is playing against his brother’s former team … he’s going to have a little bit of a chip on his shoulder. I think that something’s got to give. And BYU has looked great some weeks, and then they’ve looked pedestrian in other weeks. Last week against Oklahoma State, their defense looked like a shell of what they had looked like in in previous games. Against Arizona they looked amazing, but you just don’t know what you’re going to get from that team. They are very young, and like I’ve said, they move the ball around to a lot of different guys. So it could be, any given day, it could be one guy that’s kind of taking over. So it’s going to have to be defense by committee. Everyone’s going have to do their 1/11, and you’re not gonna have an Ollie Gordon, or you’re not gonna have a Skattebo who’s just gonna dominate the game himself. It’s gonna be by committee for this BYU offense, so you got to figure out a way to stop that. And when it comes to our offense, who knows what we’re gonna get. It’s been a struggle the past three weeks. It would be really nice if we went into Houston this week, had kind of an offensive explosion, put up a ton of points. I think that would give Isaac a ton of confidence going into the BYU game, that he can make throws down the field, and they can actually do the upset. It’s funny that this is looked at as an upset, because if you’d have told me that two months ago, I would have laughed. I didn’t think that BYU was going to be as dominant as they’ve been. So it’s going to be interesting. I would love more than anything to ruin BYU’s undefeated season. But we’re going to see what’s the play calling look like against Houston, what does the offense look like, was the offensive line … has there been shifts in the O line. So it’s gonna be fun. I’m excited for it, but a little nervous.

Christian Stringer: Yeah, definitely a little nervous, too. It’s very interesting playing spoiler this season. You know, that’s a new thing Utah hasn’t quite had to do yet. But I think if we play this game with a chip on our shoulder, like you said, Isaac’s facing his older brother’s former team. I really hope that kind of lights a fire inside of him, whether it’s family rivalry, whether it’s just he was raised and born in Utah, he knows about what this rivalry means to people here. I really hope that lights a fire in him. But yeah, as you said, BYU is just a very well-rounded team. Retzlaff is having a heck of a season. He’s been on the both on the ground and in the air. It’s kind of similar to what we kind of thought Cam Rising would do this year. It’s a very similar team, I find it quite funny. And then another thing you mentioned is a rushing attack. They are doing a running running back committee group back there, similar to what I kind of expected Utah to do with Bernard and Glover and Mitchell and Stanley, and all these guys … and I actually think if we go back to that a little bit, it might help us out. Having fresh legs in our running attack is going to be helpful, you know, as opposed to riding Micah — which we definitely can do, because he is such a stud — I think if we mix in Mitchell, and we mix in Stanley on maybe some outside runs to keep the defense on their toes, that could really help open up our passing game, allow for Wilson to make more of those easy reads, like you said, as opposed to having to chuck it downfield and double coverage on our third and long when we’re behind the chains. And then defensively BYU has been great. I do want to bring that up. I’m a little bit nervous about how we’re going to handle that because this defense is playing really solid team defense, as you mentioned. They have a great linebacker core of Glasker and Taggart. Their safeties have been great at stopping the run. Their cornerbacks have been mixing up coverages good against receivers. I’m just hoping that we can have a well-balanced attack and like you said, figure it out against Houston … because if we don’t figure it out against Houston, I’m gonna have no hope for this game, to be blunt with you. We need to go into Houston and we need to dominate them, quite frankly, so that we can build that confidence up for this game of the season.

Kyle Garrison: Yeah, and the defense for BYU starts and ends with Jay Hill, defensive coordinator. He has been unbelievable this year, one of the best coordinators, and not only in the Big 12, but all of college football. That BYU defense had a ton of holes coming into the season, and that was people’s main concern. And they have looked phenomenal. I mean you know, they’re seven and out — you don’t win seven games in a row, especially in a pretty tough conference like the Big 12, without having a very stellar defense. So it’s gonna have to come down to, like you said, getting other players involved, keeping the defense honest, utilizing play action, utilizing multiple different running backs and maybe even doing a couple sets where we have Dijon Stanley and Micah Bernard in the backfield, and can run a play action with Micah Bernard and then pitch it to Dijon, or something along those lines. Obviously, that’s not set in stone, but something that is similar to that is going to make BYU make adjustments. And I feel like in the past couple of weeks we have not made the opposing defenses go into halftime and make adjustments to this offense. They go in and they say, “We’ve done a great job. We’re going to continue to do what we’re doing and make them move the ball on us.” So if we can’t move the ball against BYU, we’re going to lose by multiple scores. That’s just how it is. So again, this Houston game is going to be a big determining factor in what this offense is going to look like heading into some really tough games down the stretch.

Christian Stringer: Yeah, because Colorado this year is also looking actually legit. I hate to say it, but they look like a team that could also play spoiler to some Big 12 contenders, not necessarily us anymore. I mean, we have BYU, Colorado, Iowa State, back-to-back-to-back — that is by far toughest stretch of the season, and having that right after our offensive coordinator steps down is definitely a little nerve-wracking. But I got hope that we can figure it out this week against Houston. I really do.

Kyle Garrison: Yeah, I mean … Andy Ludwig, he’s done such amazing things for this program. I don’t want to be too negative towards him, but it definitely is a change. There needs to be a change of scenery. Something’s got to change. And again, Houston’s going to be going to be a huge game for this team — maybe not necessarily for this season, right now, this season’s kind of looking like a wash. But going into next year and getting Isaac those reps down these last five games is going to be absolutely massive. And yeah, like you said, we play BYU. We play Colorado, who has a ton of pro players. Deion Sanders has been able to figure out how to run a competent offense with Shedeur Sanders. And Iowa State — again another team, kind of came out of nowhere that has looked like what we thought Utah was going to look like, a very run-heavy team with a quarterback that can make those down the field. But they’re much more reliant on the run game and running back by committee than maybe we thought Iowa State would be. I did think Iowa State was going to kind of compete for that Big 12, but I didn’t expect them, you to sit at 7 and 0, and at No. 10 in the country. I think that they’ve done an excellent job of kind of turning that program around. And, yeah Matt Campbell’s just done an unbelievable job there, and I commend him and the job that staff has been able to do. But again, another team I would love to have come into Rice Eccles, most likely going to be a late afternoon or night game and play spoiler on their season. That’s kind of what we’re looking like this year.

Christian Stringer: Yep, and I’m hoping that like we said, that chip on our shoulder, if we can get some of these big wins at the end of the season, that’s just going to start us off on the right foot for next season, for the future of this team, which is a little bit up in the air right now. So if we can steal a couple wins, get our confidence back, get this team going again, fighting again, I have some faith for the future. Great. Well, thank you for sharing your thoughts today, Kyle, and thank you all for listening to the Home Stretch, The Daily Utah Chronicle sports podcast. Stay tuned for new episodes coming every other week.

Transcribed by Otter.ai

Host: Christian Stringer — [email protected]

Producer: Brooke Hale — [email protected]  | @brookehale

Guest: Kyle Garrison — [email protected] | @Kylegarr23