Jason Beck arrived in Salt Lake City ahead of the 2025 season, the expectations were high — and he still managed to exceed them.

Coming off a 5-7 disaster in 2024, Utah’s first year in the Big 12 had been a humbling experience. The Utes ranked 98th nationally in both rushing and passing yards per game, finishing 115th in the country in total offense at just 329.8 yards per game. The program that had long prided itself on dominant football had become an embarrassment offensively. Then Beck walked through the door.

The Jason Beck-Devon Dampier partnership worked wonders for Utah, which finished the 2025 season averaging 41.2 points per game. That mark was good for fifth in the nation, and rushing for 266.3 yards per game, which landed them at second in the country. The Utes averaged 482.9 yards per game and set school records for rushing yards and rushing touchdowns in a single season. Utah finished the season 11-2, ranked 14th in the country, and won the Las Vegas Bowl. It was a single-season offensive turnaround — and Beck did it by jumping from a Group of Five coordinator role straight into the Big 12.

History repeating?

That’s precisely the path Kevin McGiven is about to take.

Utah’s new offensive coordinator arrives with a résumé that mirrors Beck’s at nearly every turn. Beck came from New Mexico, where he ran a run-heavy offense that ranked first in the Mountain West Conference in total offense and fourth in the FBS at 484.3 yards per game. McGiven comes from Utah State, where his offense ranked second in the MWC in scoring at 31.8 points per game and third in the conference in both total offense and passing efficiency.

Both coaches spent their pre-Utah years proving they could get the most out of dual-threat quarterbacks in spread-based systems. Both were stepping into a Power Four job for the first time as coordinators.

The quarterback connection is perhaps the most compelling piece of this puzzle. Beck famously brought Dampier with him from New Mexico, and that familiarity paid immediate dividends. Dampier, who played through multiple injuries in 2025, threw for 2,490 yards and 24 touchdowns while rushing for 835 yards and 10 scores, completing 63.5% of his passes and turning the ball over just six times — a significant improvement in both accuracy and decision-making from his time in the MWC.

The parallels

McGiven spent the 2025 season doing something strikingly similar with his own signal-caller, and former Ute, Bryson Barnes. Under McGiven’s guidance at Utah State, Barnes became one of just six FBS quarterbacks to eclipse 2,500 passing yards and 700 rushing yards in the same season. A threshold Dampier himself hit in 2024 at New Mexico and nearly matched again in 2025. Barnes earned Second Team All-Mountain West honors while throwing 18 touchdown passes to just five interceptions. McGiven has shown ability to maximize a dual-threat quarterback.

Now, here’s where the numbers get interesting for Utah fans: Dampier is back. So is backup Byrd Ficklin, and so is running back Wayshawn Parker. The foundation Beck built isn’t going anywhere; it’s just getting a new architect. Utah hopes that the returning quarterback room and a proven running back group give McGiven an immediate platform to build on. 

The parallels between McGiven’s body of work and Beck’s pre-Utah profile aren’t superficial. McGiven spent six seasons as San José State’s offensive coordinator, winning a Mountain West Championship and developing quarterbacks who earned multiple All-Mountain West selections. He knows what it takes to run an offense, manage a playbook and get production from skill players who aren’t blue-chip recruits.

At Utah State in 2025, his top wide receiver, and now Ute Braden Pegan, earned Mountain West honors and running back Miles Davis landed on the second team alongside Barnes — another sign that McGiven’s offense doesn’t just rely on one player but distributes production across the roster. That’s exactly the kind of multi-threat offensive identity Utah ran in 2025.

Potential Drawbacks

There are, of course, reasons for caution. Beck’s transition was eased enormously by the fact that Dampier had already played in his system for two years and that Utah’s offensive line was legitimately one of the best units in the country. Spencer Fano and fellow tackle Caleb Lomu are both gone, as first-round draft picks, to the NFL.

Alongside those losses, the three starting interior offensive linemen have graduated and moved on. Replacing that kind of elite line play will be McGiven’s biggest challenge before the season even kicks off. The run game that made Beck’s offense historically dominant depended heavily on the front bookend.

But McGiven has 25 years of coaching experience on his side, and more than a decade of it spent coordinating offenses at the Division I level. He’s built winning systems at Weber State, Utah State, San José State and everywhere in between. He’s not a gamble; he’s a proven commodity making the same jump that Beck made before him.

The blueprint exists. The quarterback is back. The system is expected to be extremely similar. If McGiven can replicate even 80% of what Beck produced in his debut season, Utah’s offense will remain among dangerous in the Big 12. The Utes will be right back in the conversation for a conference title run under new head coach Morgan Scalley. The numbers say this isn’t wishful thinking. They say it’s a reasonable expectation.