New Poll: Rate the coaching staff’s 2023 Football Season

Man, that’s kind of a mean poll to put out the morning after whatever that was last night ;).

I voted average. The D was excellent, the offense not so much. Particularly the handling of the QB spot. Word is other players who may or may not be hitting the portal were not happy with how NJ was handled.

I voted “Good”. The team still finished with a decent record even with a slew of injuries to key contributors. That has to count for something. I didn’t rate them as “Excellent” because of all of the QB drama that could have been mitigated with prior planning. I also wasn’t too happy with how the Barnes/Johnson situation was handled. It’s obvious that the coaching staff (i.e. Whitt and Lud) felt that Barnes was the better QB and gave the Utes the best chance to compete and win in all games. We shall see. If Johnson turns into a dual threat QB at Vandy we’ll definitely know who was wrong or right on this issue. More suspense for next season I guess.

Mixed rating, we did well for how many injuries we had but the handling of the QB situation was a joke, imo a fireable offense if you’re not somebody with more than plenty of built up good will like Whitt.

To be completely clear, the way every ounce of the QB situation was handled this year from the beginning of spring ball to the end of that pathetic joke we call a bowl game was abysmal, indefensible, and inexplicable by any other explanation other than massive incompetence, profound dips**ttery, or a healthy healthy combination of both. There is no version of reality where Whitt isn’t guilty here, it just is what it is.

There’s no excuse for not understanding a recovery time frame that everyone with any sense at all was able to just f**king google going all the way back to last spring, and let’s not pretend that this is a football coaches first f**king knee injury. No excuse for putting Rose in live contact at that point of year. No excuse for not having any semblance of a backup at all. AND on that topic, no excuse for COMPLETELY REFUSING TO PREPARE ONE UNTIL THE ACTUAL F**KING SEASON WAS HALF OVER. No excuse for not game planning effectively for the backup when they finally were begrudgingly given the reins. No excuse for not preparing Rose and Bottari for the bowl game.

Any one of the litany of mistakes Whitt made with the QB situation puts a normal coach in question, two puts them in the hot seat, three puts them on tarmac notice. Whitt’s about seven deep and it’s very obvious (and I pointed this out going all the way back to Oregon State) The locker room is not happy about this bulls**t. Now that insiders have confirmed that we might lose our RB1 SPECIFICALLY because of this disaster everyone who contended that the team themselves somehow didn’t notice that Whitt was torpedoing their season can eat triple helpings of crow for Christmas. Dumbest s**t I’ve ever heard to think that these young men who devote their entire lives to the team aren’t bitter when they see their efforts and the efforts of all of their closest friends being undercut by sheer incompetence.

And to put a bow on this catastrophe we are seeing a transfer portal exodus that will leave us at a net negative going into next year. A year were we better f**king hope that Cam rising doesn’t get injured because there is absolutely no reason to believe that Whitt is capable of more than lucking his way into one serviceable QB at a time. We will not have a backup prepared, every shred of evidence we have supports this. QBs in this program can spend their entire careers in our system without being able to even remotely perform at a D1 level. And lets pray to football jesus because let me remind you that Cam Rising has NEVER ACTUALLY PLAYED A YEAR OF FOOTBALL WITHOUT SUFFERING A SEASON ENDING INJURY.

I’m willing to forgive some of the bowl performance due to that fact that we practically fielded a scout team. But them playing like a scout team is our coaches fault. A garbage game plan and a locker room that is so very clearly disinterested AGAIN. These northwestern losses, texas, and Penn state. Lets be honest our team put on a f**king clown show and the buck stops at the coaching staff. Whitt is no longer capable of putting a team on the field that gives a s**t about the postseason anymore. Part of that is a change in college football, part of it is the coaching staff’s fault. We can’t rely on playing in a marquis bowl against a top three program all time for our team to play like they’ve ever put on pads before. No other coach could’ve done what Whitt has done for our program but he doesn’t have it anymore, it happens to everyone, and some of the stuff he never had at all (any interest in having nor ability to field an offense), is starting to become too big of a problem to ignore for a program like Utah. You can’t just have 45 RBs in 2023 and expect that’ll do.

Also. we have approximately four lurking BYU fans because that’s how many people voted “excellent” so far, which I can only construe as a snarky insult

The older coaches Whitt and Ludwig looked worn out. NIL, transfer portal, signing day and throw a bowl game in there too. Thats on top of a rough season. Too much to ask for older coaches. Scalley had the defense ready to play. Besides the mis coverage by Ritchie on the first touchdown the defense played great. Defense should be good next year.

The offense was horrible. Looked like an FCS team playing a solid D1 defense. Not enough talent on offense. Online was below average QB below average WR below average TE ? Running backs looked good.

I think this was clearly a good coaching job. Earlier in the year there was talk from everyone about how this was Coach Whitt’s best year of coaching ever. Y’all just forget all of that? Whole team was hurt and we beat USC and UCLA, I think that’s pretty incredible. Recency bias will lead everyone to feel negative about it, but this was a really impressive coaching year.

I think the coaching has to be considered among if not the worst of Whitts tenure. This was a Jon Hayes season for the second time and that’s pretty inexcusable.

Roster management has to start with quarterback and this year was abominable. And that’s coming off of Whitt calling this the most talented roster he’s ever had.

Compounding that mistake from an X/O standpoint was not giving the reps to the QB 2/3 that actually were going to play.

That 8 games were won is really a testament to the defense and the actual talent on the roster that was thrown in under poor circumstance.

Excellent – Did you see the injuries? And we got to 8 wins?

Yeah, the bowl game was disappointing and yeah, I hope I never see Barnes on the field again in a game outside of the spring game, and yes, I am 100% for reigning down boos if Barnes ever steps on the field in a game that counts,

BUT

We had QB1, QB2, RB1, RB2, RB3, TE1, TE2 all down for all or significant portions of the year. And we beat USC, UCLA, ASU. We almost beat UW. If we could have beat Arizona we would have run through the teams I severely dislike.

Not a perfect year, but given all the injuries we did a lot better than expected. What the coaches pulled off with the injuries we had was…

EXCELLENT!

Id say this was a tale of 2 completely opposite sides of the ball. I’d give an A to the Defense, I’d give a C to the offense. Special teams id say B+. Overall Id say B
Here’s why:
Offense: Yes injuries were the story but we did not do much with what we had. Won’t even go into the QB fiasco, but that alone put the team behind the sticks. The playcalling was headscratching at times–keep running when its not working, no creativity, no tempo, QB roulette, no identity. Id say biggest positive on offense was Vaki. 91st ranked team offense–cant be all injuries, many teams have our backup talent or worse and managed to do much better.
Defense: Continues to shine under Scalley. Many guys off to the NFL says all you need to know about development on that side of the ball. A handful of gashes deep are still an issue but otherwise the run D was insane. Id credit the D for many of the wins–Florida, Baylor, UCLA, mayby CO. Lets be honest, an average/above avg D with this offense and we’re looking at 4-5 wins tops.
ST: Def improvement on previous couple years–Buemister and Becker solid. We gave up a few big returns and didnt have many of our own. Overall the unit helped but wasn’t a huge factor most games
Head coach: Wont go into the QB stuff but safe to say it was mishandled. Decision to go with an stay with BB in the bowl game was also strange. Whitt definitly looks like he’s tired, frustrated and cant blame him with NIL and portal. I think he’s ready to hang it up, the landscape has changed and he goes 1 more season then passes the keys to Scalley. I think next year is his swan song, gives it his all, a season to celebrate his legacy and goes out on top. I think all coordinators are back next year–in ’25 Ludwig moves on with Whitt, Scalley will take over; maybe Swan becomes DC and we find a fresh, up and coming OC.
In sum; injuries hampered us–but we didnt do much with what we did have, D won many and kept us in games. Special teams was good but not a huge factor. Next year is a re-invigorted program in a new league, healthy, learned from this years mistakes. Culture and legacy move forward safe with Scalley