Expectations

My wife heard some nieghbors talking football yesterday.  One man is a huge BYU donor, like hundred of thousands.  The other guys said to him, “Saturday had to be brutal for you?”  The donor said, “No, we had a lot of fun because I expected we would get destroyed by Wisconsin.”

It reminded me of the mid 1970s.  My buddy and I bought season tickets to the Utes in 1975.  We knew we were no good.  In fact we ended up going 1-10.  If my memory is correct, our only win was a 21-10 victory over New Mexico.  But, we always had fun at the games.  Why?  Because, we had no expectations of being good.  

So what are our expectations for the Utes this season?  For me, I have to keep in mind that we had 8 players picked in the NFL draft including 4 of 5 offensive lineman.  We are not Alabama and don’t have a bunch of 4 & 5 star recruits waiting in the wings.  In fact this senior class is made of of 2013/2014 recruits.  They were not our best recruiting years.  We also lost an amazing running back and a stud at safety.

We may have the most difficult PAC 12 schedule because we don’t play Cal and OSU.

So, initially expecatations for this season (for me) were not super high.  I am always hopeful, but the reality was that we had a ton of holes to fill and a very difficult conference schedule.  But, along came Carrington.  We announced a new starter at QB, we found a kicker that appears better than automatic Andy.  Also, the last few weeks proved that UCLA and USC are beatable.

For me, I am hopeful because of Carrington and Huntley.  They give us something we haven’t had since 2004.  But, we still do not have a running game.  In fact, we are not close.  If we can’t run against SJSC, how do we expect run against PAC 12 teams?  We couldn’t run against BYU and Wisconsin shredded them.  I understand that Winsconsin is one of the best running teams in the country.  Nonetheless, we have NO excuse for our poor running game.

I haven’t seen aything that leads me to believe that this team is capable of winning the south or even winning 9-10 games.  There isn’t a game on our schedule that we can’t win, but we make way too many mistakes to believe that we are a top ten team.  If we had last year’s offensive line and Williams back at running back – we could probably be a top ten team, but we don’t.

So, one game at a time.  Beat Arizona this week and show improvement in areas where we are struggling.

Go Utes!!!