I’m 100% in Taylor’s corner at this point.

It gets harder and harder for me to listen to anyone (fans, coaches, media.. ) who says “look at all that talent” or “we have so much talent next year”. We hear it every year. This off season all we heard about was how good our receivers were, but so far they look like garbage. I make fun of BYU fans because it’s always “next year”. Our fans are basically doing the same thing.

The bottom line is that if we don’t have the coaches in place to come up with a good offense, we won’t have a good offense. I don’t care if we have 5* guys at every position, it won’t matter if the coaches can’t coach them. It’s really too bad because we constantly have a defense that any other team dreams of.

I understand what you’re saying, and I agree. But it is really getting hard to keep looking forward to “next year”. We’ve been saying that for several years now. It’s frustrating as a fan to perpetually be so close but always missing one piece of the proverbial puzzle.

I still believe in Taylor, I believe in Huntley. I hope receivers start catching balls and I hope Moss gets healthy and we give him 20+ carries per game. Saturday was a gut-punch. But there is still a lot of football to be played, and I can’t wait to watch and cheer.

Go Utes.

Penisini and Blackmon are both Juniors this year – so until they declare for the draft – the assumption is that they are both coming back.

Agreed.

I just want two things, WR to catch the ball and Huntley to make better decisions. Don’t care about play-calling at this point.

I agree completely.  I think constant switching at the OC position looking for a good OC is worse than keeping an average OC for continuity sake.  As long as Whittingham is the coach the Utes will have a great-to-elite defense and a poor-to-average offense.  It’s the philosophy.  QBs at Utah are told that the worst thing they could do is turn over the ball.  You can see that with our last few QBs, they seem really hesitant to throw the ball at times.   It’s a tradeoff I’m willing to take because a sound defense keeps you in every game.  Even if it can be frustrating at times (especially Saturday).

If we can get a year with elite defense and average offense we will take the South.  Elite offense and defense just doesn’t happen outside a few schools even then only every few years.

The only option for a new OC right now is with a complete new coaching staff.  If crazy garbage happened and Whitt got fired, whoever comes in after is set up for a very solid run in 2019 and 2020. But I still think odds are that we will get MUCH worse rather than better.

And with the new transfer rules who is to say we won’t lose most of the talent on the team if the coaching staff gets fired?

The UW game has too many people p**sing their pants.  People need to relax. UW has a top 5 Secondary (easily), and are very stout up front (Utah quality or better on the D line, better LBs).  They are a legit Top 10 team. 

Moss was hurt, the receivers couldn’t get seperation, and Huntley was being inaccurate due to the yips.  I suspect they will rebound and look greatly improved against WSU next weekend, especially after USC softens them up this week.

I’m mostly in your camp on this one.  The revolving door we’ve had at OC is an obvious reason for our offensive identity woes.  The game against NIU seemed like scheme was our main problem but last week it was execution.  One thought I had was how many new pass catchers we have running routes this year and that includes Covey, who is in his first year of this offense.  Outside of Mariner, Simpkins, and Nacua we have a stable of new receivers and tight ends that are very young that didn’t play last year.  I have to believe it can only get better from here.  At least I hope it does.

Having said all that, we still don’t run the ball enough.  I think Troy Taylor abandons the run too quickly altogether.  Moss should be getting his touches.  Our best seasons in the Pac-12 were on the backs of John White IV, Devontae Booker, and Joe Williams.  All three of those guys are playing professionally.

I do find it sad that a lot of us are looking back at the Roderick/Harding days wishing for those back when at the time a lot of us were fed up with how one-dimensional our offense was.  Who’da thunk it?

Ok but you have to admit you expected our offense to improve this year vs last and I would say we are the same or worse.  I expected, with the continuity of OC, QB, RB and much of the line we would be much improved.

At least until the season is over.  I don’t see any good coming from it.  The only reasonable option I can see would be to put Gary Anderson over the offense but I’m so sure that’s great idea either.  

so far there aren’t any this year either