Interesting article from a Ducks writer

I did six games worth of film study on Utah, watched six of Ludwig’s games at Vanderbilt, and did a data regression on the full-game charts I assembled. I don’t understand what additional work you want me to do or what factual errors you think I’m making. If you can tell me what I got wrong I’d appreciate it.

If your comment is about an opinion I have on Jaylon Johnson, then I’ll repeat: I don’t have a negative opinion about him. I don’t have an opinion at all. I don’t have enough film to draw a conclusion.

Several people have brought up his good play against Dillon Mitchell when Oregon played at Utah. Here’s the issue: Utah didn’t make the switch to have Johnson on Mitchell until 4:37 remaining in the 3rd quarter. By my count there are only 13 passing plays (including ones that turned into scrambles) in which Johnson was covering Mitchell.

On three of those plays we got a clear look and I thought Johnson was covering him very well. On one more his coverage was solid but I think he got away with a DPI, there’s a fairly clear restriction at Mitchell’s shoulder and his feet show it.

On four more plays the progression went to the left side first, where Schooler was against Blackmon, and there was enough separation so that the throw went there – we didn’t get to see how the Mitchell-Johnson battle went and we can’t infer it because Herbert’s eyes never got there.

On five more plays the camera angle was just atrocious and we couldn’t see that battle at all.

So I agree – Johnson played a pretty solid quarter of football in coverage against Oregon’s best receiver. But I can’t say he’s a surefire NFL prospect on seeing four plays. That is literally what I meant: I don’t have enough film.

The critique seems a bit unfair. Yes, a journalist should research an article, but give him a break, the guy is a OU fan/writer and wrote an article about Utah on a blog. This is not the NY Times.

And so what if he doesn’t know as much about Utah as *some* Utah fans (he probably knows as much if not more than most casual fans), he admitted as much in his article (saying he has not seen enough to opine). He researched the Utes pretty well and wrote a fairly indepth analysis, he is not claiming to know every in and out of the team.

I agree that the Utes are well situated for another Pac-12 South win, especially having done similar projects on Arizona, USC, and UCLA so far this offseason and not coming away very optimistic about their prospects (I haven’t dived into ASU yet, though I was less impressed than most of the media appears to be with Coach Edwards’ first year). It’s a bit rough that Utah gets both of its two toughest games — Washington and USC — on the road, but at least those are ones everybody knows are going to be the big determinants of how the season goes. And with the USC game, as Adam and Cameron pointed out on the podcast, it’s entirely possible they’ve fired their coach by then!

Not joking about the name meaning, that’s what they in the podcast and they’re pretty reliable. So go ahead and keep the down votes coming.