Arizona game first quarter

[BleedsRedUte]

That was the weirdest quarter to watch this season. I know the defense was racked by injuries, but the pass plays where the Az player was wide open with no Utah DB within 5 yards of him were hard to watch. Even the trick play should have had some coverage on the receiver who finally caught the ball.

The Utah DBs haven’t been extraordinary, but to see them let Arizona march down the field without much resistance, was not a good feeling. Most of the bad coverage was on the Corners, so Bishop and LBs that were out wouldn’t have made much difference.

The offense had no answer and the way Arizona was stuffing the Run looked like they knew exactly where the play was going.

It looked like Arizona had practiced and prepared for the game, and Utah hadn’t done any preparation at all.

The excuse of injuries to key personel only goes so far, this far into the season the team should at least be playing some consistent, competitive football.

[Utah]

That was a great gameplay by Arizona. We had LB’s out, safeties out, and have struggled at CB. And they attacked all those players.

Can I get on a soapbox and rant a little?

Let’s admit how incredibly stupid Whitt’s “no injuries” policy is. One, it sets up unrealistic expectations for fans. Had we really known about Cam in August, had we known that half our defense was out on Tuesday…we’d feel so better about the season and would not have expected the game yesterday to be close.

And hiding the injuries from Arizona…I think Arizona did just fine vs us. I don’t think them knowing about our injured players on Tuesday instead of Saturday would have changed the outcome much.

It’s such a stupid policy. That and closed practices. Just. Dumb.

*steps off soapbox*

[Utah]

And this by no means I don’t like Whitt. I love Whitt and want him to coach forever. But you can criticize your leaders and not everyone is perfect and this is a flaw in Whitt’s armor…that and the QB position.

[Charlie]

The Utah defense is assignment based and those assignments are constantly changing. A LBer is used to receive defensive signals and/or call the defensive assignments. Barton getting injured hurt that process. Reid being out was the loss of the other experienced LBer. Bishop was involved with messages in the secondary. I am not sure how we started the game, trying to use the different assignments with new players or simply going back to a base defense with very few options. What ever the case, it took some time to settle in what we were doing and it was not clean. Myself, I think the solution is rotating the ramrod assignment with as many as three. This would be less effective in good times but may raise the bottom in bad times. The bad part is the likely 3 would be Barton, Reid and Bishop. But then, I always favored using the backup center as much as possible to minimize the impact of the center going down.

[2008 National Champ]

I think people are overlooking Scalley’s micromanagement of the play calls also. The insistence on waiting until the last possible second to send in the defensive play call has been taken advantage of by other teams. And it’s been a recent phenomenon as I don’t remember the same issues with Lloyd and Sewell.

At some point you have to trust that you have taught your players properly what their assignments are during the week based on the coverage calls and the offensive alignment. Those rules are built into your scheme. I’d estimate that half of the coverage breakdowns happened because the players were looking to the sideline to get a late call. I’m sure that’s hyperbole but it has happened often enough that it seems like there are always players rushing to get into position as the ball is being snapped.

There does come a point where the players can’t be confident in what they are supposed to be doing if it is always changing on the fly.

[UtMtBiker]

It was just terrible football. The backups looked out of their depth but found footing as the game went on. I wonder if a time out or 2 to slow it down for them could have helped weather the storm early. Guess it wouldn’t have mattered to much as the offense once again didn’t produce any point that mattered.

[utefansince79]

Having several huge parts of the defense out hurt quite a bit. Took a while for those that were out there to sort out what they were doing. After the first 20 minutes, didn’t give up any more points until deep into the 4th quarter where Zona finally got a few more TDs (and were caught off guard by that last bomb).

Meanwhile the blocked punt was devastating. A huge boost to Arizona’s momentum and confidence, and crushed Utah’s morale.

[Utah]

Man, Mokofisi has had a rough year. Let’s hope he improves.

[Author]

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