Last week I took my crew up to the NIU game. We had a great time. It certainly wasn’t the most exciting game, and at times it was a bit aggravating, but we had a great time cheering on the Utes.
I’m still in the optimist club for this team. I think the first two games did not show us much, and I think that was largely by design. Nevertheless, the defense absolutely shut down Weber State. The end. There were some silly miscues on special teams, and the offense was slow to get going, but I think the gameplan was vanilla, vanilla, vanilla. (I’m no expert on such matters, but that was my impression.)
NIU is a decent team, and Sutton Smith is a fantastic player. But even though the Utes had to step things up a notch, I think they were still playing with less than the full throttle and a largely vanilla gameplan (with a few wrinkles here and there). It’s possible I’m wrong about that, but I think they were trying to keep as much in the tank as possible leading up to Washington. I think they wanted to remain fresh and, if at all possible, minimize the potential for injuries. And, yet, the defense still did a great job shutting down NIU. Two field goals. The end. (I know there probably should have been one more field goal on NIU’s errant snap play, but, hey, those things happen. The defense held.) There were some silly miscues again on special teams, but I don’t expect that to happen three weeks in a row. The offense still struggled a bit, but they did enough to win.
Anyway, no deep analysis here–just a Ute fan musing on game day. But I hope I’m right.
And I hope we pound Washington and lay at least forty points on them. And get fifteen sacks. 🙂
Go UTES!
Mississippi Valley State @ 
Utah .
