Magnitude of Friday

[Ghost of the HEB]

If Utah can escape Corvallis with a W, we’ll be a top 10 team going into a long bye week that’s followed by a home game against struggling Cal. This is a great opportunity to catapult into a bye with momentum and to get people healthy for the stretch run of @USC, Oregon, @Washington, and the always tricky game in Tucson.
I don’t believe we can afford a loss to a non-SC/UO/UW team and still make the CCG. So here’s to hoping something drastic happens to bring the offense back to life.

[Kirk Herbstreet]

This week is huge. One of the biggest games of the season. Don’t know who the QB will be. Don’t know who is coming back. But IF Utah wins at Oregon State, and we get a well timed bye week…who knows what the heck will happen. Cal should be a W. That would get us to 6-0 with a trip to USC. Plus we could be really healthy. Cam Rising? Brant Kuithe? Conner O’Toole? Jaquindon Jackson? Mycah Pittman? A more healthy Junior Tafuna, Simote Pepa, Jatravis Broughton, Devaughn Vele, Van Filinger? I will repeat what I have heard a lot of national guys say: Look out.

[alexsmith]

I’d absolutely agree. A win on Friday gets you to (most likely) 6-0 heading into USC which is not for another 3.5 weeks. That should get you pretty healthy with the gauntlet coming up. That still leaves you with best case scenario pulling a 3-0 from USC, UO, and UW, but with a realistic best case of 2-1. Going into the final weeks of the season 10-0 or 9-1 is a lot better than 8-2 or 7-3. It all starts Friday

[22Ute22]

Not to mention that USC has to travel to and from South bend, against a very physical ND team, the week before Utah. I hope USC wins a close, hard fought game. ND softens them up for us, and we go to the Coliseum and deliver the finishing blow on national television.

[Utegator]

For some reason the hosts of the Podcast of Champions seemed to think that Oregon State looked really bad. I didn’t watch the game, but they said their QB is just flat out not good. Weird take because it seems like everyone else talks about how good they are.

[EagleMountainUte]

Most of Utehub talked about him in the off-season. Consensus for me is most Clemson fans were happy to see him leave.

[22Ute22]

Do you think DJU looked good? I don’t. He didn’t look terrible, but definitely mediocre.

[EagleMountainUte]

Can OSU rush the ball? Like better than Utah’s ability to stop them? If they have to throw to win I like Utah’s defense against every team sans Williams, Penix and Nix.

[2008 National Champ]

around 230 yds / gm. If Utah can keep them under 150 with about the same from the pass game, I would consider that a win. Offense still needs to figure out how to move the ball for it to matter.

[Utah]

DJ Uigalelei sucks. Look, there is a reason why he isn’t at Clemson anymore. There is a reason why he is at Oregon State.

And it’s not because he is good.

If we had Cam, we’d roll Oregon State, just like we did last year. Because our offense is so limited, the game will probably be closer than it should be, with a shot at us losing. That’s why we need Cam back so bad.

Oregon State is the most overrated team in our conference, which is good for us, because if we win, we get a big bump from the win. If we lose, we don’t get dinged as much.

[SalUteopia]

DJU is adequate. Regardless, their O is potent enough to put up 21-24 points on our D. Can our O score 24-28 points if Cam doesn’t play (and JJ is not at full strength, no Becker)?
And I disagree that OSU is the most overrated team in P12 this year; at this point, that’d be USC.

[2008 National Champ]

WSU threw the ball well against them, a skill that Utah hasn’t shown this season. DJU struggled with pressure which is definitely a skill that Utah has shown. What that means for Friday I don’t have a clue but Vegas is saying that this is a pick-em game on a neutral field.

If it comes down to field goals, I don’t like Utah’s chances. I feel like Utah will need either a defensive or specials teams score again this week. Road Friday night games are tough, even when fully healthy.

I had Utah at 3-2 after this week’s game so they are playing with house money from where I’m sitting. Figure out a way to make it happen and git-er-dun!

[wcrunner]

Our oldest son went to OSU when J Smith was the QB there. Our younger son is a Ute. They get along well.
While the older brother was there he became good friends with an OL guy who played with Smith. He told my son that OSU secondary is weak this year, as they sent 3 DBs to the NFL from last year’s team. They are young and a work in progress, and a good passing game can expose them.

[2008 National Champ]

if only Utah had a good passing game.,,

[bopahull]

And a couple of top RBs, not to mention the TEs. Hell, what Utah needs is their first string starters back.

[2008 National Champ]

Oh man, you must be fun at christmas 🙂

[bopahull]

HO HO HO

[rbmw263]

the road to 6-2 (ie 10-2) starts this week. I still think we can get there if we lose this one, but we’d have to be completely healthy and get a bit lucky in LA or Seattle and obviously no room for error anywhere else.

Huge game, cant wait. These games are what its all about man.

[SalUteopia]

I mentioned this in a different post as well, but according to me, losing to OSU will virtually eliminate us from the P12 CCG race. I think we can only afford to lose to UW and maybe USC.

[2008 National Champ]

It’s going to come down to losses. Utah gets the head to head with all of the contenders except WSU so they control their own destiny. WSU loses to Utah on a tie-breaker as long as USC has a better record than Stanford so they aren’t a concern.

No team has ever finished undefeated in conference so I’m going to assume it doesn’t happen again this year. There are a lot of permutations this early in the season so nothing is written in stone but if Utah is going to lose 2 games and be in a tie for the 2nd spot, a loss to Oregon State helps rather than hurts. Oregon State already has a loss and still has to play UCLA, Oregon and UW. They could easily lose 2 of those if not all 3 so in this scenario, Oregon State would not be a factor.

If one of the losses is to Oregon State that means Utah should win 2 of the 3 remaining big ones and would hold the head to head against those 2. At that point, you just hope that the one you lost to isn’t in the tie.

It’s too early to try calculating the 3 and 4 way tie-breakers. What matters is that your losses are not to teams that could potentially be involved. If you told me that Utah ended up 7-2 while beating USC, Oregon and Washington, I would put their chances around 95% of making the CCG. So no, I don’t believe that losing on Friday virtually or actually eliminates Utah from anything. The road gets tougher but is still doable.

[Author]

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