New Poll: Week 2 Grade – Baylor at Utah

[Tony (admin)]

Vote early. Vote often on the website or the app. Maybe I should do a week 2 concessions poll too. I think I know what grades that would get.

[MFury]

Feels like a poll for offense separate from defense. I’m screwing the defense on the grade, but can’t reward Ludwig for not having Wilson prepared, or not having a calibrated playbook for him.

[Uteanooga]

D? Did you see that they won the game?

[MFury]

Edited for clarity. The overall grade (I gave B) screws the defense (should get an A) vs the offense (C).

[2008 National Champ]

It’s a C. Don’t focus on the score. It was a typical 2nd game of the season where some things worked, some didn’t.
Baylor is a team that is expected to struggle to get to .500 this year and the game was never in doubt so Utah did what they were expected to.

Now if we want to talk about someone from that game that should get an A+++++.,, man that Baylor punter was nails. He kept flipping the field and never let the Utah offense get any momentum.

[PhiladelphiaUte]

Utah rarely plays well after facing an FCS opponent. We always beat up on those grossly overmatched teams, and enter the next game believing we can do that to anyone. But we can’t. And that’s one of the primary reasons why I would like to see us stop playing them — scheduling instead a MWC team in a region we heavily recruit — or at the very least, adopt the SEC’s model of scheduling them in November, to serve as a virtual “bye” week, to help get our best players healthy.

Here’s our last decade the week after an FCS opponent (omitting 2020)…

2024: Beat SUU 49-0 | struggled vs Bylr, 23-12
2023: Beat Web St 31-7 | struggled vs (8-5) UCLA, 14-7
2022: Beat SUU 73-7 | trounced (7-6) SDSU, 35-7
2021: Beat Web St 40-17 | lost to (10-3) ybu-p, 17-26
2019: Beat Ida St 31-0 | lost to (8-5) USC, 23-30
2018: Beat Web St 41-10 | struggled vs (8-6) NIU, 17-6
2017: Beat N Dak 37-16 | struggled vs (4-9) ybu-p, 19-13
2016: Beat SUU 24-0 | struggled vs (9-4) ybu-p, 20-19
2015: Did not play an FCS opponent | started the season 6-0
2014: Beat Ida St 56-14 | trounced (6-8) Fres St, 59-27

And since we didn’t play an FCS opponent in 2015, we can throw in the 2013 game to get us to 10 FCS opponents. In 2013, we beat Web St 70-7, then shat the bed vs (7-6) Ore St, 48-51.

Week after FCS: 7-3 (.700)
Avg margin of victory: 13.7-pts
Avg margin of loss: 6.3-pts

And for the record, our record the week following a MWC team (aka, a much better “test/warm-up” game to help us figure out what areas need special attention) over that span was 7-0, where we’d beaten Ariz St, Wash St, Ariz, USC, Fres St, Ore, and Mich. And if you included 2013, it would be 8-0, but our subsequent opponent was Web St.

Week after MWC: 7-0 (1.000)
Avg margin of victory: 17.3-pts
Avg margin of loss: n/a

[Tony (admin)]

I appreciate when people put in the research work to do posts like this.

[Duhwayne]

Word

[Jim Vanderhoof]

Wow. Interesting viewpoint and numbers to back it up. Seems every year it takes us a few games to get in rhythm and find our identity on offense and defense. A lot comes down to leadership and a great QB. We are a totally different team when Rising is on the field.

[Utah]

Got Damn Philly! Bringing it. Love it.

[UTE98]

So Philly you’re saying the improvement from game 1 to game 2 is a myth? Your stats back it up. It always seems like Utah either takes three of four games to get going and November is incredible or they come roaring out of the gate and November everything catches up, or was it October.

[PhiladelphiaUte]

I’m not saying it’s a “myth”. What I’m saying is, Utah annually squanders the opportunity for a tune up game, by playing an opponent so weak, it’s not a true “tune up”. Because the competition won’t inspire our athletes to become truly dialed in to the task at hand, nor will they be able to give us any glimpses of deficiencies that we’d rather find out vs a beatable team, than one who can conceivably beat us.

[Author]

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