I am not taking away anything from the Utah defense but did it seem odd to anyone how USC stayed committed to rush? Besides a few losses of containment on that new QB I just found USC’s game planned deeply flawed. With those wideouts you expect more throwing especially being really the only weak point for Utah.
Well when you have a freshman QB who has had less than stellar results on the road, they may have felt they didn’t have a choice and were going to try and rely on special teams, defense, and 4 and 5 star tallent to try and pull out a win. More throws against an unexpected cover 2 would probably have resulted in more take aways for Utah.
Especially down 3 TDs in the 4th quarter. Yeah they scored on that one drive in the 4th Q but they helped the Utes by chewing up more than 6 minutes in doing so.
They stayed with the rush because Utah was sitting in pass defense the entire time. USC probably felt like they should be able to run so kept trying to. Utah gifted them points so they score wasn’t too out of control… so running the ball wasn’t the worst thing in the world. But obviously Utah’s d-line just tore them up all game long.