Playoffs still attainable?

[RustyShackleford]

Hypothetically speaking could a 10-2 Utah team receive an at large bid? I truly don’t think the season is lost. Think 2022. Had to have a lot of help but still made it to the conference championship. Obviously none of this matters if the coaches don’t pull their heads out of their ass, Cams ankle is a serious injury, or we can’t get the guys back on defense. All is not lost.

[Ghost of the HEB]

no

[Itacoatiara22]

Technically, yes. But it’s not happening.

[RoboUte]

lmfao

[MFury]

Maybe if we lost to Oregon and Ohio state. But Arizona and asu? I don’t see it.

[RoboUte]

It’s not even just that. Why Would you WANT us to get smoked by 50 points in front of every football watching eye in the country. Going to the playoffs would be a disaster

[RustyShackleford]

If we won out I don’t think we would get smoked. As I mentioned above the team would have to get right.

[Roy Rangum]

Nope. Don’t see it happening. But, at least we still have a chance to beat BYU! (Although if we lose to them this year I don’t think I could take it.)

[Utehoopsfan]

At this point, ybu is a much better team and will be heavy favorites to beat Utah. They dominated Arizona today and already have wins against K-State and SMU. Utah is looking at a 7-5 season.

[Tony (admin)]

Silly question. Sorry. At this rate becoming bowl eligible is questionable.

[RustyShackleford]

How? I clearly stated this was a hypothetical based on the team getting back to full strength. In this scenario a Utah that wins out means they are playing at full potential

[Utehoopsfan]

Yeah the Jim Mora bit is very fitting for that question. Utah isn’t a good football team. Not close to the playoffs. Would love for them to turn it around, but a 6-0 finish just to get in the conversation isn’t happening.

[Tednab]

They’re so many issues with this team . What the hell did they do this off season cause they sure didn’t prepare for it .. defense is a mess . Offensive sucks and the coaching is complacent AF. No drive, no energy, no spark.. I know the talent is there .. so this is 100% on coaching imo

[Utah5410]

It is if we win out. But at this point. Just accept the play on the field. Is it possible. Yes. But, we need to see it on the field. So don’t plan on it until the defense learns to tackle, we get some guys back and figure out the QB spot. So, not likely.

[Utehoopsfan]

Yeah the reality is the play on the field is bad. The last two games weren’t “quality losses.” Arizona is a very mediocre team and ASU is better, but not a great team either. A 10-2 Utah team might be on the bubble, but with what we’ve seen a 10-2 Utah team is a pipe dream.

[Utah#1]

It would take a MASSIVE MIRACLE if that team won the next six games and others lost three games for the Utes to reach the conf champ game and win it.

[The Miami Ute]

If Utah doesn’t win the Big XII title, then it has little to no chance of getting a bid to the CFPs. There are too many other teams with bigger and better brands and in stronger conferences that will be selected before them.

[EagleMountainUte]

I mean it was a late game. Maybe nobody saw the WAY Utah lost that game.

But regardless of perception Utah looks like they are in a bad way. I felt like Utah did an amazing job coaching last season to turn things around. Let’s see if they can do it again. I think Whitt has earned that kind of support from me.

[Holladay Ute]

Aside from his ridiculous response about why they didn’t bench Cam, I appreciated what Whittingham said after the loss. At least they know what the main problems are (red zone offense, poor tackling, etc.) and aren’t shying away from that. That’s a positive. The bigger negative is that we’ve known those were problems for weeks and they haven’t been able to fix any of them. What made the ASU game harder for me is that they compounded our problems by inserting a 40% Cam Rising. What were they thinking?

[The Miami Ute]

For me, the biggest negative is that you had two weeks to prepare to face a mediocre ASU team and thought that you could win by having a U sticker on your helmet. I mean, WTF did they focus on those two weeks? ASU is Skatteboo and not much else and they were still able to roll the Utes. As I said last night after the game, Rising can’t play another down unless he’s physically fit and, based on the sample I got last night, that’s probably never. Utah and Whitt need to roll with Isaac, mistakes be damned, from here on in to, hopefully, set the stage for a successful 2025-2026 season.

[admiralute]

Not sure why everyone wants to join the Big10. Utah would get wrecked most weeks. Joining the Big12 gave Utah the opportunity to be the big dog, but looks like that’s not happening anytime soon. The problem is Utah is the same team from 3, 5, 10 years ago. Building the team on “physicality “ is not the answer anymore, especially if they have aspirations to join the Big10. Speed and finesse is the name of the game now and IMO, Utah needs to start making some serious adjustments. I’m sorry, but they are not fun to watch. It just sucks when I flip it on a random channel on Saturday and most of the time more entertained than a Utes game. I’m a hardcore Ute fan and used to cry sometimes after a loss (joking), so don’t call me a zoob. All I’m saying is that the dynamics of the Ute football team must change now or it’s going to be a not so fun next several years of football.

[UtesRock]

This is not the same team as the team that started the year. We need to win a game first. After that maybe we make a Cotton Bowl or Alamo if we defeat Tex Tech.

[2008 National Champ]

It’s the same team that started the year. There were just 3 really bad opponents to make it seem better than it was. Oklahoma State is interesting for comparison though because you have two long-tenured coaches who seem to have lost the narrative at exactly the same time.

At this point, I’m trying to decide if two things are true simultaneously: 1) that Whitt is correct and the talent level of the team is truly the best he’s put together, and 2) that the coaching, across the board, has just not been able to figure out how to maximize that talent yet. Because if the opposite is true and what we heard was Coachspeak intended to obfuscate known deficiencies and blind hope that no one would look behind the curtain and see how bad things really were.,, that speaks to a larger problem which probably cannot be solved by the current regime as some have suggested. And I don’t want to go down that road since I still believe the team can get it’s doody together and at least meet what I felt were realistic expectations for the season. Of course, I’m a well-known optimist so take that with a grain of salt

[RustyShackleford]

I don’t think that’s true at all. We are missing 4 MASSIVE contributors on defense. And obviously Cams body being broken. I know injuries are a bulls**t excuse and doesn’t count for anything but it’s asinine to say this Utah team at full strength isn’t good enough to win the Big12

[Anfernee]

Tanuvasa. O’Toole. Dumani. Reid. Fotu. Keenan Johnson.

[2008 National Champ]

Sure but you have to play with what you’ve got, just like your opponent. If’s won’t change the last 6 results and will have no effect on the next 6. So the only thing that sounds asinine to me is playing the what-if game.

What if Rising was fully healthy last night. What if ASU wasn’t missing two defensive starters the first half along with any other injuries they might be dealing with. There’s no way to know what would happen, just speculation that you can retroactively change the variables you want to and get the result you desire.

A healthy Rising has lost games before. Maybe just give ASU credit for their turnaround from last year and recognize that they were better last night. It doesn’t hurt to show respect for your opponent, especially when you weren’t involved in the outcome.

[RustyShackleford]

You said this is the same team that started the season, basically saying we only won because the teams we played sucked. I guarantee if we were even a mostly healthy team we would be undefeated.

[2008 National Champ]

Guarantees are easy to give out when they can’t be proven right or wrong

[UtesRock]

I can’t agree this is same Cam. Not in my opinion.

[Anfernee]

“PLAYOFFS!? DON’T TALK ABOUT PLAYOFFS! ARE YOU YOU KIDDING ME? PLAYOFFS?! I’M JUST HOPING WE CAN WIN ANOTHER GAME!”

[The Miami Ute]

Playoffs?

[Anfernee]

“We couldn’t do diddly poo offensively.” Another Mora that fits us.

[Charlie Foxtrot]

Before we can worry about the playoffs, we need to figure out how to beat “Red Zone” on a consistent basis

[RUUTES]

[Utehoopsfan]

Haha, what have you seen from this team that puts them and the playoff in the same sentence? Arizona and ASU aren’t great teams. Arizona just got dominated by ybu today and is 3-3. They might not make a bowl, yet they won in SLC. ASU is an improving team, but not a great team. A playoff level team would have smoked them. Even the win against USU was pretty bad. Outside of Robert Morris, Utah State has been terrible this year, but looked the best against Utah. They haven’t had a double digit lead against anyone else besides Robert Morris.

So hypothetically, sure if Utah won out they would be right in playoff contention at 10-2. There is nothing to suggest they could go 6-0 down the stretch though. The only reason anyone would believe that is based on preseason hype, certainly not the results through 6 games. I’d lean closer to 7-5 than 10-2 at this point.

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