Slow day, SOS in the PAC-12:

[Utah]

One thing that’s important to remember in Football is SOS and returning OL are the two most important factors. It’s a lot of why the NFL has so much parity regular season wise. The worst teams from last year get the easiest schedule.

In the PAC-12, you have the top three teams from the north and south (WSU, Stanford, UW, USC, AZ, ASU) and the bottom three teams (Cal, Oregon St, Oregon, Utah, UCLA, Colorado).

How tough are their schedules? What I did is I looked at how many games each team had vs the top half of the conference and vs the bottom half.

This isn’t exact science, but it does explain why some teams are better/worse than initially thought, and also explains why Utah has struggled some.

I looked at how many of the top 6 teams each team faces vs the bottom six. It’s very simplistic and isn’t fool proof, mainly because a better team has an easier schedule because they can’t play them selves and likewise for a worse team, but it can show how such similar teams talent wise (say, Utah and Arizona) can have such different records.

Here is how it shakes out:

Plays the most “easy” games (bottom three teams from each division):
6 games: Washington, Arizona
5 games: WSU, Stanford, USC, ASU
4 games: Oregon, Cal, UCLA, Colorado
3 games: Oregon St, Utah

Now, toss out the 4 and 5 games, because those rankings are most likely a product of one team beating another.

BUT, you can see how Utah’s season looks worse than Arizona’s, but Utah beat Arizona. Talent wise, they are very similar, but out of Stanford, WSU and Wash, Utah plays all three (3 losses) and Arizona only plays 1 (1 loss). Is Arizona two wins better than Utah? Probably not, Utah just plays a much tougher schedule.

If you take the number of tough games and minus the number of easy games, you get a 3 (you play three more tough teams than easy teams), 1, -1, and -3.

This gives you this ranking:

3 (you play 6 tough teams, 3 easy teams): Oregon State, Utah
1 (5 tough, 4 easy): Oregon, Cal, UCLA, Colorado
-1 (4 tough, 5 easy): WSU, Stanford, USC, ASU
-3 (3 tough, 6 easy): Washington and Arizona

I think the intelligent info from all this is that Oregon State sucks and has a tough schedule, which sucks.

Utah is probably an average PAC-12 team, but with an easier schedule could have gotten to 8 wins but will probably end up with 6.

Washington is a little overrated. With a tougher schedule, they are probably an 8 win PAC-12 team.

Same with Arizona. If you switch Arizona and Utah’s schedules, you probably switch their records as well.

[Utah]

Tl/dr:

Utah was always a 6 to 8 win team this year. Their schedule is insanely hard which pushes them down to the 6 win side of that range.

So, don’t overreact to the 6 wins this year. Utah is right about where they should be, realistically.

[vcsg01]

Great breakdown. I feel like us fans always have pretty realistic expectations to begin the year but once you get emotionally involved in the actual games its a lot more disappointing to not win most of the games.

[EagleMountainUte]

For me personally it is how they have lost. 

Looking back at the OOC schedule I shouldn’t be surprised. Utah should have put up more points on BYU. Yeah it was a “road” game but that is one of the worst BYU teams of all time playing right now. Statistically it was a blowout in most areas but that should have been a marker for me. 

You see the total lack of effort against ASU and Oregon. Defensively they just rolled over and took it. This is after playing reasonably well against a rising Stanford and nearly having a shot to win it against Usc. Even the USC game giving up that lead to USC isn’t Utah football. The three and outs on offense are but not that terrible thing that happened. Usually you get a stop with that kind of lead. It may have happened on fourth and nine with knee down. 

I am starting to ramble and get frustrated. The losses hurt the most because they were so close to a great season. 

[Author]

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