Wilson debacle is on Whit

[Stone]

Anyone with eyes that see can discern that Utah’s chances of winning are better with Rose than Wilson. The same is true for Bottari. Who knows about Huard (seeing as Whit closes all practices).

Wilson may one day be a good or even great college QB. But he is CLEARLY not there now. I would be fine with that if there weren’t clearly better QBs behind him. I do not blame Wilson–any athlete worth his salt wants to play and should play his hardest when given the opportunity. Wilson has done that. The blame clearly lies with Whit. He chose to play a QB that was not ready, and he chose to play that QB when there were BETTER options. That is what I find so frustrating.

Why did Whit do that? Was it pressure because Wilson is being paid a lot of NIL? Was it a personal/social connection with the family? Was it because Wilson was a prized recruit that need be catered to? I do not know. But whatever the reason, it seems clear that the reason was not because Wilson was the QB that gave the team the best chance of winning NOW. That is a tough thing to signal to a team (especially when this is the last year of football for many players in their life).

In sum, Wilson is not ready. But I don’t blame Wilson. I blame the coaches. I love Whit. But he blew this one.

[noneyadb]

Cool story, only about the 1000th post on this topic.

[2008 National Champ]

does he get steak knives?

seriously though, if there’s a limit to how much we can discuss the same topic over and over and over and over, this site will dry up in a hurry

[noneyadb]

Maybe reply to an already existing thread on the topic?🤷‍♂️ Having new threads on the same subject with the same points being restated only gets about half the conversation anyway.
Yes, Whitt sucks at offense and choosing QB’s. He takes experience over talent even to the detriment of the team.

[UteBaron89]

Amen, brotha! Abundantly clear after what we’ve seen of the four QB’s that Isaac should’ve redshirted this year and been running scout team. Sly said it best in the post-game. “They did wrong by Isaac Wilson this year.” Which means they did wrong by the program as well.

[utefansince79]

I do feel rather badly for Isaac. Very much needed a red-shirt year to learn how to play at the higher level, (didn’t help his brother is in the NFL so there were very high expectations of him).

[USS Utah]

As the captain of the ship that is Utah football, Whit is responsible for everything. Even if the mistake is made by an assistant coach, well, who hired that assistant? Kyle. The buck stops with him.

[Charlie Foxtrot]

Who knows what the real reasons are for playing Wilson when he clearly is not ready and needs more development, especially considering he has had some sort of injury (before the ISU game). When both Rose and Bottari can step in and the offense works, obviously something has gone wrong in the evaluation of the ability to make the offense go. Perhaps Wilson is more talented that Rose or Bottari and that somehow shows up in practice, but it is clear in game play situations that Wilson doesn’t process fast enough to make the correct decisions on a regular basis.

Given that we can’t have a reliable passing game with IW running the offense, opposing teams load the box and just dare us to throw. Now we can’t run or pass and we have to hope that the defense and/or maybe special teams can somehow win the game. Why it took until the TDS game for anyone other than an injured Rising or Wilson to get a chance to play is beyond me? How many games in a row do we have to go without hardly any offensive production before you take a chance on a different QB?

After Rose gave the team a spark and unfortunately sustained a season ending injury, why stick with Wilson for the whole game against Colorado? Why not give a couple of series to Bottari and just see what happens? The season is over at that point anyway and the only thing on the table other than a possible meaningless bowl bid is pride. What would the Iowa State game have looked like if Bottari started that game? Who knows, but apparently the coaches didn’t want to take a chance to find out.

[Ute Dub]

I thought Ludwig made the call on Wilson, right? It’s well documented. Also, Wilson is Ludwig’s recruit, no?

Also, Ludwig stepped down.

[thirtyfour-thirtyone]

Wilson must be great in practice, but in games, he is clearly the worst QB on the roster, and it’s not close. Ludwig and Bajakian must have been seeing something during the week in practice that made them think Wilson would be OK (or someone promised him playing time). Either way, Whit probably should have stepped in to sort this out a lot sooner. This team probably goes bowling with Rose / Bottari playing more. Rose is one thing, but having the starting quarterback outclassed by the walk-on emergency quarterback is not a good look.

[Utah]

I wonder how much Whitt’s f**kups at QB have him second guessing himself.

Look at all the QB’s he f**ked up on:

He started Jon Hays over Travis Wilson.
He picked Jack Tuttle over Zach Wilson.
He actually made the right decision on Huntley, starting him over Williams.
He started Brewer over Rising.
He started Wilson over Rose/Bottari.

Literally every god damned decision at QB he has made has been the wrong one. I wonder if him going with the old guy over Travis Wilson and Rising made him push for Wilson over Rose/Bottari hoping that Wilson would become another Rising.

The dude just does not know the QB position at all.

[jshame17]

You left off the couple seasons of trying to get Wynn’s weight up and the team being built around his injured shoulder.

[2008 National Champ]

If the stories are true, it was Taylor who put his foot down on starting Huntley. Whitt wanted to go with Williams

[Utah]

I 100% believe it. 100%.

[Charlie]

Who is it that has the loop of a guy beating a dead horse?

[ProudUte]

Unfortunately, I think Isaac goes into the portal in December. I had high hopes for the kid. This year was a mess. He was only supposed to play in a mop-up role. He was thrown into the fire much too soon.

[2008 National Champ]

Playing Wilson this year just moved up the inevitable. We got to see his true talent level and decision making instead of putting all of the 2025 hopes on him. And quite frankly, as bad as the Wilson hype was for the last 2 years, the lead up to 2025 would have been insufferable around these parts if he’d rode the pine this year.

[jshame17]

Trying to carry a team with playoff expectations as a true freshman (with a questionable knee by the way), is not indicative of his true potential.

All freshman struggle with the speed of college ball.

Unfortunately, the damage may be permanent to his ability and confidence.

[2008 National Champ]

We know his true potential, but only because he got high leverage game reps which was my point. Holding a clipboard all year wasn’t going to slow down the game for him because you can’t simulate those stressors in practice, or even scrimmages. Without a remake of his throwing motion, and apparently a maturity upgrade when dealing with his peers, his ceiling is a lot lower than many had hoped.

Which was my 2nd point. Had Rising played most of the year with Rose filling in the gaps, this board would have assumed that Wilson was still the heir apparent and predictions based on perceived potential instead of objective reality would have been well past optimistic.

To your point though, if Wilson sticks around and works on his issues in the offseason, he has a very good chance at improvement. Whether that’s enough to be the QB the next OC needs to get Utah back to being an 8-9 win team with opportunity for more if it gets the right bounces remains to be seen.

But that’s the advantage of having a season go as badly as 2024 has. A lot of people need to look deeper than they would have if the season had ended at 7-5. And hopefully that soul searching leads to a new focus across the board in all aspects instead of assuming that everything will be fine because it always has been.

[Trailgoat]

Agree. Find a school with offensive stability. I’m sure he and his family are already on it. Kid’s been set up to fail by his HC and OC. No way he should been thrown into the situation as a true Frosh.

[Utah]

See, this is one area that we need more information before we make any judgments. Whitt has tried to let QB’s sit for a year to learn.

Rising did it and excelled.
Jayden Daniels was going to do it, but then momma got involved and convinced Daniels to play right away at ASU.
Tuttle was supposed to do it and then daddy got involved and Tuttle left.

What was Wilson’s responsibility in all this? Forgive me, but I think that I could completely see momma and poppa bear being in Whitt/Ludwig’s ear about how good golden boy was and it would be a shame if he didn’t play and transferred mid season…

We just don’t know all the information on Wilson.

[Author]

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