One wrinkle I haven't seen discussed much is that Utah's coach before Urban Meyer, Ron McBride spent a month in Ann Arbor this spring sitting in film sessions with the staff. Reportedly his son in law is on Harbaugh's staff--I don't recall who. McBride will be familiar with Utah, BYU (Utah's primary in-state rival) and Oregon State (with Gary and Kalani Sitake being Whittingham DCs at Utah previously). I expect there will have been quite a bit of good info re trends and schemes discussed.
I'm a Utah fan but from a planning and matchup perspective I think Michigan will give Utah plenty to deal with. Both are run first attacks and both boast strong defensive fronts and decent athleticism in the secondary. I don't think this game gets higher than 17-14. I can't say which gets which.
Greetings Michigan fans from a Utah fan. I'm tacking this on because I don't seem to be able to start a thread. First of all I'm really excited to see this game on Saturday. I think it has an outsized impact on the seasons for each team. Setting the ND game aside (they are really good), both teams have feasted on creampuffs. Neither fanbase knows what to think about its team and the season ahead. I think this weekend is really important in terms of teaching each team about itself.
I've been lurking on Michigan boards, blogs and news sites this week. I've been really impressed at the quality analysis in articles like this one--if only Utah's clickbait journalists would have the chops and interest to do similar breakdowns of film on our own teams, let alone our opponents. Good on all of you for that. Generally, all the basics are well covered. As a result, I thought I'd add a few bits to add a little more insight. If helpful, then great. Utah fan expectations—negative with some hope: I think at bottom, Utah fans are squarely in the same basic position as Michigan fans--hopeful but more than prepared to accept that the team just doesn't have it this year--again. There have been a number of polls in Utah fan sites about win numbers expected. The median ranges between 4 or 5 and 7. People who hope for 8 wins are accused of homerdom. We’ve had some tough years and expectations are tempered. Five of our games in the next 8 weeks are ranked. Transition to PAC-12—QB and offensive problems coincide with transition to much tougher league: Utah's 2004 and 2008 BCS wins were perfectly timed in terms of joining the P5. There were a lot of lucky breaks, but by and large Utah had the coaching and the players to win their way into a major conference. Had the undefeated seasons and BCS wins not happened, we would still be in the MWC. I think the door has already closed for others, so I think Utah fans properly recognize their tremendous luck at having Urban Meyer kick off the transition from above average MWC power to P5 candidate. The 2004 and 2008 teams have left a wider impact: HCs and assistants for those teams are now HCs in SEC and B1G. We’re trying to stop being a stepping stone to somewhere bigger and Whittingham’s decision to stay despite offers to coach Tennessee or the Raiders defense, etc. has been good for us. The last few years have been hard on Utah fan hopes, however. The team is getting noticeably deeper, but the last three years have coincided with a serious upgrade in coaching and team quality across the conference. Our own problems are largely a result of… OC, QB and offensive woes—investment in wrong people compounds problem: The last year that Utah had a starting QB finish the season was the year we last played Michigan in the Big House--2008. In 2009, true freshman Jordan Wynn competed for and ultimately won the starting spot. He torched Cal in a bowl game. This led to a hole in QB recruiting which led to a failure to secure decent backups for three years. In 2011 and 2012, our backup was a D-II recruit that Norm Chow (three coordinators ago) brought in when that player’s former program cancelled football. Wynn failed to finish more than half a season for two or three years until he retired. Our mediocre D-II backup played A LOT of QB. Predictably, we rode on the shoulders of a tailback. He ran 400 times a year. Our offense struggled to get three touchdowns a game. Meanwhile, Whittingham lost several offensive coordinators to head coaching and “bigger program” OC positions. After Norm Chow left to take the Hawaii head coaching job, Whittingham made an apparent attempt to stabilize by appointing homegrown Brian Johnson as OC--the quarterback who played in Ann Arbor the last time we were there. Johnson was 24 and the OC of a P5 program. This was probably the single biggest staffing error Whittingham made as HC at Utah. He was too young and the play calling together with our QB situation meant that we relied on our defense to keep the game close. The joke became “keep them at 20”—if the D could keep the other team around 20 points, we had a shot to win. It is disappointing how much this joke was true. After Erickson was fired at ASU, Whittingham brought him in to help train the OC, creating a weird “co-OC” arrangement. There was some confusion over who had the final call. Erickson has been a total pro despite a chaotic atmosphere and he now coaches the RBs. After last year, Whittingham had to replace Johnson and brought in recently fired Wyoming HC Dave Christensen. Johnson left to join his old QB coach at Mississippi State. Christensen and Whitt have an old relationship and Chrisensen had a good track record as OC at Missouri. So far, so good... QB Wilson’s numbers explained—good then very bad: On top of brittle former starting QBs and OC turnover, last year our starter also dealt with injury problems. He damaged his hand badly against Stanford. His season last year started 4-2 before his numbers imploded with his hand. Many, many of his picks happened after he injured himself. Against UCLA, he threw six picks, for example. Some were read problems, some were just bad tips, and some were that he couldn't throw. It’s clear that until he was told he could never play football again, he was pushed to persevere despite a mangled throwing hand until he basically broke psychologically one night. After that, we started a walkon who lost us a lot of games at the end of the year. Recruiting a QB became a priority. We now have six QBs on scholarship: Wilson worked his ass of and is back. Kendall Thompson is a senior OU transfer who was recruited to replace what we thought was a retired Wilson. Brandon Cox is 3rd and our next starter. Our 4th, Connor Manning, is an OC product who broke all of Matt Barkley’s records. Donovan Isom is a 6’5” true frosh expected to lead in two or three years. And finally, Wyoming’s backup came with Christensen. These reflect the shifting OCs. Wilson and the 4th stringer are primarily pocket passers, and 3, 5 and 6 are clearly dual threat QBs. Our preferred approach is dual threat and the pocket passers are Chow leftovers. Manning will probably transfer. Wilson is getting better and better at the read option. His decision making is better too. At 6’7”, he can fall forward well. Injuries and depth: Last year our offense struggled in part because our number two and the number three receivers, possession receiver Kenneth Scott and TE Jake Murphy, were also injured. Scott is back and we added several JCs who are exciting prospects. On defense, we added a safety, Tevin Carter, who was judged to be better than our PAC-12 freshman all-star Eric Rowe. Our CB situation thinned out (there are nine Utah DBs in the NFL now), so Rowe is now one of our starting corners. The other starter proved to be a bit of a nightmare in game one and has been replaced by a receiver who played safety in high school. He did very well at CB in our last game--considering. The DL is depleted but our LB situation is the most worrisome. Our SAM starter the last two games broke his wrist, and we have had to reorganize our defense. We are getting a Miami transfer back from a foot injury this week, which is a very good thing, and we are shifting our stud DE to SAM as a kind of spy back. We are deepest at DE with three or four players who have overwhelmed the creampuffs. Our run defense numbers against Idaho State were not good—coaches indicated that gap reads were off for the LBs in that game. They got this fixed for Fresno and the yardage came down sharply. Hopefully, our replacements are ready to play against what will likely be a run heavy offensive attack from Michigan. Very hard to say what will happen. My guess is that Michigan will run pretty well. Why Utah could win: Last year, despite ending 5-7, Utah ended Stanford's win streak, lost to Oregon State in overtime and played UCLA, Arizona and PAC-12 South champ ASU to the final possession or minute before losing. Had the games broken better, 5-7 could have been 8 or 9 wins even with our completely shitty offense. This team is deeper at every position (other than CB and LB) than we have been since joining the conference. If we stay healthy and put it together, this could be a better year by three or four games. Saturday will tell us what we might be allowed to expect as fans. Why Utah could lose: Our OL play and our young CBs struggle and Michigan is able to stuff our run game while burning our young secondary. This could be a long day, if we don’t coach it right. A failure to get into the backfield will make it very hard on our secondary. Expect A LOT of blitzing. UM will probably do really well throwing short into the middle. Hoke knows Whitt's habits so this should happen. The Polynesian connection: From as early as 1880s, Mormon missionaries preached in Hawaii, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Tahiti, and even to the Maori in New Zealand. Today on several islands, Mormonism is the most prominent sect. What this means is that one in four Tongans living outside of Tonga live in Utah. About the same number of Samoans live in Salt Lake also. The last BYU-Utah game was attended by the king of Tonga, Western Samoa's cabinet and American Samoa's representative in Congress. A lot of those boys were built for ball. The Glendale neighborhood of Salt Lake City is one of the most concentrated for NFL players as anywhere in America. Salt Lake has more Polynesians than anywhere in America other than Honolulu, LA, the Bay Area and maybe Seattle. My kid attends East High School in Salt Lake, in which whites are a minority and which played Oahu's Kahuku High School in the preseason and sent polynesian players to Stanford, ASU and Wisconson in addition to Utah. Utah’s football team is roughly a third white, a third black and a third Polynesian. Michigan players Mone and Houma will line up against fellow Utah state champion Highland High School teammate Nate Orchard—our biggest playmaker on D. Well, this went long. Unfortunately I won’t be there this year, but thought you might enjoy some of these supplemental thoughts. Here’s to an injury free Saturday and to good years for both programs. Thanks, Duhwayne
Recent Comments
The two teams turn out to play very similar football and Utah's kicker makes four field goals while their passing game struggles.
From a Utah fan.
American Indian College Fund.
It's Shasta's tailgate setup. Shasta fed Cyrus. I seen it.
One wrinkle I haven't seen discussed much is that Utah's coach before Urban Meyer, Ron McBride spent a month in Ann Arbor this spring sitting in film sessions with the staff. Reportedly his son in law is on Harbaugh's staff--I don't recall who. McBride will be familiar with Utah, BYU (Utah's primary in-state rival) and Oregon State (with Gary and Kalani Sitake being Whittingham DCs at Utah previously). I expect there will have been quite a bit of good info re trends and schemes discussed.
I'm a Utah fan but from a planning and matchup perspective I think Michigan will give Utah plenty to deal with. Both are run first attacks and both boast strong defensive fronts and decent athleticism in the secondary. I don't think this game gets higher than 17-14. I can't say which gets which.
My guess is he means Twitter.
Greetings Michigan fans from a Utah fan. I'm tacking this on because I don't seem to be able to start a thread.
First of all I'm really excited to see this game on Saturday. I think it has an outsized impact on the seasons for each team. Setting the ND game aside (they are really good), both teams have feasted on creampuffs. Neither fanbase knows what to think about its team and the season ahead. I think this weekend is really important in terms of teaching each team about itself.
I've been lurking on Michigan boards, blogs and news sites this week. I've been really impressed at the quality analysis in articles like this one--if only Utah's clickbait journalists would have the chops and interest to do similar breakdowns of film on our own teams, let alone our opponents. Good on all of you for that. Generally, all the basics are well covered. As a result, I thought I'd add a few bits to add a little more insight. If helpful, then great.
Utah fan expectations—negative with some hope:
I think at bottom, Utah fans are squarely in the same basic position as Michigan fans--hopeful but more than prepared to accept that the team just doesn't have it this year--again. There have been a number of polls in Utah fan sites about win numbers expected. The median ranges between 4 or 5 and 7. People who hope for 8 wins are accused of homerdom. We’ve had some tough years and expectations are tempered. Five of our games in the next 8 weeks are ranked.
Transition to PAC-12—QB and offensive problems coincide with transition to much tougher league:
Utah's 2004 and 2008 BCS wins were perfectly timed in terms of joining the P5. There were a lot of lucky breaks, but by and large Utah had the coaching and the players to win their way into a major conference. Had the undefeated seasons and BCS wins not happened, we would still be in the MWC. I think the door has already closed for others, so I think Utah fans properly recognize their tremendous luck at having Urban Meyer kick off the transition from above average MWC power to P5 candidate. The 2004 and 2008 teams have left a wider impact: HCs and assistants for those teams are now HCs in SEC and B1G. We’re trying to stop being a stepping stone to somewhere bigger and Whittingham’s decision to stay despite offers to coach Tennessee or the Raiders defense, etc. has been good for us. The last few years have been hard on Utah fan hopes, however. The team is getting noticeably deeper, but the last three years have coincided with a serious upgrade in coaching and team quality across the conference. Our own problems are largely a result of…
OC, QB and offensive woes—investment in wrong people compounds problem:
The last year that Utah had a starting QB finish the season was the year we last played Michigan in the Big House--2008. In 2009, true freshman Jordan Wynn competed for and ultimately won the starting spot. He torched Cal in a bowl game. This led to a hole in QB recruiting which led to a failure to secure decent backups for three years. In 2011 and 2012, our backup was a D-II recruit that Norm Chow (three coordinators ago) brought in when that player’s former program cancelled football. Wynn failed to finish more than half a season for two or three years until he retired. Our mediocre D-II backup played A LOT of QB. Predictably, we rode on the shoulders of a tailback. He ran 400 times a year. Our offense struggled to get three touchdowns a game.
Meanwhile, Whittingham lost several offensive coordinators to head coaching and “bigger program” OC positions. After Norm Chow left to take the Hawaii head coaching job, Whittingham made an apparent attempt to stabilize by appointing homegrown Brian Johnson as OC--the quarterback who played in Ann Arbor the last time we were there. Johnson was 24 and the OC of a P5 program. This was probably the single biggest staffing error Whittingham made as HC at Utah. He was too young and the play calling together with our QB situation meant that we relied on our defense to keep the game close. The joke became “keep them at 20”—if the D could keep the other team around 20 points, we had a shot to win. It is disappointing how much this joke was true. After Erickson was fired at ASU, Whittingham brought him in to help train the OC, creating a weird “co-OC” arrangement. There was some confusion over who had the final call. Erickson has been a total pro despite a chaotic atmosphere and he now coaches the RBs. After last year, Whittingham had to replace Johnson and brought in recently fired Wyoming HC Dave Christensen. Johnson left to join his old QB coach at Mississippi State. Christensen and Whitt have an old relationship and Chrisensen had a good track record as OC at Missouri. So far, so good...
QB Wilson’s numbers explained—good then very bad:
On top of brittle former starting QBs and OC turnover, last year our starter also dealt with injury problems. He damaged his hand badly against Stanford. His season last year started 4-2 before his numbers imploded with his hand. Many, many of his picks happened after he injured himself. Against UCLA, he threw six picks, for example. Some were read problems, some were just bad tips, and some were that he couldn't throw. It’s clear that until he was told he could never play football again, he was pushed to persevere despite a mangled throwing hand until he basically broke psychologically one night. After that, we started a walkon who lost us a lot of games at the end of the year. Recruiting a QB became a priority. We now have six QBs on scholarship: Wilson worked his ass of and is back. Kendall Thompson is a senior OU transfer who was recruited to replace what we thought was a retired Wilson. Brandon Cox is 3rd and our next starter. Our 4th, Connor Manning, is an OC product who broke all of Matt Barkley’s records. Donovan Isom is a 6’5” true frosh expected to lead in two or three years. And finally, Wyoming’s backup came with Christensen. These reflect the shifting OCs. Wilson and the 4th stringer are primarily pocket passers, and 3, 5 and 6 are clearly dual threat QBs. Our preferred approach is dual threat and the pocket passers are Chow leftovers. Manning will probably transfer. Wilson is getting better and better at the read option. His decision making is better too. At 6’7”, he can fall forward well.
Injuries and depth:
Last year our offense struggled in part because our number two and the number three receivers, possession receiver Kenneth Scott and TE Jake Murphy, were also injured. Scott is back and we added several JCs who are exciting prospects. On defense, we added a safety, Tevin Carter, who was judged to be better than our PAC-12 freshman all-star Eric Rowe. Our CB situation thinned out (there are nine Utah DBs in the NFL now), so Rowe is now one of our starting corners. The other starter proved to be a bit of a nightmare in game one and has been replaced by a receiver who played safety in high school. He did very well at CB in our last game--considering. The DL is depleted but our LB situation is the most worrisome. Our SAM starter the last two games broke his wrist, and we have had to reorganize our defense. We are getting a Miami transfer back from a foot injury this week, which is a very good thing, and we are shifting our stud DE to SAM as a kind of spy back. We are deepest at DE with three or four players who have overwhelmed the creampuffs. Our run defense numbers against Idaho State were not good—coaches indicated that gap reads were off for the LBs in that game. They got this fixed for Fresno and the yardage came down sharply. Hopefully, our replacements are ready to play against what will likely be a run heavy offensive attack from Michigan. Very hard to say what will happen. My guess is that Michigan will run pretty well.
Why Utah could win:
Last year, despite ending 5-7, Utah ended Stanford's win streak, lost to Oregon State in overtime and played UCLA, Arizona and PAC-12 South champ ASU to the final possession or minute before losing. Had the games broken better, 5-7 could have been 8 or 9 wins even with our completely shitty offense. This team is deeper at every position (other than CB and LB) than we have been since joining the conference. If we stay healthy and put it together, this could be a better year by three or four games. Saturday will tell us what we might be allowed to expect as fans.
Why Utah could lose:
Our OL play and our young CBs struggle and Michigan is able to stuff our run game while burning our young secondary. This could be a long day, if we don’t coach it right. A failure to get into the backfield will make it very hard on our secondary. Expect A LOT of blitzing. UM will probably do really well throwing short into the middle. Hoke knows Whitt's habits so this should happen.
The Polynesian connection:
From as early as 1880s, Mormon missionaries preached in Hawaii, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Tahiti, and even to the Maori in New Zealand. Today on several islands, Mormonism is the most prominent sect. What this means is that one in four Tongans living outside of Tonga live in Utah. About the same number of Samoans live in Salt Lake also. The last BYU-Utah game was attended by the king of Tonga, Western Samoa's cabinet and American Samoa's representative in Congress. A lot of those boys were built for ball. The Glendale neighborhood of Salt Lake City is one of the most concentrated for NFL players as anywhere in America. Salt Lake has more Polynesians than anywhere in America other than Honolulu, LA, the Bay Area and maybe Seattle. My kid attends East High School in Salt Lake, in which whites are a minority and which played Oahu's Kahuku High School in the preseason and sent polynesian players to Stanford, ASU and Wisconson in addition to Utah. Utah’s football team is roughly a third white, a third black and a third Polynesian. Michigan players Mone and Houma will line up against fellow Utah state champion Highland High School teammate Nate Orchard—our biggest playmaker on D.
Well, this went long. Unfortunately I won’t be there this year, but thought you might enjoy some of these supplemental thoughts. Here’s to an injury free Saturday and to good years for both programs.
Thanks,
Duhwayne