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SALT LAKE CITY — Britain Covey called it a lack of identity; Kyle Whittingham said it’s a little more nuanced than that. But the result is the same: an anemic offense in back-to-back weeks and a potential upset opportunity over the 10th-ranked team wasted.
And the only people Utah has left to blame is itself.
Coming into Saturday night’s matchup against No. 10 Washington, the possibility of a loss was at least on the table for the Utes. Not that anyone would readily admit that a loss was possible, but beating top teams is always hard to do, particularly against a head coach that has had Utah’s number since he was the coach at Boise State.
But the way in which Utah orchestrated its loss was something different. It was like preparing for Thanksgiving dinner, with all the fixings and such, but forgetting to put the turkey in the oven. The intent was there, but the goal and purpose of playing the game were not met.
Saturday, Washington gift-wrapped Utah the comeback victory after quarterback Jake Browning was intercepted by Pita Tonga, who took the ball down to the 11-yard line before fumbling it out of bounds. Still, Utah was sitting pretty on the 11-yard line and was a couple plays away from Utah’s second score of the night.
But the offense failed to get points in a near gimme situation. Utah, again, was gifted a good field position inside Washington’s territory two more times, but the offensive woes struck again and the Utes failed to come away with points. That inability to score has Utah ranked No. 109 out of 130 teams in the country in scoring offense — not great.
Several factors have contributed to Utah’s offensive problems, including receiver drops, lack of a run game, turnovers and play calling. In the bye week, Whittingham said it will be a time of self-examination as the team looks to bounce back next week against Washington State.
“We look at everything on the bye week,” Whittingham said. “It is a self-study time and look at the first three games and tendencies we may have built up, players that are playing well and who maybe needs to get more playing time, who needs less playing time based on production.”
One thing is certain, though— the run game needs to improve to offset the passes to receivers. Whittingham said starting running back Zack Moss has been hurt and hasn’t been able to get the production they’ve hoped. But the run game has fallen to quarterback Tyler Huntley, who is averaging only 1.68 yards per carry.
The backup running backs have only a few touches, as all the rushing workload has been pushed onto Huntley in back-to-back weeks. On Monday, Whittingham said they “probably needed to get Armand (Shyne) a few more carries.” But Whittingham added that just being a backup doesn’t get a guy playing time — “you earn your playing time.”
“I'm not saying Armand has been a bad practicer, but the coaches have got to feel confident in you and trust you that you're going to do the job,” Whittingham said. “So it's not just one guy goes down and the backup comes in and gets the same work that starter would have got. It's what gives you your best chance to move the football.”
In the interim, Whittingham hopes Moss will be 100 percent by the Washington State game so they can utilize him more in the offense.
“Hopefully, Zack will be 100 percent by next week and then we can start feeding in the ball more, which we need to do,” he said. “We know that we're not — we feel like Zack is one of our best weapons on offense, without a doubt. As soon as he's ready for it, up his load.”
But that only solves one part of the equation, and that’s only if Moss is healthy and getting the ball. Utah has to find consistency in its receiving corps to have any shot at winning the South division, which currently appears to be a mess to the top. Receivers and tight ends can’t continue to drop passes. Whittingham said, “it’s not due to lack of effort,” as the players have put in the work throughout the year.
“Every skills player we have works on the jugs machines every day after practice,” he said. “And so we're putting the time in and my guess is it's going to be corrected and we're going to get better at it. Because those are, like I said, drive killers oftentimes. It's tough enough to score on defense like Washington without shooting yourself in the foot over and over.”
But save practicing more, nobody on staff has given any viable approaches to getting better in the game. The receivers can catch — they did all throughout fall camp — but something seems to change in game settings. Whittingham said he hopes simplifying the offense by scaling back the amount of personnel groups utilized in the game will help the players.
“We need to scale back the amount of groups we have. That's something, I think. We maybe overloaded our guys a little bit on Saturday with personnel groups,” he said. “That's just our offensive coaches trying to get the best group for that particular play out there. And sometimes you can take that a little bit too far and it just gets a bit convoluted — a little tough to sort out.”
But until the offense actually changes, the program is left metaphorically throwing things at the wall and hoping it sticks (and maybe a receiver will catch it).
