First Look at Football in Utah

Associated Press

The run for the state championship has begun! Utah vs Utah St on the field up north. While it is not my job to be detailed on football teams north of Provo I will offer some insight on what I saw from the two teams that BYU will be facing later in the year.

Let’s talk Aggie Ball first. Utah State come flying out of the gates and caught Utah off guard. Too bad they could not capitalize on the fumble recovery in the first quarter. The fans in RES were silent there for a while and it was awesome! My first impression of Utah State is that they are going to be a lot better than they have been the last few years. They have excellent team speed and their QB Borel seemed pretty good. Definitely a run threat in the backfield.

Utah State believes they have team speed also as you saw them empty the backfield and then attack the perimeter on the run. And how about #6 pulling away from EVERYONE in red on that 96 yard run? Utah State is going to give us a good football game in Provo this year.

What killed Utah State? Big Plays and Penalties. Utah ran the quick slants against their LBs for two TDs of long yardage. Utah State was also not physical enough on Defense to stop Utah. They must have been hungry for Mexican food because they constantly were packing the box with 8 defenders to stop the run and all they got was a mouthful of Carne Asiata Burrito. That ended up killing them on the perimeter also because with everyone in the box the corners were by themselves trying to stop the run outside. What is most surprising about the Utah play calling is that when they got to the goalline they tried to stuff it up the middle when the outside had been there the whole drive.

OK, on to Utah…Nothing new. Same team, different guys in the spots. Asiata is a very, very good RB. We will have our hands full with him lighter, faster and still just as powerful. The new QB Cain looked just as good as Johnson (both I think are good not great). But for Utah it was Big Plays that turned the tides and killed the Aggie emotion.

On the defensive side for Utah, Sylvester is a very good LB. He will be all over the field this year and is someone to account for on every play. The DLine looked pretty dominate on the run and applied pressure at times on the pass.

For two teams that really had the same philosophy of using speed on the perimeter to move the ball, Utah did a much better job of attacking North and South, while Utah State players seemed to move more East and West.

There you have. That is all I have for you right now. I am interested to hear what you all think.

-Markell Staffieri