If South Florida is the classic example of the late-November surge no one anticipated, the Utah Utes model the exact opposite case study: the late multi-game losing skid which abruptly turns a team’s first-ever division title in its new conference into a jarringly barren season.
Utah — playoff contender for two and a half months and still division leader heading into the penultimate moment on the 12-game schedule — will not even make the Pac-12 Championship Game. In early October, Utah deserved to be one of the top two or three teams in the country, strictly based on resume in the present moment. Yet, that’s exactly why college football rankings should never be too much of a discussion point before the middle of November. It’s a short season, but one with many layers and faces. The whole of a team’s personality isn’t revealed until it is forced to face the cauldron of November pressure, with everything to win… or lose.
Utah very clearly lost everything, and what’s especially depressing for the people of Salt Lake City is that this downturn wasn’t all that new. It wasn’t an out-of-left-field ambush. It wasn’t a plot twist with extraordinarily fresh dimensions involved.
No, it was painfully and numbingly familiar: Travis Wilson just didn’t measure up, and the offensive coaching staff really didn’t have a Plan B, especially when the team’s best offensive player missed the most important home game of the year this past Saturday against UCLA. One got the sense that with Devontae Booker out of the mix, the Utah coaching staff needed to throw some wrinkles into the equation. The Utes’ staff needed to devise some personnel groupings and formations which could set up different kinds of plays and at least force a young UCLA defense to think about covering the field (and specific players) in ways that hadn’t emerged in film study.
The sad part about Utah-UCLA from a Utes fan’s perspective: One sensed that as much as new looks were needed, they weren’t likely to emerge. Sure enough, they did not, and Utah never tasted the end zone in a brutal and shattering defeat which recasts the way the season should be remembered near the Great Salt Lake.
What are we left with from this season, which isn’t going to change much based on the finale against Colorado? Very simply, it is this: Kyle Whittingham’s 2008 season with Utah looks more and more aberrational with the passage of time.
Remember when Utah hung 62 on Oregon in Eugene? The Utes offered an indication that their offense had turned the corner.
After the past three weeks, it’s clear that game was more outlier than indicator. Not even managing to win the South — let’s not put too much on losing Devontae Booker for one home game, as much as it did in fact matter; UCLA has been absolutely decimated by injuries all season long, especially on defense, and has done a lot of surviving throughout the year — represents a rather pronounced failure for the Utes. Whittingham still hasn’t found the answers to his offense, after all. This was an ugly and late collapse, but one that should be mentioned.
Two weeks ago at this time, national pundits and regional pundits in the Pac-12 were pointing to a showdown between 11-1 Utah and 11-1 Stanford for all the gold on Dec. 5 in the San Francisco 49ers’ home stadium. Stanford lost to a surging Oregon offense which has found itself; no shame there.
Utah’s two-game breakdown is a lot harder to accept.
