Utah-BYU thoughts

Never in a million years did I imagine what happened Saturday night could've actually happened. I figured the game would be a defensive battle with the edge going to the home team. It went that way for about a half, and then the training wheels came off in the second half and BYU crashed and burned. Here are my thoughts about each team following that game.

Utah - Despite winning 54-10 on the road against our biggest rival, I don't think the Utes are as good as the final score. What I do think is that Utah's defense is outstanding and will give them a chance to win every game they have remaining on their schedule. The front seven is as good as any in the PAC 12 and the depth is better than I thought it would be coming into the season. The biggest question for the defense was the secondary, and thus far I think they have answered the call well. They have a "bend but don't break" mentality, and are very good at forcing turnovers. I don't think they have been tested as much as they will, mainly because I don't think USC or BYU's offenses are as good as people thought they'd be. We'll see how they do the rest of the season, but three games in, I am impressed.
As for Utah's offense, I think the MVP through three games is a tie between John White and Norm Chow. I am still not a believer in Jordan Wynn being a big game QB. Norm Chow has made Jordan look better than he really is by putting him in situations that he can succeed. John White was an absolute beast for Utah on Saturday night. He is quick and strong, and in my opinion better than any running back we've had in the last few years, which is saying a lot.
Overall, I think Utah is going to be pretty good this season. With Arizona St coming to Rice Eccles, the Utes are in position to win the south division because USC is still on probation, and Utah's schedule is lucky enough to avoid Stanford and Oregon. Utah should be favored in every regular season game from here on out, and if they take care of business, they should be playing in either Eugene or Palo Alto in December for the Pac 12 championship.

As for BYU, I look at this team a lot differently then I had. I picked BYU to win this game, and at the very least I figured they'd keep it close. There are a few different areas about BYU's team that bother me. First, the offense, that was proclaimed to be great by not just Jake Heaps, but many members of the Cougars this offseason. So far, this "great" offense has scored exactly three touchdowns in three games, all to the same player. BYU currently ranks 118th in the nation in rushing out of 120 teams; that's not good. I heard so much about these three BYU running backs that were all so good that there was no clear cut starter. So far, I've seen nothing from any of them to prove that they are any good. If they don't have holes provided for them by the offensive line, they have gone nowhere.
The biggest positive for the BYU offense is the wide receivers. Cody Hoffman and Ross Apo are NFL caliber wide receivers in my opinion. They are big, athletic, and catch about everything they can get their hands on. The problem is that if a team doesn't have the threat of a run game, it takes away from what the receivers can do.
The defense for BYU is very good as far as the starters go, but they do not have the depth that Utah has, and that was obvious in the second half of this game when BYU's defense was completely worn out from how much they'd been on the field. You can't expect anyone to play every down, which is why you need better rotation, and BYU doesn't have that right now. Luckily for BYU, they don't have many games this season that will require that depth.
Now onto my biggest issue with BYU football at this point, and it's with their quarterback Jake Heaps. I've heard for over a year how good this kid is, and how he might be the best BYU quarterback in the last decade. I've heard BYU fans trash Jordan Wynn and talk about how much better Heaps is. I'm not defending Jordan because I still don't fully believe in him, but from everything I've seen from both Jake Heaps and Jordan Wynn, they are essentially the same person. The biggest difference is Jake is far more arrogant and ignorant than Jordan, and that was never more apparent than Saturday night after the game. Jake's postgame comments were absolutely ridiculous, and just proved he isn't ready to be the leader this team needs. Jake has been arrogant since before he came to BYU. He has been told he's the greatest thing since sliced bread from the time he was 14 years old. He held a press conference to announce he was coming to BYU, and said he didn't care who else was competing at quarterback, he was going to start for BYU immediately when he came in. After going 7-6 in his freshman season at BYU, none of the victories against good teams, Jake talked about BYU competing for a national championship this season. Needless to say, that isn't happening. I have no problem with a quarterback being confident and wanting to be the leader of his team, but when you continue to talk about how good you are when you haven't proven yourself, it starts to become not just arrogant, but very annoying. I think Jake has the potential to be a very good quarterback, but he hasn't shown it against any good defenses, and he doesn't seem to get that.

All in all, I think these two teams are closer than what we saw Saturday night, but not as close as most people thought before the game. Utah is clearly the better team right now, and unfortunately for BYU fans, there really isn't much to look forward to the rest of the season other than just cheering on your team against mediocre competition. As for Jake, for BYU fans sake, I hope someone within the organization can sit him down and make him realize he isn't the second coming of Ty Detmer, and he needs to just shut up and get to work. If that happens, BYU could be a very good team, until then, they'll be just like their WAC competition: mediocre.

Til Next Time,
Dallas