What the...???

Believe it or not, it actually took me a few minutes to come up with a title for this post.  This was the best I could do to sum up how I'm feeling about the Utes right now.

Going into the TCU game, the Utes were averaging 45.3 points per game, and destroying their opponents by an average of 29.9 points per game.  In the last two weeks, the Utes have only managed to average 5 points per game while losing by an average of 32.5 points per game.  Why the huge turnaround?  Here's what I think:

TCU GAME:

Let's be honest.  Going into this game, the Utes hadn't faced a real tough test.  You could argue that Air Force is a good team, and you'd be right.  But Air Force is no where near the level of TCU.  The Utes rolled through their first 8 games, and I think the ease of the schedule gave Utah a false sense of security.  They started to think that they were invincible.  I don't know.  Maybe they thought they would waltz into Rice-Eccles Stadium and drop 60 points on the number one defense in the country.  It's disappointing to me that they weren't better prepared.  Coach Whittingham has a reputation for preparing his team very well -- especially for big games.  As it was, they looked like they had no game plan whatsoever.  But what's more disturbing is that the didn't seem to make ANY adjustments throughout the course of the game.  I think TCU ran the same play -- a swing pass to Jeremy Kerley -- about 500 times, and it went for 8-10 yards EVERY SINGLE TIME.  If I were their OC, I would have just said, "Ok, we're just gonna run that play on every snap for the rest of the day".

NOTRE DAME GAME:

For me, this game was even more disappointing than the TCU loss.  I say that because going in to the TCU game, we knew we were going to get a fight.  I figured we had about a 50/50 chance of beating TCU.  We knew TCU was a fantastic team.  But Notre Dame?  Going into the game, ND was 4-5 with home losses to Tulsa and Navy.  They lost their starting QB a week before they played the Utes -- which meant they were starting a true freshman in his very first game at the collegiate level.  And the QB wasn't the only position that was thin due to injury.  There was no doubt in my mind that Utah would win that game.  They'll bounce back.  They'll re-focus and win out.  They'll respond to getting embarrassed by TCU by getting a huge win at one of the most storied programs in the nation.  No doubt about it.  Yet they came out absolutely flat.  They honestly looked like they couldn't care less.  So yes, this game was even more disturbing to me than the TCU game.

I'm frustrated.  I know I'm a biased fan, but I honestly think the Utes are better than Notre Dame.  That probably makes me sound really dumb, but I do believe it.  If they had played the way we know they're capable of playing, they would have won.  Maybe they still had a little hangover from the TCU game.  That's inexcusable. 

Utah's QB situation is a mess right now.  I voiced my disapproval of Coach Whittingham's decision last season to bench Terrance Cain and make Wynn the starter half-way through the 8th game of the season.  First of all, Cain was not really playing that badly in that game.  The play calling -- in my opinion -- was more to blame for the lack of offensive production.  Up to that point, Wynn hadn't seen the field.  My feeling was that he should be red-shirted in order to preserve a year of eligibility.  But that didn't happen.  Now we have a situation where our starter is not playing well AT ALL, and we have a fantastic back-up QB sitting on the bench, wasting his last year of collegiate eligibility.  By all reports, Terrance Cain has improved leaps and bounds since last season.  Can the same be said for Wynn?  Look, I don't dislike the kid, but can anyone honestly say he's any better today than he was when he came in at half-time against Wyoming last season?  If you have noticed any improvement in him at all, please let me know.  But me, I'm just not seeing it.

Now, that being said, I don't really think starting Cain would have won the TCU game.  But I think it could have won the ND game.  Obviously there are MANY other problems with this team right now, but the QB situation, to me, is the most disturbing.  Whittingham is a great coach, and I wouldn't want anyone else.  But I believe he has made a very serious and costly mistake here.  Utah has 2 games left this year, plus a bowl game.  If they play the way they have the last two weeks, I am 100% sure that they will lose all three.