Utah Football:Improving on 2009

Football season can't get here soon enough right boys?.  The purpose of this post is to analyze the reasons why 2009 was a good year but not a great year and how 2010 could be different.  So here are thew areas I believe were our greatest weaknesses:

Penalties:

It a clique in football by now but the words still ring true: The team that commits the fewest mistakes more times than not wins the game. With so many younger players last year, I can partially understand why we were flag prone, but that shouldn't be a legitimate excuse: we made far too many mistakes that easily could have been avoided.  Penalties not only lower the morale of the team but they also can be huge momentum swingers. Bottom line: The Utes need to play smarter and more disciplined football in 2010.       

Sloppy WR play:

I really hate to get nit picky here but in my mind the overall play of the WR in 09'  was below standard. David Reed and Jeremy Brooks to an extent were the bright spots but in my opinion there was just too many dropped passes and sloppy mistakes. Because we have a lot of new faces at this position next year, I really hope Coach Whitt will do improve the overall play.  

  Special Teams: (particularly punt/kickoff coverage) 

I think almost everyone expected a drop off with the loss of King Louie but be that as it may there is much to improve on ST next year. First of all I have to point out Joe Phillips was a step in the right direction and made the transition of post-Sakoda much easier.  Back to my point though. In the Oregon game, poor ST play costed us dearly, I wont go so far as to say that if we didn't let them convert their first kickoff into a TD that we would have won but it was a prime example of our ST woes.

RED ZONE OFFENSE:

I'm sure most of you have guessed by now that I think this was our biggest weakness. I'm not gonna sugar coat it: our red zone offense play was downright horrible and costed us a win against BYU. If there was one thing that bugged me more last year it was that we didn't finish the job too many times. Again I have to give props to Joe Phillips for coming through for 3 many, many times but field goals alone don't win ballgames.  This is a problem that needs to be addressed by the coaches in this off-season

I think it goes without saying that we have high hopes for our last season in the MWC. For 2010 to be a great year, I want two things: Have a respectable record (9-3 would do it) but more importantly: BEAT BYU. If the Utes can do better than that (say.....beat TCU and win the conference) it will be an awesome year. 

GO UTAH!!!