Utah football midway through season

After my meltdown at the UW game in front of my GF and friends, I now have no, few, limited, reasonable expectations.

No turnovers, no bone-head penalties, no ST defense time on field saving schemes, maybe only 1 batted down pass per game, Conroy Black not getting beat and for a change some decent blocking for an entire game, would be nice. That should be good for about 6 wins.

as one of the tough games?

Looked up the latest line and Cal is the 3 point fav. Which has to totally be home field advantage. So the ‘experts’ with money on the line think the two teams are even.

Now if we can keep the turnovers in the near vicinity of the Pitt game and just get a little better at throwing the ball, I think we can pull out a squeaker here.

But, I am not gonna put my money on either team. Just watch with fingers crossed.

I came to terms with a so so season as soon as the Utes joined the pac 12. I figured it would take a couple years to get some recruits in here. I figured we could compete with the pac 12 teams and be “ok”. A “successful” season for me will be seeing our Utes in a bowl game

I know the back-end is easier than what we’ve faced so far, but it’s interesting to see that 67% of those who’ve voted so far think we’ll go 5-1 or better down the stretch, 95% think we’ll do no worse than 4-2!

I guess this is why the rest of the Pac-12 thinks our fans are not prepared for “The Grind”. Hopefully we can prove it to be a myth.

ASU was touted as OK, but it was at RES and I thought ASU would disappoint their expectations yet again. And I don’t think anyone reasonably thought UW would be as good as they are, but again it was at home and I thought Utah would pull out a close win. By this point I was hoping Utah would be 5-1 ( loss to USC only, ) but figured 4-2 would be realistic. Granted I thought 4-2 would happen without all the injuries that have happened.

There’s no reason Utah can’t go 6-0 the rest of the season. No game presents that “ouch” factor where a win requires Utah to get a few lucky breaks. Cal has just as many problems as Utah does so it’s a dead heat at best ( worst. ) WSU is the next hardest game, and though they started hot, they seem to have developed their own consistency issues, so another fairly even match. The other four Utah should be favored in and will likely win so long as they keep the stupid mistakes to a minimum.

So:

• 9-3 = Ecstatic. Utah pulls it together for the hard road games and doesn’t let up in trap games.
• 8-4 = Good. Utah splits the two tough road games while playing solid in games they should win. Alternatively they pick up both Cal and WSU but lose focus in a trap game. I think the latter would be more disheartening to the fans because that means they still lack consistency.
• 7-5 = Adequate. Likely from dropping both Cal and WSU. It would take a rare feat of stupidity for Utah to win @ Cal or WSU and yet lose to CU, UCLA, UA, or OSU. But weirder things have happened.
• 6-6 = Mildly disappointing, mainly because that means they’d lose another game they really shouldn’t have.

But after thinking about it I’m expecting (hoping) for 4-2 with losses at Cal and Wazzu. And then we either get throttled by TCU in the Vegas or we meet one of our MWC buddies in New Mexico.

When the schedule originally came out I thought we would be 3-3 at this point with losses to USC, ASU, and splitting Pitt and BYU. Washington came as a surprise, being a home game after a bye. I thought Utah could load the box on Polk because they would lose production at QB with Locker being a top 10 NFL pick. Turned out the new QB might be more efficient at running the Huskies.

I originally thought we would go 5-1 in the second half, with a loss most likely at Cal, finishing at 8-4 overall. But now at midpoint, with the way the offense is struggling to score TDs, it wouldn’t surprise me to lose to UCLA, or Washington State, or Arizona. Assuming we beat struggling OSU and Colorado and split the rest, that would put the second half at 4-2 and in a bowl game.

With Jordan Wynn, these last games were all but gift-wrapped.
Without him, my feelings went from “gift-wrapped” to merely “winnable”.
After watching the D at Pitt, especially given they had to be on the field all game.. I’m now feeling “winnable +1” haha. Hays is getting better with each snap, I think our Offense will look better with each of these games.
GO UTES!

Were Utes and we’ve got nothing to lose… What fun is there in expecting losses? So long as you’relevel headed if a loss should occur… Might as well “go big”… You realist guys are no fun… Who cares if you’re right?

and how that was the best Utah Cal game ever. Enlighten those hippies men.

Without faceguards.

Which explains a lot.