Saturday bye week football fix open thread

Not easy but winnable. There is a difference there. A winnable game just means we don’t view the game as being daunting, like the Utes would have to have everything go their way in order to beat Cal or Washington. The Utes basically needed a lot of things to go their way to beat USC, like not letting Matt Barkley go off for 4-5 TDs. Utah doesn’t need a perfect game to beat those teams. There is no disrespect there, Utah is in no way a perfect team, and they make lots of mistakes but so are Cal and Washington. Hence they’re winnable games, but that doesn’t mean I’m saying they’ll be gift wrapped.

Yet another Bear-Dawg nail-biter.

I actually hold season tickets to ASU football games, a confession that may appear to contradict my screen name. However, I just recently moved to Phoenix and bought the tickets in a pathetic attempt to fill the void left by my inability to attend Utah home games.
Anyway, this is the third game in person I’ve been able to watch them play, and I’ll admit they are very good, but they are also very beatable. Their offensive scheme reminds me a lot of what Utah was doing the past few years, although Osweiler is much more of a run threat than Wynn was (but not by much), so the read option works a little better for them. But they run a lot of plays East-West. Osweiler can be dangerous down field, but they never come out throwing the ball down field. Although last night I can’t think of a single long shot taken down field. They love to pass out in the flats to their receivers, then set up a 10-15 shot across the middle. Bottom line is, they have several talented receivers and running backs. However, their offense is very predictable in my opinion, which is exactly what I felt hurt Utah last year. Teams like TCU, BYU and Boise State had defenses good enough to pick up on the same receiving routes that we ran over and over again.

On the other side of the ball, their defense was supposed to be their strong point this year. Up until last night’s game against USC, ASU’s defense was good, but not great, and was actually the point of frustration for a lot of the ASU fans down here. They play for the big hits instead of form talking, and gave up a lot of big plays. While ASU’s defense deserves all the credit for last night, USC also made it very easy at times for ASU’s defense. Vontaz Burfict is a BEAST, but ASU has lost a lot of their key players. Also, from my understanding, they also have some young DBs who are still learning.

In my opinion, I think ASU will be the toughest team left on our schedule, BUT I think Utah can beat them if we show up to play. I didn’t watch the ASU-Illinois game because it was at the same time as the BYU game, but I understand that they put a lot of pressure on Osweiler, which basically shut down ASU’s offense. If our front seven can get similar pressure on Osweiler, I think Utah has a shot.