Grading out the loss to Oregon

Because I love to punish myself, here are some grades for the team this past weekend. big sigh

Offense - D+

Maybe I’m being too generous, I probably am, but I liked what I saw from Tyler Huntley, overall, in the game against Oregon. He looked like the player we saw early in the season, and was pretty much the source of Utah’s offense. He almost had 300 yards through the air, and threw some awesome passes, a couple of which were dropped (Nacua dropped a would be TD). He also looked good running the ball and making Oregon’s defense defend the entire field. Carrington played well, outside of that bad fumble. The running game wasn’t terrible, it was just under utilized. The offensive line, well, they remain a project.

Defense - D

Same story with the offense, I may be too generous (but hey, I’m glass half full guy). They couldn’t stop the run, but almost 20 of Oregon’s points came on either a scoop and score, or near the end of the game when Utah turned the ball over on downs deep in their own territory. It seems that the injuries to the ends have really hurt the ability to pinch down and contain perimeter rushes, because they’ve been gashed the last couple of weeks. It’s especially painful this past week when they were playing a QB that couldn’t throw the ball. The backers aren’t helping much either, which is very disappointing. I’m not sure what the possible fix is here, but they need to get the run game under control or else it could be a bad 4 remaining games.

Special Teams: B

One missed field goal by Matt Gay, which did hurt, but it was a rather pedestrian effort by special teams this past week.