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Football

Utes try to lose, but beat Air Force 38-35

It was a tale of two Ute teams last night. One Ute team was dominant offensively and strong on defense. The other Ute team was offensively stagnant and predictable, and the defense was like a big block of Swiss cheese with holes you could drive a truck through.

Just like the last time Air Force was in Rice-Eccles, they took their first possession and drove it right down the field for a TD. But the Utes came right back and answered with a TD of their own.

The period from the 2nd quarter through the 3rd quarter was stellar. The offense looked great and Johnson made some very crisp and accurate passes. The defense played the option perfectly and forced many punts and turnovers.

The bad

The fourth quarter was scary. We brought a large lead into the 4th, only to allow Air Force to score easily and nearly pull off a victory. The offense was terribly conservative, running predictable dive after dive up the middle for no gain. In short they were playing “not to lose” instead of “to win.” This team looked like the Ute team of a few years back, and not the team we’ve become accustomed to in the last couple of years.

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Football

Air Force game extremely important

This week’s Air Force game is very important. The winner of this game still has a chance to take the conference title. The loser will be 0-2 in the conference and pretty much nearly impossible to win it. The Utes MUST win this game.

Air Force is always tough to defend, and this year they’re passing a little bit more. It will be an interesting game. See you there…

GO UTES!

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Football

The 18 game winning streak ends at TCU in OT

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to watch a ton of this game. I missed some completely and listened to much of it on the radio. It sounds to me like we were a little conservative on offense, and a bit porous on defense.

We ran the ball 80% of the time on 2nd down. The problem is that we didn’t get much on first down so we were calling running plays with 2nd and long? Sounds like a passing situation to me.

In the overtime there was an illegal pick which allowed TCU to score a TD to win the game. Too bad for the Utes. But if we’d held onto our 17-7 lead to begin with, that wouldn’t have happened.

TCU is apparently a condender in it’s new conference.

Ok, so we got the first road game and first loss under our belts. Lesson learned. We don’t have to worry about our 18 game winning streak any more. Lesson learned. Now lets go and play some great football the rest of the season.

GO UTES!

Categories
Football

Pix from the Utah State game

endzoneusu
End zone shot during 4th quarter

gantherTD
Ganther plows his way into the end zone for a touchdown!

Categories
Football

Our kicking game stinks

1. Our kicking game stinks. We’ve kicked kickoffs out of bounds, shanked punts, had field goals blocked, missed field goals… Why is this so hard? Even in the Urban days our kicking was not good.

Memo to coach: Go over to the soccer team and find a kicker…