The Utes held their second of four spring scrimmages today. I hope the defense can turn some turnovers directly into points because the offense looked terrible.

The first team defense (minus Bowers and Olevao) stopped the first team offense (minus Smith and White) cold. Garrett Smith and Maake Kemoeatu stuffed up the middle. The backs had nowhere to go. The DB's stuck right to their men and gave the QBs no place to throw the ball. It looks like the coaches are confident of the DB's ability to cover the WRs man-for-man because the Utes were blitzing on almost every play. The interior linemen knocked down a couple passes and the blitzes got to the QBs all the time. I was very impressed with the coverage by Patrick Dyson and Jeff Ray.

The second and third team defenses did not fair quite as well against the second and third team offenses. Tevita Vakalahi was really getting after it, as were some of the backup DBs.

The offense was really bad. The OL could not open a whole to save their lives, although the second and third teams did a little better. They weren't much better at protecting the QBs. The RBs really had no opportunity to get going. When the QBs threw the ball they were off target. The only time anything really positive happened was when Arceneaux and Alvarez scrambled.

The defense looks very sharp. However, we still need some depth at LB and corner. With Olevao sitting out, Deckart is getting some good experience. The DL looks good, but we have three players (Bowers, Enosa and Johnson) sitting out with injuries who will need to step up and play some minutes.

The offense looks bad. I hope a lot of that hs to do with White sitting out. McBride has said on a couple of occasions that he is the toughest offensive linemen. If the OL can't do the job, it won't matter who is running and throwing the ball. OTOH, maybe our DL is just real good.

I have seen the Utes yet but what you said made me think of something. When I played ball in high school we had the best offense in the state, yet in practice the 2nd team D-fence routinely stopped us and they were pretty average. I thought then and think now that the reason is that defenses key off of what they see the offense do and if they see it enough it is easy to pick up on what the play is especially if it is your own team whose plays you have seen before.

Defense is much more about reaction and offense about execution. This is the reason offenses are better the longer they are on the field and defenses worse. When I hear that our offense who has barely practiced with a host of new players is struggling in practice that sounds about right to me. I really think we should wait until at least October before we start having opinions about how the offense is gelling.

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