In just his second game as the starting quarterback, Brian Johnson put his name in the Utah record book.
Johnson had an outstanding night in the Utes' 31-7 victory, completing 18 of 21 passes for 268 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions. He also rushed for 70 yards, giving him 338 yards of total offense.
While his 224.34 passing efficiency rating was the 10th best in Utah history, his 85.7 completion percentage was the best ever for a Ute, topping the 84.0 percentage by Mike McCoy in 1993.
When Johnson entered the interview room after Saturday's game and was asked if he could have played any better, running back Quinton Ganther interjected, "Hey, don't juice his head up."
However, Johnson was his usual humble self, giving credit to his blockers and receivers and coaches. He was unaware that he set the Ute record for completion percentage when he said, "It's one thing you take pride in. You want to complete as many passes as possible to keep the chains moving. I think we did a pretty good job of that."
Ya think?
On the night, the Utes piled up 510 total yards with 26 first downs and an average gain of 7.2 yards per play.
Almost as impressive as Johnson's passing was his running as he rushed much more than a week earlier against Arizona when he ran for just 18 yards.
In Saturday night's game, he ran the ball almost as much as he passed, finishing with 18 carries for 70 yards. He actually had 87 positive yards rushing, but two second-half sacks gave him some negative yards when his protection broke down.
"We had some more quarterback runs put in the game plan," he said. "We did a good job of moving the ball once we did that."
Utah coach Kyle Whittingham was happy with the play of his sophomore quarterback, saying, "We wanted Brian to be more involved with the run game. He's a heck of an athlete so we ran him a lot more. The more he develops the more we're going to put on his plate."
Johnson missed on his first pass attempt of the night to Travis LaTendresse. He completed his next six passes before missing on an attempt to Madsen. After missing on his first attempt of the second half, Johnson completed his final 10 passes of the game before giving way to backup Brett Ratliff in the fourth quarter.
Next up for Johnson and his teammates is TCU Thursday night in Fort Worth.
"It's a huge game for us," he said. "We want to win the conference championship and it starts this week. We've got to come out prepared like we did the past two weeks and hopefully it turns out for the best."
E-mail: sor@desnews.com