Utah and BYU should roll this weekend. They’ll be enabled by gravity with little resistance. In other words, both should coast, cruise and generally glide to wins.
Utah State, on the other hand, will face a big challenge against No. 20 Boise State in Mountain West Land. It will be extremely tough if QB Jordan Love is unable to play.
The Utes take their final Pac-12 regular-season road trip at Arizona, a team that may lead the league in scoring and total offense, but can’t defend territory or the end zone. Mark it a win and get on to “rival” Colorado.
The Cougars, on the other hand, face one of the worst football teams in the FBS in UMass at Amherst. This is a team that ranks among the bottom in most NCAA defensive statistics. The Minutemen just lost to Northwestern 45-6, Army 63-7, Liberty 63-21 and UConn 56-35.
This is the perfect game for Zach Wilson to continue his comeback after breaking his thumb at Toledo almost two months ago. He will need to be far better in the finale in San Diego than he was a week ago against Idaho State. This means posting an efficiency rating much better than 129 (Idaho State). Against UMass, Wilson needs to be efficient and productive. That goes for the rest of the offense too.
Utah’s march toward a showdown against Oregon in the Pac-12 championship game played out easy after a dominating win over UCLA. Arizona, at times, has been a thorn in the Utes’ side, but don’t expect any prickly resistance in Tucson out of this team because of the way Utah is peaking.
Utah’s defensive line versus Arizona’s offensive line is like lions after lambs. It will get ugly.
“It is on the road, the last Pac-12 road trip this year,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said. “They have some weapons. Their running back J.J. Taylor is a good player. He is tough, runs hard. Their quarterback, we all know about Khalil Tate, and I know they are splitting time recently, but he is a talent.”
Messing around with QBs, the guessing game, the disruption of continuity is a sure way to succumb to a takeaway-minded Utah defense. Even with stability at that position, Utah has found a way to make them look bad.
“Defensively, they haven’t been as productive as they wanted to be and then they had the change in coordinator a few weeks ago, which I’m sure changed things somewhat,” Whittingham said of Arizona’s firing of Marcel Yates after Arizona yielded 133 points to Washington, USC and Stanford.
Arizona had Chuck Cecil take over as defensive coordinator three weeks ago.
Good luck, Chuck. Andy Ludwig will have Tyler Huntley and Zack Moss embarrass your guys like they did UCLA. The score will be whatever Whittingham decides it will be. Arizona’s only chance, as the Pac-12’s offensive leader, is to outshoot the Utes. But to do that, they’ll have to take on a Utah defense that cannibalizes offenses. This is going to be picked-over bones.
Kalani Sitake, fresh off a contract extension, is hoping his team shows consistency — no matter who the opponent is. Losses to Toledo and South Florida — despite fighting injuries — almost erases the memories of wins over USC, Boise State and Tennessee. That shouldn’t happen.
In UMass, the Cougars will face a squad that is beaten up after a long season and regime change. But UMass is in the Eastern time zone, where the Cougars are 0-2 this season.
“We have a chance to win five in a row and send a message to our seniors how much we love and respect them,” Sitake said on his weekly BYUtv show.
Seven wins is about where I had the Cougars finishing the regular season back in August. They could reach that with one to go after this trip.
Style points don’t matter, points do. But in the case of Utah’s CFP outlook, and BYU’s quest to continue to get better, both points and style kind of do matter this weekend.
This week’s picks
Hawaii 31, San Diego State 28
Boise State 34, Utah State 21
Weber State 24, Idaho State 21
Utah 42, Arizona 17
Stanford 17, California 14
Ohio State 27, Penn State 24
Oklahoma State 28, West Virginia 24
Baylor 33, Texas 27
Navy 28, SMU 21
Southern Cal 24, UCLA 21
New Mexico 24, UTEP 21
Texas Tech 28, Kansas State 21
Oregon 38, Arizona State 31
BYU 48, UMass 10
Last week 8-6; overall 145-96 (.601)