While evaluating his defense’s play from last week’s 29-26 loss at Florida, particularly the front seven, Utah coach Kyle Whittingham didn’t sugarcoat the situation.
In fact, he uttered some “S” words and an “A” word.
Whittingham described the defensive performance as “sloppy” and “soft” and “abysmal.”
“We didn’t get the job done, man. We prepared our butts off. Hats off to them. They balled out. They did everything they planned on doing; we tried to do everything that we planned on doing but we weren’t successful. That’s the end of it,” — Utah DB Clark Phillips III.
And he was frustrated by the fact the No. 13 Utes had, by the staff’s count, 27 missed tackles.
“We weren’t very good on defense. Far too soft in the run game, missed too many tackles, not good enough in the red zone,” the coach said. “That was disappointing to see our defense not play as well as we know they’re capable of. We’ve got to coach them better. It starts with us as coaches.”
Gator quarterback Anthony Richardson torched the Utah defense a few times, finishing with 106 rushing yards and three touchdowns.
“It wasn’t really any one particular play or schematic. The quarterback obviously hurt us. He had 100 yards rushing,” Whittingham said. “That was a big part of it. A lot of those yards came on broken pass plays. Just too soft overall. The gap control was sloppy. … The entire front seven, if you look at the entire game, our biggest deficiencies were in the front seven.”
Added the coach: “You watch the tape, our run defense was just abysmal. We gave up nearly 200 yards rushing. We didn’t gap control well, we didn’t take on blocks well. We didn’t tackle well.”
As Utah prepares to host Southern Utah Saturday (11:30 a.m. MDT, Pac-12 Network), there’s a lot of work to do on the defensive side of the ball.
“You make changes if you think you have guys that are better that aren’t playing that need an opportunity,” Whittingham said. “We’ve just got to get better across the board. The front seven were just not what we were used to. It was sloppy. Sloppy technique play, sloppy fundamentally, sloppy tackling. We just weren’t at the right place at the right time. We missed 27 tackles, which is way high for us. We’re usually single-digits.”
Linebacker Mohamoud Diabate didn’t disagree with Whittingham’s blunt assessment.
“We’ve got to play better up front. Exactly what he said,” Diabate said. “We didn’t play to our standard. We didn’t play the type of game we’re supposed to play. As a leader up front, I have to be the guy to make sure everything gets right.”
“We didn’t get the job done, man. We prepared our butts off. Hats off to them. They balled out. They did everything they planned on doing; we tried to do everything that we planned on doing but we weren’t successful. That’s the end of it,” said cornerback Clark Phillips III. “Every year new leaders have got to step up. We’ve got to fill those roles. Week 1 was a test. We knew it would be. I’m glad that we’ve got that out of the way and now it’s time to move forward with SUU.”
Defensive end Van Fillinger said the defense fell short.
“Obviously, not good enough. We made a lot of mistakes fundamentally and technically. Things that we saw on film, we weren’t expecting for that to happen and things to go that way. But it’s nothing that we can’t fix or get better from. We’re trying to move on to the next week and SUU and get better fundamentally.”
Cornerbacks coach Sharrieff Shah also agreed that the Utes were soft defensively.
“We didn’t make plays that we should have. That we were unreasonably soft. We should have played tougher and made more tackles,” he said. “Plays were there to be made and we didn’t make them.”
Whittingham was encouraged by what he saw from the defense during Tuesday’s practice.
“They responded well. ... You either get it done or you don’t. You’re either tough or you’re not. We’ve got to be better on defense,” he said. “We know that. I expect that we will the rest of the way. We have to be if we want to accomplish what we want to accomplish.”
Utah didn’t do a lot of “live” work in practice. In other words, the Utes didn’t do much tackling during fall camp.
Whittingham acknowledged that could have played a role in last Saturday’s struggles.
“Could have been. But then if we would have gone more heavy and missed three or four starters in the game, that’s the tradeoff. There is no one perfect way to do it,” he said. “If you have a veteran team, typically you can back off a little bit on the physicality during camp. If you’ve got a young team, you have to have more physicality. We have a veteran team, so that’s the approach we took.”
Shah felt that Utah’s defensive players were in the right positions during the game against Florida.
“You’re being put in those critical plays that require somebody to stand up and make a play. So that’s good,” he said. “Now, we just want somebody to make the play. We don’t want guys to uniformly wilt in those moments. That’s equally frustrating, to be in those particular junctures time and time again in that game and not have enough people to step up and make plays. That felt like the worst dream ever that I couldn’t wake up from. It was very frustrating.”
How can the Utes overcome those deficiencies?
“Work. A hard practice, tackle better,” Shah said. “Practice live tackling.”
Phillips is focused on making improvement this week.
“For me, it’s tackling for the whole defense. That’s something we’ve got to improve on,” he said. “For Week 2, that’s got to be a point of emphasis. I’ve got to be a great tackler.”
Utah’s defensive players would like nothing more than to eliminate certain “s” and “a” words from Whittingham’s vocabulary this week.
Utes on the air
Southern Utah (1-0) at No. 13 Utah (0-1)
Saturday, 11:30 a.m. MDT
Rice-Eccles Stadium
TV: Pac-12 Network
Radio: ESPN 700