What Kyle Whittingham said about Cam Rising’s Rose Bowl injury

PASADENA — For Utah quarterback Cam Rising, the unthinkable happened.

For the second consecutive season, Rising was unable to finish the Rose Bowl due to an injury. 

The Ute star suffered a leg injury midway through the third quarter Monday and, once again, was replaced by backup Bryson Barnes, similar to what happened last year in a Rose Bowl loss to Ohio State.

Rising’s absence certainly played a factor in No. 8 Utah’s 35-21 setback to No. 11 Penn State Monday. 

The Utes trailed just 21-14 when Rising went down. 

“It doesn’t look good; I can tell you that,” coach Kyle Whittingham said of Rising’s injury. “We’ll wait for confirmation from the medical people at a later date, either tonight or tomorrow.

“Looks like it could be something that takes a while to recover from. That’s not positive right now.”

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After losing its leader, Utah’s offense sputtered.

It’s a cruel fate for Rising, to suffer an injury in the Rose Bowl two years in a row.

“Yeah, breaks my heart. He’s such a warrior and such a fierce competitor. He’ll be back; I can promise you that, from the injury. Hopefully he’s back with us. That’s to be determined. But he’ll work his way back,” Whittingham said.

“It almost seemed we lost a little bit of our mojo when that happened. We had a little bit of a deflation on our team, and that’s not the right way to respond. We needed to respond better than we did, and it’s unfortunate that we didn’t — that we had the dropoff that we did.”

For the game, Rising completed 8 of 21 passes for 95 yards with one interception. He rushed 10 times for 47 yards but his running proved to be costly. Rising was injured trying to gain extra yards at the end of a 9-yard run. 

Last year, Barnes entered the game and led a late touchdown drive for the Utes against the Buckeyes. Utah ended up losing 48-45. 

Monday, Barnes completed 10 of 19 passes for 112 yards with one touchdown and one interception. 

The Ute offense tried to regroup without Rising. 

“I felt like the message was the same thing we said last year when Cam went down in the fourth quarter,” said wide receiver Devaughn Vele.

“Bryson came in and we said, ‘We’re trusting you, you’re going to be our leader, you’re going to lead us in the offense and we’re going to give everything we can.’ And a lot of people were even saying the same thing like, ‘We’re doing this for Cam, we’re doing this for the fans,’ and we just went in and made sure that we kept our heads up.

“As Coach said, the morale kind of was deflated a little bit when we saw our captain go down, but I give credit to Bryson,” Vele added. “He kept his head in it. He kept trying to pick us up even when everybody was kind of down, trying to lead us and trying to get something to go.”

Because Utah struggled to generate much offense without Rising, did Whittingham consider inserting speedy freshman Nate Johnson as a change of pace? 

“Bryson had been taking all the reps with the twos,” Whittingham said. “Nate had a few plays in a package for him that we just didn’t get to tonight, and so Bryson was the guy we felt like gave us, at least tonight, the best chance to move the football.”

Whittingham was disappointed by the lack of efficiency by his team’s passing against Penn State.

Of course, the Utes were playing without their two star tight ends, Brant Kuithe and Dalton Kincaid. 

Tight end Thomas Yassmin caught one pass for a 1-yard touchdown in the second quarter — Utah’s first score of the day, and tight end Logan Kendall had one reception for 14 yards on a third and 9 play in the third quarter. 

“We did drop a couple passes at the tight end position, but Dalton Kincaid is, in my opinion, the best receiving tight end in the nation, so tough to replicate what he brings to the offense,” Whittingham said.

“Brant Kuithe has been gone several weeks, same thing, but Thomas, Logan Kendall, they were not big factors tonight, but it wasn’t just them. Like I said, the entire throw game as a whole was just not what it needed to be. As coaches we’ve got to coach it better and put them in better position to get better production there.”