3 takeaways from No. 12 Utah’s comeback win over Baylor

It wasn’t pretty and it required some late heroics, but the 12th-ranked Utah Utes came back to beat the Baylor Bears 20-13 Saturday afternoon on the road in Waco, Texas.

Inept on offense for most of the day, the Utes scored two touchdowns in the final two minutes to rally to the victory.

Here are three takeaways from the Utes’ win.

The defense was excellent when needed

In the first half Saturday, Utah’s defense was good but not good enough with the inability of the offense to get much of anything going, and the Utes trailed 10-3 at intermission.

In the second half, however, the Utah D was rather tremendous, which allowed the Utes to hang around before the offense woke up down the stretch.

Until the second-to-last play of the game went for 47 yards in Baylor’s favor to set up a dramatic finish, the Bears had just eight yards of total offense in the fourth quarter.

In all, Utah outgained Baylor 166-55 in the fourth.

Perhaps most importantly, the Utes won the turnover battle 2-1, with all three turnovers in the game being interceptions.

The most crucial was the pick by Utah’s Cole Bishop near field goal range with 1:35 to play and the game tied (Zemaiah Vaughn had the other Utes interception in the third quarter, which led to Utah’s second field goal of the day), which set up the game-winning touchdown.

Nate Johnson QB2?

After a solid season opener last week against Florida in which he went 12 of 18 for 159 yards with a touchdown and no interceptions, Ute quarterback Bryson Barnes struggled mightily Saturday against the Bears and was finally pulled for good in favor of third-stringer Nate Johnson down the stretch.

Johnson certainly made the most of his opportunity, as he led the game-tying drive, an 88-yard march down the field in 15 plays that took 8:02 off the clock, punctuating it with a 7-yard run to the end zone.

He then was the signal caller on the game-winning drive, which culminated in an 11-yard touchdown run from Jaylon Glover.

In all, Johnson finished 6 of 7 for 82 yards passing and rushed 11 times for 32 yards with a touchdown.

His performance late begs the question of whether or not he’ll replace Barnes as Utah’s starting quarterback next week against Weber State if Cam Rising is again unable to go.

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The run game was very good

With Barnes unable to find much success at all, the Utes relied heavily on their run game, and it delivered.

Ja’Quinden Jackson got the lion’s share of the work, finishing with 129 yards on 19 carries. His long was a 44-yard gain, but he routinely fought for extra yards when Utah was desperately trying to get going.

Glover added 40 yards on seven carries with the touchdown, there were Johnson’s 32 yards, Barnes rushed for 21 on eight carries and even Charlie Vincent had one carry that went for four yards.

When all was said and done, the Utes had 224 rushing yards compared to 121 for Baylor, which compensated for the 218-153 advantage the Bears finished with in the passing game.