Morgan Scalley is shaking things up in Utah’s “front office.”
Utah’s new head coach kept general manager Robert Blechen on staff through a hectic portal season amid Kyle Whittingham’s move to Michigan.
After the dust settled, however, Scalley decided to go a different direction, hiring USC Director of Football Strategy Joe D’Orazio as the program’s new general manager.
Blechen was in the general manager role since 2022, and prior to that, was Utah’s director of player personnel.
D’Orazio, a former offensive lineman and captain at Penn, brings NFL and college experience to his new role at Utah.
D’Orazio spent the past year as USC’s Director of Football Strategy and an offensive assistant. Prior to his time in Los Angeles, D’Orazio had coaching stops at Baylor and Columbia, including a stint as the offensive coordinator at Columbia.
D’Orazio also had a stop in Kansas City from 2013-15, where he was special assistant to the head coach for Andy Reid’s Chiefs.
He’s no stranger to Utah, having spent the 2012 season on Kyle Whittingham’s staff as a graduate assistant.
Now, he’s returning to Salt Lake City in one of the most important positions in Utah’s program.
Since NIL was instituted, college teams — just like NFL teams — have needed a general manager. D’Orazio will be a key decision-maker in all aspects of Utah’s roster management, from how much money to spend on certain players and position groups to which players to recruit and target in the transfer portal.