Hey yet another Ute fan here looking to add to some discussion.
First I hope that some of you get a chance to come down to Salt Lake with your team. If you don't have a tailgate of your own feel free to drop by the main Utah tailgate area and chat up anyone there. Most are extremely friendly and will invite you to sit down and have a beer and talk some football.
Map of the main tailgate area:
To add to the football discussion. If your offensive line isn't up to snuff then they will be in for a long long day with Star in the middle. Utah has a veteran interior offensive line and just like last year during fall camp this year during spring training they had to make Star sit out most of the time or the offense couldn't run the plays during practice. Now Star himself isn't going to be the one chasing down the QB, but he makes teams double or triple team him allowing the outside DE's to run rampant in the back field and the LB's just do mop up duty.
Last year during Montana's State's game it became evident to everyone that our starting QB Jordan Wynn had not fully recovered from the shoulder surgery he had during the off-season. He left too many deep routes untested and only dinked and dunked the short stuff. When he did try to go deep, his passes were weak and off the mark.
This year although it is a point of concern I think it is much less of a weakness than last year. This year Jordan has put on about 20 lbs of muscle and looked in the spring game like he had fully recovered. Add to this that Utah picked up a couple of very talented freshman and I think they sit in a much better position this year. Plus the guy who finished last year's season is still available with an extra season of practice.
Utah's strength is there defense in general with the D-Line leading the way. The defensive line not only has Star in the middle but they have two other who will most likely make it to the NFL. There two Kruger's (dave and Joe) are brothers to Baltimore Raven's Paul Kruger will be there. Dave is very good and was a starter last year and played most games the year before. He would be considered a talent on any team just that he is overshadowed by Star. Joe will be one of the DE's and will be one chasing down QB's and RB's from the outside. He's pretty tall 6'6" so he also tends to knock down a lot of passes. They kind of switch the other DE around between a few players depending on the situation but they have all played a significant amount of time.
The LB's are mostly new this year since they had two graduate, but athletically they are an upgrade over the two departing seniors and if they get the scheme and assignments down they could be pretty special.
The corners should be 1 returning and 1 with significant playing time although it looks like the non-starter from last year will be the better of the two.
The safeties are a pretty good tandem. Both were freshman all-americans. One is a third year starting junior and one is a second year starting freshman.
Offense the biggest concern is going to be the two offensive tackles. They have some decent players but they had two all-pac conference players graduate. They need to find two guys to step in and play. They have several players that have playing time but nobody has stepped up to win the job yet.
