Utah - Air Force Lessons Learned

For those that missed it, Utah defeated Air Force 28-23 in Colorado Springs on Saturday. With this win, the Utes set up a battle of unbeatens, as they face 9-0 TCU in Salt Lake City this weekend. ESPN and the College Gameday crew will be on location for this showdown.

Saturday’s game demonstrated the following things about this year’s Utah team:

• The Utes can force turnovers - All season long, Utah has been on the negative side in turnover margin. This weekend, the Utes forced 3 fumbles, and 2 interceptions. The first two fumbles occurred deep in Utah territory where the Falcons would have certainly scored.


• Utah can run the football when they need to - Saturday's offensive game plan resembled Vince Dooley's "three yards and a cloud of dust" offense. The Utes ran the ball a season-high 51 times, taking advantage of the smaller Falcon defenders. In addition, by running the ball so frequently, the Utes ran a very "vanilla" offense, giving TCU very little to glean from this weekend's game.


• The Utah D comes up huge in the clutch - While the defense did not have outstanding numbers, they played very well when it counted. The Utah defense stopped the Falcons on 4th down twice in the 4th quarter when the game was still in doubt. In addition, they forced turnovers in the 1st quarter, which prevented Air Force from taking an early lead.


• Utah has yet to open the full playbook. - While the Utes played conservatively on offense, they did sneak in an additional wrinkle this weekend. Utah ran a fake field goal in the third quarter with kicker Joe Phillips picking up the first down. After picking up the first down, the Utes scored their final TD, which ended up as the deciding score.