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Line play will be the story when Arkansas faces Utah
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- Line play will be the story when Arkansas faces Utah
Line play will be the story when Arkansas faces Utah
(Rob Gray, Imagn Images)
The Utah Utes pounded the Idaho Vandals on Thursday night in Salt Lake City. Arkansas' Week 2 opponent (on September 12) rolled up 66 points and easily covered the 37-point pregame spread. Yet, for all that Utah did right, the reality of the game was more complicated than the scoreboard might suggest. The Utes needed a few Idaho turnovers to score their first 10 points. They made big plays, and they eventually did steamroll their small-school opponent, but in the first one and a half quarters, they weren't blasting away at the line of scrimmage. Utah's offensive line looked like a work in progress more than a finished product.
This has to give Arkansas some confidence that it can march into Salt Lake City and, at the very least, compete with the Utes next week. It's not a guarantee, but it does at least show that Utah hasn't answered every question on its roster or depth chart under first-year head coach Morgan Scalley.
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Utah's defensive line was not airtight either in this game. The Utes allowed Idaho to run the ball at times in the first half. Though Utah scored 66, Scalley and the defensive coaching staff will view allowing 14 points to lowly Idaho as a disappointment. This is the standard Utah football established under Scalley and former head coach Kyle Whittingham. The Utes are going to look at film of Idaho and will not be satisfied with the way they played. Arkansas can elbow its way into this upcoming game and be competitive if the Utes aren't especially sharp and don't make real improvements from their first game.
Let's step in here and offer some realism: Utah rotated a lot of players in and out of the lineup against Idaho. Scalley wanted to see, especially on defense, a lot of different player combinations, plugging numerous players into different roles. Some combinations worked well while others didn't. Some Utes displayed considerable and consistent discipline, while others were caught out of position on attempted blitzes and pre-snap movements.
Ryan Silverfield and his Arkansas staff will obviously tell their players to expect Utah to be a lot better than it was against Idaho, but at the same time, the UA staff can look at film and find points of vulnerability it might be able to exploit when it goes up against the Utes on September 12. It will be fascinating to see what Silverfield sees of the Utah-Idaho film and how he uses his observations to formulate what he thinks will be a winning game plan.
