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SALT LAKE CITY — Underneath the Rose Bowl Stadium in a small room near the home team locker room, Kyle Whittingham made his way to a raised platform with a makeshift podium to deliver his postgame thoughts after his team fell to UCLA in a pivotal game in the Pac-12.
There was no urgency in Whittingham's voice or a sense of panic — even after his defense gave up 511 yards to a dynamic UCLA offense led by senior quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson that kept Utah on its toes all day. If anything, Whittingham was calm, collected and mostly void of any lingering frustrations from a loss.
Sure, the undercurrent of his frustrations were apparent at times in his answers to questions about the game, but his was a measured reassurance that though his team missed another key opportunity this season, the path to a Pac-12 championship had not been closed on Saturday.
In fact, there was a subtle persistency from the man in charge that Utah had been in the position before and found success on the other side of a devastating loss. He said his team is "very eerily in a very similar situation" as to where they were last season and "we're by no means out of contention."
And though Utah is in somewhat a similar position to last season, at least record wise with two losses six games into the season, there's a difference in how each season has been defined.
In 2021, it was a switch to quarterback Cam Rising that changed the momentum of the program after two nonconference losses to revitalize an offense going nowhere (to say nothing of a team that banded together after another tragic loss). This season, the defense has, at times, underperformed to the level of play consistent with a Whittingham-led team.
And though the passing defense leads the Pac-12 and ranks 19th nationally, it's the run defense that has struggled most for Utah — and that's maybe why it stings so much for all involved in the Utah football program.
In short, Utah is hardly ever outmatched in the run game. Since the 2015 season — four years after joining the Power Five ranks — Utah's defense has finished No. 1 in run defense in the Pac-12 every year except for the 2017 season (it finished third). It's been a given that Utah reloads, retools and returns as the top run defense each season.
That is until the 2022 season.
Midway through the season, in which preseason expectations were high for a Utah program coming off its first Pac-12 championship and Rose Bowl appearance, Utah's run defense has been average — No. 6 in the Pac-12 and 58th nationally.
"We've had two bad games and four really good games," Whittingham reasoned on Monday, as he pointed to high rankings in every area but run defense.
Those two games — Florida and UCLA — have been a thorn in Utah's side. The team has had success against the run — as evidenced by the defense holding Arizona State to only 6 yards rushing — but in games that matter and have a mobile quarterback, the defense is seemingly nowhere to be found and teams find big holes.
To Whittingham, it all starts with not getting enough pressure on a four-man pass rush. It's an area of his defense that he calls a "huge concern" and one he hasn't found an answer to yet midway through the season.
"Absolutely a huge concern and we've got to do a better job coaching pass rush, setting our guys up for success — maybe the twist games, the stunts that you run with your front, maybe we need to incorporate more of that; we're looking at everything," Whittingham said. "But it's a big concern. As concerning as it is, we're playing the pass pretty darn good, but we'd like to get more pressure; that would be ideal."
It's an area that Whittingham and his coaching staff will continue to work to fix, but given the turnover in the front seven from last season, it's hard to see a wholesale change immediately. Utah has felt the loss of first-round NFL draft pick Devin Lloyd, Nephi Sewell and Mika Tafua more than many would have expected.
The front seven features one senior who transferred from Florida and had to learn a new scheme amid injury, six sophomores in starting positions and one freshman. That's a lot of youth to replace a previously established group that maintained a high level of play.
With a majority of that personnel absent of an upperclassman who has come up through the program, Utah's front seven is learning on the fly. Van Fillinger and Junior Tafuna got extended starter experience last season, but they had veteran Tafua on the line and Lloyd and Sewell behind them to keep the game moving about the right way.
Two of the three — Lloyd and Sewell — led the team in tackles (199 total tackles and 29.5 tackles for loss combined), and Tafua and Lloyd combined for 17.5 sacks to lead the team. That's a lot of production to replace — to say nothing of the leadership aspects of the veteran players during the game and the coaching up of players in practice.
To help Utah get more pressure on the quarterback, Whittingham said they've added a fifth defender (or more) on the line to get "any heat" on the quarterback, which remains a "concern and an ongoing problem" through the first six games of the season. That change in the scheme has altered how Utah is able to defend opponents.
It's a work in progress for the front seven and one that will likely continue to make errors along the way, which is an unusual area of concern under Whittingham's tenure as a head coach. The season isn't all lost, it's just a more difficult task — a slimmer margin — to get the team back to where it hopes to be when the regular season ends.
"We're by no means out of contention and the key now is for us to pick ourselves up, go back to work on Monday, and address our deficiencies and become a better football team next week, because it doesn't get any easier next week — I can tell you that for certain," Whittingham said. "We have a good team coming into Rice-Eccles next week and we've gotta be ready to play our game, and we will be. Our guys will bounce back and they'll play well next week."
"Personally, I've got all the confidence in the world in my guys, I ain't lost no confidence in them since Game 1," cornerback Clark Phillips III said. "Those are the same group of guys I'll go to war with every single day. So I feel good about the vibe, personally. Being in the locker room, I know they can probably say the same, but I feel good about it. We've just got to make more plays, we've got to play our assignment. And when the plays come to us, we've got to make them."
