Utah did enough to hang on at Folsom Field, but Morgan Scalley didn’t spend much time talking like a coach whose team had just extended the nation’s longest active winning streak to 12 games.
Instead, the Utah coach gave Colorado plenty of credit after a comeback that turned a comfortable halftime cushion into a nerve-wracking finish. Utah owned the first half, outgaining the Buffaloes 248-70 and building a 13-0 lead while Colorado’s offense sputtered.
Then the game flipped. Colorado outgained Utah 324-161 after halftime and kept pushing until the final minute.
“Credit to Coach Sanders and Colorado for the way they competed and fought,” Scalley said after the game. “I knew going into this game, I thought this was going to be a battle, particularly their defense and how stout they were. I think you look at really all metrics that matter, and I don't know that we should have won this game, outside of the score.”
The box score backed up the unease. Colorado’s front got to Utah quarterback Devon Dampier three times and helped hold the Utes to 131 rushing yards on 39 carries, a modest 3.4 yards per attempt. Scalley said that pressure was the biggest reason Utah’s offense never really settled in.
“It's finishing in the red zone with touchdowns,” he said. “Now, a big part of that is their defensive front is pretty active, and they brought quite a bit of pressure all night.”
The late stages brought another problem Utah created for itself. Scalley said his staff should have handled a key clock situation better after an incompletion stopped the clock while the Utes were trying to close out the game.
“You cannot throw an incomplete. You got to keep the clock running,” Scalley said.
When asked whether the quarterback should have taken a sack instead, Scalley put the blame on coaching.
“That's one of those situations where we're saying if it's not clean, you got to basically kill it. You got to go down,” he said.
“We've not coached that well enough, obviously. So that is on the coaches.”
Colorado quarterback Isaac Wilson, a former Utah product, made his presence felt against his old team, throwing for 256 yards and two touchdowns. One of the biggest plays came early in the third quarter, when he hit running back JaQuail Smith on a 68-yard touchdown. Scalley wasn’t interested in making Wilson’s familiarity with Utah the storyline.
“No. That's any team that knows that we play man coverage.
And there were too many times today where we came off coverage,” Scalley said. “Miscommunication on combos, stuff like that.
So we just have to be cleaner in the back end.”
Utah still found a way to escape thanks to a couple of defining plays from unexpected sources. Cornerback James Chenault Jr. intercepted Wilson in the fourth quarter and returned it 30 yards to the Colorado 22. Then linebacker Brock Fonoimoana came through on Colorado’s onside kick after DeAndre Moore Jr.’s touchdown pulled the Buffs within three with 1:21 remaining.
Scalley made clear just how tight things had become by the end.
“Brock Fonoimoana, if he doesn't recover that, it becomes very interesting, right?” he said.
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