Morgan Scalley knew exactly what he was looking for when Utah needed an offensive coordinator.
He had spent years around the game - from safeties coach to defensive coordinator to head coach - and along the way he kept a notebook full of names he wanted to remember for the day he got that chance. Kevin McGiven was one of them.
Now McGiven is the man steering Utah’s offense, and through two games the results have been impossible to ignore. The Utes are piling up points and yards at a blistering pace, averaging 54.5 points and 537.5 yards per game. The numbers are padded by a 66-14 win over Idaho, but Utah also rolled up 442 yards and 43 points against Arkansas, a defense that presented a much tougher test.
Last season’s offense under Jason Beck was already productive, averaging 41.3 points and 482.9 yards per game behind a powerful offensive line and run game. McGiven has taken the whole operation a step further by leaning into variety, pace and deception right away.
He hasn’t been shy about opening the playbook, either.
Utah started the Arkansas game with a double pass, as Devon Dampier flipped the ball 5 yards back to Byrd Ficklin, who then launched a 36-yard strike from the left sideline to Wayshawn Parker on the right side. That was just the beginning of the moving parts.
Ficklin kept popping up all over the place in the first half. He caught a pass from Dampier.
He took a pitch from Dampier. And on one of the game’s best sequences, Ficklin handed it to Dampier, who pitched it right back to him for a first down.
The Utes also mixed in some eye-catching formations, including one with Ficklin, Daniel Bray and Parker lined up across the 45-yard-line. On a two-point conversion, long snapper Logan Castor lined up a few steps away from the main group and shoveled the snap to Mana Carvalho, who scored the two points.
Dampier kept the ball moving, too, with 10 different receivers catching passes Saturday. That kind of distribution makes life a lot harder on a defense trying to lock onto one target.
Braden Pegan was the top receiving threat in the opener against Idaho, finishing with four catches for 81 yards and a touchdown. Against Arkansas, Pegan had three receptions for 32 yards, while tight end Noah Bennee led Utah with 113 yards and a touchdown on four catches.
That balance has been a big part of the early success, and Scalley said the players are buying in.
“Our guys have a great attitude right now, great mentality,” Scalley said. “You may get yours one week, you may not get as much the next week, but it doesn’t matter who scores, it matters that we score and guys are bought into that right now.”
From a defensive perspective, Scalley said Utah’s offense creates constant stress for the people trying to sort it all out on the sideline. In his view, the most frazzled person on game day isn’t the head coach or even the coordinators - it’s the personnel spotter trying to keep up with all the shifting pieces.
“When you’ve got 40 seconds on the play clock, play ends, and really you don’t have 40 seconds, you have about 15 seconds to figure out what’s going on, who’s coming on, who’s coming off,” Scalley said. “...
‘Uh, it’s 12 personnel. No, no, no.
It’s 10 personnel.’ All the while the coach is like, ‘Let’s go!
Let’s go!’
“So they have a hard time and the more you can create chaos with guys coming on, guys going off and still be able to snap it in time and be efficient, that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Tempo is part of that too. Utah has shifted gears from huddling to playing fast, and Scalley said that helps keep defenses from settling in.
“Creating different tempos as well. You go from being a huddle team to quick on the ball.
So teams don’t get into a rhythm of, ’OK, they’re always going to huddle. They’re always going to break the huddle and we get to see the formation.’
You got to be able to mix that stuff up as well,” Scalley said.
What really separates McGiven’s offense, though, is the personnel flexibility. Ficklin is the most intriguing piece because he opens the door to two-quarterback looks and to snaps where the defense can’t be sure who’s actually going to throw the ball.
“When you have athletes that can play multiple positions, Daniel Bray could line up as a wide receiver, can line up as a running back. Byrd, you see lining up as a wide receiver, he can also be a quarterback,” Scalley said.
“When it’s a quarterback that can also throw the ball after a handoff or after a backwards pass, that creates, ‘Well, we got to stay on coverage, first of all, got to be aware that he can still throw the ball.’ These are the issues that you face every single snap.”
Motion, shifts and misdirection are built into the approach as well, giving defenses more to process before the ball is even snapped.
“The shifts, the motions that force defenders to communicate throughout pre-snap communication. How good are they at pre-snap communication?
How loud are they, particularly in loud environments? So the changing of the formation, the motions that can cause eye tricks, the changing of personnel groups, and then the physicality,” Scalley said.
For now, Utah’s offense has been forcing exactly the kind of problems McGiven wants. And if the first two games are any indication, the creativity isn’t going away any time soon.
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