Whittingham: TJ Pledger, Chris Curry Closing The Gap On No. 1 RB Spot

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Utah head football coach Kyle Whittingham has a full running back battle on his hands with TJ Pledger and Chris Curry making a push.

The No. 1 running back spot is currently held by Micah Bernard, who was the only returning scholarship running back from last season but TJ Pledger and Chris Curry and eyeing that spot.

Whittingham spoke with the media on Tuesday in their final week of spring football and was asked about the progress of Pledger and Curry in the running back battle.

“They have definitely close the gap,” Whittingham said. “Micah (Bernard) has continued to perform exceptionally well this spring. So he’s, still the number one tailback. But both Chris (Curry) and TJ (Pledger) have have shown a lot of progress and really, what they needed to do was feel comfortable with their assignments and their role in the offense. They’re starting to do that now and really settle in and they’re going to be contributors as well. So we’ll see what happens through fall camp, whether or not we’re gonna have one tailback get the majority of the reps or by committee. It’s a good problem to have right now. We got those three guys that we think are all very capable.”

While Micah Bernard has made major strides during the off-season, Whittingham said that TJ Pledger and Chris Curry have closed the gap.#GoUtes @kslsports

— Trevor Allen (@TrevorASports) April 13, 2021

With the spring game approaching, Whittingham and his coaching staff are going through a list of players to potentially hold out. Whittingham didn’t give any names out yet but it’s highly unlikely that Bernard, Pledger and Curry will be held out unless they get injured.

“Preliminarily, we still haven’t finalized that,” Whittingham mentioned. “We’ll see what happens in practice today and Thursday. You know, somebody tweaks an ankle or something that could change what our thought process is but we’ve already got a start on that. We don’t have anything to announce today because like I said, it’s not finalized and that will be finalized by Thursday and we’ll proceed from there.”

The red/white spring game for Utah will be held on Saturday, April 17 at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Kickoff is at noon MT on the Pac-12 Network.

Trevor Allen is a Utah Utes Insider for KSLSports.com and host of the Crimson Corner podcast. Follow him on Twitter: @TrevorASports. You can download and listen to the podcast, here.