Top Five Takeaways From Utah Football’s Kyle Whittingham Week One Press Conference
Aug 26, 2024, 12:31 PM | Updated: Aug 27, 2024, 10:45 am
SALT LAKE CITY – On Monday, Utah Football head coach Kyle Whittingham addressed members of the media in his first in-season press conference of 2024.
The Utes depth chart is set and the squad is ready to take on the Southern Utah Thunderbirds in Rice Eccles Stadium for the season opener. Kickoff is set for 7:00 pm MT on Thursday.
A new era begins on Thursday đź‘Š
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— Utah Football (@Utah_Football) August 24, 2024
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After the 15-minute presser, here are five key takeaways from Utah’s head coach press conference.
One – Kyle Whittingham’s expectations for Cam Rising and Utah Football on Thursday
“(Looking for) Clean football game, executing the way that we should execute. Limiting penalties, just the whole mechanism of substitutions, the special team functions- everything, just the whole operation needs to be clean. That’s really what we’re looking for. No delay of games, minimize false starts, just those sloppy penalties that can show up particularly early in the season, we’d like to get a great start on all that stuff.”
This is the biggest key to Thursday’s game regardless of who performs well individually. Utah is a veteran squad, they should show up in that manner on Thursday and take care of business.
Two – Reasonings for Johnathan Hall, John Randle Jr, and Hunter Andrews position changes
Whittingham provided insight into what led to some noteworthy position changes on Utah’s week one depth chart.
Johnathan Hall moving to LB – “Hall, we’ll start with him, he is more of came to us as a safety, he played safety in high school but we projected that he would eventually outgrow the position and he has done so. We feel like his highest ceiling is without a doubt at the linebacker spot. We feel he’s going to be a really good one. That combined with a lack of depth at linebacker- not to say it’s a problematic position but it’s a position that maybe wasn’t as deep as others.”
John Randle Jr. moving to CB – “John Randle, same thing, corner spot was maybe out thinnest position on the team. We lost a couple guys during the spring and summer, that we weren’t necessarily anticipating. He’s a tremendous athlete, you look at his testing scores- his vertical jump, 40-yard dash, shuttle are all among the best on the team. That led us to the place where we said lets move you over to the defensive side and he’s responded. Doesn’t have the experience yet, not going to see him early on at least, but he is making a nice transition.”
Hunter Andrews moving to RB – “Hunter Andrews we added him to running back- we didn’t have a big back, Mike Mitchell is as close as it gets and he’s 215-220 and Hunter is 225. He was in a situation where it was almost like a domino effect. Knowing (Hall) was going to move forward allowed us to take Hunter. It isn’t necessarily permanent, it will be for this season, but we could move him back to linebacker.”
Three – Whittingham believes Dorian Singer is an exceptional football player
Coach Whittingham continued to heap praise Singer’s way. It’s clear that Singer is the WR1 on the squad. Whittingham said that the throw game will go through him. That’s pretty significant considering what we know Brant Kuithe means to this passing game. Singer has just consistently made plays in practice and put himself in the situation to be the featured guy in the passing attack. There is and should be a lot of excitement around Singer, it’ll be fun to see him take the field and learn just how impactful he can be at Utah this season.
Four – A coaching rule change that has enhanced Utah’s ability to get everyone reps
“We did more this camp of running simultaneous drills. For example, we have a team period that is 12-15 minutes long. Instead of just one group going against the other group, we have two complete sets going on simultaneously. That has been enhanced by the rule change where everybody can coach now. Before, we ran out of coaches, and didn’t have enough supervision- enough eyeballs on the drills as they were happening to make them as effective as they needed to be. With the analysts and everybody else being able to coach, that has opened up a lot of opportunity for getting a lot more done during practice.”
This will benefit everyone in college football, however, for Utah which is renowned for its player development, this is a big win. First-team guys are already the big focus but providing them more practice reps is always good. Getting second and third-string players more snaps should be a big benefit for Utah in the long run.
Five – Rising is back, different, but back
“He’s going to be very judicious in his running… He’s going to be a guy that picks his spots… Right now, he’s functioning as well as he ever has. His arm strength is back. No limitations ”
Rising’s worked his way back into a groove during camp. All eyes will be on him on Thursday night. Taking the field, taking the first snap, taking the first hit, making the first throw, the first completion, the first reactionary decision… all of those moments are going to be important Rising on Thursday night.
Utah Football Schedule
Utah will kick off the season against Southern Utah on August 29. You can find Utah football’s conference schedule here.
