Bowl Game - Utah Preview

As I often do, I’ll start by looking at Sagarin’s ratings. They are not perfect, but they are a good starting point, and are generally better than most other places you could look, because they are free of any personal biases.

Unfortunately, Sagarin believes Utah is 4.5 points better than GT on a neutral field.

Strange, particularly when you consider that Vegas has GT favored by about 3 points. Wonder what they know that I don’t? Because my perception is that Utah probably is slightly better. And Utah has a history of performing well in bowl games, both under their current coach and in general, and GT, well, to put it mildly, we have not played well in bowl games in the recent past. And that is true both with Paul Johnson and without him.

Anyway, here is a look at how both teams were trending to end the season. I’ll start with GT. Obviously, we started 6-0 and finished 2-4. However, many people attributed our worse record to tougher competition, and said that we did not play any worse.

Is that true? Well, here is a look at how we did on the season.

GT Opponent	Sagarin Rank	Sagarin Prediction	Actual Outcome	Difference
Western Carolina	221	GT by 42	GT by 42	0
MTSU	168	GT by 22	GT by 28	+6
Kansas	90	GT by 14	GT by 42	+28
UNC	51	GT by 5	GT by 7	+2
NC State	66	GT by 1	GT by 10	+9
Maryland	99	GT by 13	GT by 5	-8
UVA	67	GT by 1	UVA by 3	-4
Miami	43	Miami by 8	Miami by 17	-9
Clemson	24	Clemson by 3	GT by 14	+17
Virginia Tech	26	VT by 3	VT by 11	-8
Duke	109	GT by 9	GT by 7	-2
UGA	18	UGA by 8	UGA by 14	-6

The Sagarin “predictions” above are based upon our actual performances for the season, so if we had played perfectly consistently all season, the “Difference” column should in theory read “0” all the way down. (That is not exactly accurate, mostly because our opponents do not play perfectly consistently either, but basically that is true).

So, you can see that we did in fact play a tougher schedule in the second half (as is pretty obvious).

BUT, we also performed worse relative to our schedule in the second half. With the exception of the Clemson game, we underachieved based upon our season as a whole in every single game after Week 5. In Weeks 2 through 5, however, we overachieved in every single game.

This is consistent with what I said all year, that we lack depth. As the season wore on, we were beaten down more than other teams, and thus, relative to everyone else, we got worse as the year progressed.

Does that explain 100% of the reason why we played worse as the season progressed? Provably not. There are other possible explanations, but I would bet this was a very significant factor.

The good news is that with 5 weeks off before the bowl game, we should be well rested and might have returned to our early season form.

Now lets look at Utah...

Utah Opponent	Sagarin Rank	Sagarin Prediction	Actual Outcome	Difference
Montana St.	94	Utah by 19	Utah by 17	-2
USC	10	USC by 13	USC by 9	+4
BYU	44	BYU by 1	Utah by 44	+45
Washington	47	Utah by 6	Wash by 17	-23
Arizona St.	39	Utah by 2	Ariz. St. by 21	-23
Pitt	55	Tie	Utah by 12	+12
California	31	Cal by 5	Cal by 24	-19
Oregon St.	83	Utah by 13	Utah by 19	+6
Arizona	64	Utah by 2	Utah by 13	+11
UCLA	60	Utah by 10	Utah by 25	+15
Wash St.	80	Utah by 6	Utah by 3	-3
Colorado	104	Utah by 19	Colorado by 3	-22

Hard to get much of a read there. The closest thing they had to a “trend” was 3 positives games in a row from Week 8 to Week 10. But, they were all over the map, and often Utah won or lost by MUCH more than predicted.

On paper, this game is a terrible matchup for GT. Utah has a great defense. They lead the Pac-12 in scoring defense, and are in the top half of pretty much every major defensive category. They have a stout defensive line. They are good against the run. On offense, they do not pass much. They have a good power running game, and rely heavily on their primary back.

So, basically, they are good at stopping what we do, and we are not very good at stopping what they do.

On the plus side, their offense is atrocious. They only average 300 yards per game, and only score 24 points a game. They are 78th in scoring offense nationally, 110th in total offense, and 97th in yards per play.

Here is a look at Utah’s offense and defense. I looked only at conference games to get these averages, because I think games like Montana St. throw off the numbers.

Utah Offense

	Points	Total Yards	Yards per Play
Averages allowed by Utah’s opponents	31	414.33	6.05
Utah’s averages	20.88	297.89	4.98

So you can see Utah’s offensive numbers are not good.

Now, Utah’s defense.

	Points	Total Yards	Yards per Play
Averages gained by Utah’s opponents	28.53	412.55	5.91
Utah’s averages allowed	22.44	377.44	5.23

And here you can see that Utah’s defense was impressive. They held their Pac-12 opponents well below their normal output.

For comparison’s sake, here is GT’s offense:

	Points	Total Yards	Yards per Play
Averages allowed by GT’s opponents	25.1	374.88	5.51
GT’s averages	28	391.75	5.70

So you can our offense is a decent amount above average. We score about a FG more than our opponents allow, and gain a little more in both total yards and yards per play.

And here is GT’s defense:

	Points	Total Yards	Yards per Play
Averages gained by GT’s opponents	26.7	389.5	5.63
GT’s averages allowed	26.5	372.25	5.71

Somewhat surprisingly, our defense is actually slightly above average, at least in every category except yards per play. But we are near average in all 3.

So, this game matches very good defense against pretty good offense, and average defense against bad offense.

Overall, it sounds pretty even. My gut is that we will struggle, for several reasons:

1 - The matchups for us are poor. Utah’s offense is bad, but what they do well (power running) is our weakness.

2 - This is a bowl game, and GT has not done well lately in bowls, particularly under CPJ. Utah has done very well in bowls of late, particularly under Whittingham.

3 - The computers agree that Utah is somewhat better.

As I discussed in my VT game preview, it does appear that the 5 weeks of prep time leading up to a bowl game has a negative effect on our offense. I don’t know if it hurts our timing, or if it allows the opposing defense too much time to prepare, or what the problem is, but it definitely appears that our offense has problems when the opponents have 5 weeks to get ready. Granted, 3 games is a small sample size, but our offense has now scored 3, 7 and 7 points in 3 bowl games. Thats not good.

However, perhaps an overlooked factor is the effect that 5 weeks has on our defense. In his one bowl game for us thus far, Groh’s defense performed much better than expected. But for a fumbled punt at our own 14 yard line, we may well have held Air Force to 6 points for the game.

Utah is not a very good offense. I am hoping our defense can shut them down. I am afraid we will need to do so in order to have a chance here.

Looking objectively at the evidence (Utah has a good defense, a very good D-Line, and the bowl game issue) I don’t see how our offense will score more than maybe 14 or 17 points. And that may be generous.

However, last year we should have beaten Air Force had we not lost the turnover battle 4-0. And Air Force was very similar to Utah this year, they were “supposed” to win according to Sagarin by about 5 or 6 points.

I think if we avoid the big mistakes, and win or draw the turnover battle, we will have a shot to pull out a low scoring game.

I’ll predict GT by a field goal, something like 13-10 or 17-14. But if we fumble at Utah’s 5 yard line, then fumble two successive punts and set them up in our red zone (like last year with Air Force) then we’ll lose.

Here is hoping we can avoid that result, play a good game, and end this bowl losing streak.

Let’s Go Jackets!