Scalley opens home debut vs. Idaho with offensive line still unsettled
Morgan Scalley's first game at Rice-Eccles arrives with a rebuilt offensive line, a captain's room shaken by a portal exit, and last season's five-game finish as the only form anybody has.
Scalley closes his first camp with the offensive line still the unknown
Morgan Scalley wrapped his first fall camp as Utah's full-time head coach with the team, in his words, "injury free for the most part," per the Deseret News, and he used the closing week to name a captains' group that doubles as a mission statement: Devon Dampier, Wayshawn Parker, Alex Harrison, Jonathan Hall, Trey Reynolds and Nate Ritchie. Dampier's job was never a question — he threw for 2,490 yards and 24 touchdowns last season while adding 835 yards and 10 more scores on the ground — but Scalley spent the middle of camp needling the offense over red-zone finishing, telling reporters there were "too many field goals," before turning around and joking the group must have gotten "butthurt or something because it's been fantastic since then."
The bigger question sits up front, where line coach Jordan Gross is replacing all five starters and still won't name a starting five. He told the Deseret News he trusts 10 players in a Big 12 game — Harrison, Zereoue Williams, Keith Olson, Solatoa Moea'i, Kelvin Obot, Isaiah Garcia and Cedric Jefferson among them — with Williams, who backed up first-round pick Caleb Lomu a year ago, the frontrunner at left tackle and Jefferson, a Montana State transfer who started every game for an FCS national title team without allowing a sack, pushing for right tackle. Harrison, now working center and sitting on the team's leadership council, isn't hiding from the uncertainty: "I just can't wait because I think we'll show a lot of people this year." Ahead of his first game in charge at Rice-Eccles, Scalley made clear whose program this still is: "This is not a Morgan Scalley deal. This is a University of Utah deal," he told the Deseret News, while also admitting to ABC4 there's "a sense of exhaustion just being done hitting each other. Like, let's go."
Leading rusher NaQuari Rogers bolts for the portal a week from kickoff
The one real jolt out of camp landed Thursday night before last, when On3's Pete Nakos reported that running back NaQuari Rogers is entering the transfer portal, his representative confirming the move to the outlet. Rogers rushed for 1,598 career yards and 11 touchdowns after transferring in from New Mexico, and he leaves as one of the more productive backs on the roster with the opener already a week away — an odd note for a program that spent the last cycle building out that room.
Utah running back NaQuari Rogers is entering the transfer portal, his rep @agentjshields tells @On3. He's rushed for 1,598 career yards and 11 TDs. t.co/wMrfFrcNOy
It isn't a hole Utah has to fill blind. Wayshawn Parker, who followed running backs coach Mark Atuaia to Salt Lake City in the same transfer class as Rogers, returns as the leading rusher and was named a captain this preseason, and he's expected to carry the workhorse share of a run-first offense under new coordinator Kevin McGiven. Losing a proven back a week out stings, but Rogers was never going to be the engine of this attack with Dampier and Parker both back, and Scalley's staff has treated it as a subtraction to manage rather than a crisis to solve.
Last season ended with Scalley's first win as head coach
Utah's last game was also Scalley's first as head coach: a 44-22 win over Nebraska in the Las Vegas Bowl on December 31 that closed out last season and doubled as his introduction to the job, months before it became permanent. The Utes finished last season on a five-game win streak that included a 55-28 win at Baylor and a 51-47 shootout over Kansas State, and last season's finish is the only form anybody has on this team heading into tonight.
That closing run is a big part of the optimism in Salt Lake City despite a rebuilt offensive line — last season's team was one of the hottest in the country down the stretch, and Scalley inherited a roster that already knew how to win close games in November. Nobody outside the building has seen this group play since. The record resets to 0-0 for the opener, but the version of Utah that beat Nebraska to finish last season is the one these Utes are trying to pick back up tonight against Idaho.
Idaho arrives having already blown a game it should have won
Idaho is not walking into Rice-Eccles unscathed. The Vandals opened their season on August 28 by blowing a 34-31 lead at Cal Poly, giving up a fourth-and-8 touchdown pass with 9 seconds left in a 38-34 loss — this despite quarterback Joshua Wood throwing for a career-high 363 yards and 2 touchdowns while adding 42 rushing yards, much of it scrambling behind a line that struggled to protect him, per the Spokesman-Review. Coach Thomas Ford Jr. had preached being "composed and competent in end-of-game situations" before the season even started, and the collapse against an FCS peer exposed exactly that.
Idaho went 4-8 a year ago and is trying to prove it's better than that record, with this trip to a ranked Big 12 team as its first real measuring stick and three home games — including an October 2 date with defending FCS champion Montana State — waiting on the other side. Utah opened as a 33.5-point favorite with the total set at 56.5, numbers that reflect a team replacing an entire offensive line but still expected to be far too much for a Vandals defense that just let a fourth-and-long touchdown beat it. Kickoff for tonight vs. Idaho is at 8:00 PM, the first real test of whether Scalley's rebuilt trenches are ready before Big 12 play starts.