Utah Offense vs Arizona Defense
Rankings reflect ranking percentile for Offense or Defense vs NCAA
Chart reflect ranking percentile for Offense or Defense vs NCAA
0 is worst unit in NCAA 100 is best
0 is worst unit in NCAA 100 is best
Until Weeks 6-7 the model outputs are directional, but useful
The Utah offense (#78) is proudly a mind numbing, clock murdering, bore. If there is a plus side it is that Utah tends to finish games in near record time in these days of hurry up offenses and endless TV timeouts. The Utes have managed to look competent against one of the weakest slate of defenses that anyone has played yet. In fact Arizona will represent the toughest defense the Utes have faced up to this point; and that is kind of amazing. Utah will need to kill off the clock and limit possessions with Arizona, whose points per drive advantage could be telling if they get the ball enough. That means that Utah needs to put together drives that score and kill clock.
Utah really is excellent at avoiding Negative Drives, which makes a ton of sense, since those are drives that average<3.3333 yds per play. That is how you crush the clock. You keep the ball moving forward and get first downs.
Utah is really bad at everything else. If not for Oregon State this would be the worst offense in the Pac12 by a pretty good margin. They are terrible at Drive Efficiency, Play Efficiency, Explosive Drives, preventing D-plus Plays, and on 3rd down. Slow it down, keep it in reach, make some special teams plays, or get a turnover.
Utah really is excellent at avoiding Negative Drives, which makes a ton of sense, since those are drives that average<3.3333 yds per play. That is how you crush the clock. You keep the ball moving forward and get first downs.
Utah is really bad at everything else. If not for Oregon State this would be the worst offense in the Pac12 by a pretty good margin. They are terrible at Drive Efficiency, Play Efficiency, Explosive Drives, preventing D-plus Plays, and on 3rd down. Slow it down, keep it in reach, make some special teams plays, or get a turnover.
Arizona's defense (#66) continues to improve on the season. Sure that outing against UCLA looks bad on paper, but the Bruins killed the Cats on field position and Arizona did some really good work in the first half. The worrying sign for Arizona is that Utah might be able to line up and run against them; which for some reason took the dolts running the UCLA offense an entire half to figure out. The positive is that Utah doesn't have any of the playmakers out wide that UCLA does, so Arizona can commit more to stopping the run with less fear of getting burned.
Arizona's Drive Efficiency number is improving and it is now to the point where they are OK at it. They are pretty good on 3rd down and that will be important in keeping the Utes from putting every fan dumb enough to be watching on the east coast, myself included, into a catatonic slumber.
Arizona's Drive Efficiency number is improving and it is now to the point where they are OK at it. They are pretty good on 3rd down and that will be important in keeping the Utes from putting every fan dumb enough to be watching on the east coast, myself included, into a catatonic slumber.
Arizona isn't really that good at many of the other metrics. UCLA burned them on some Explosive Drives and put up some very good yard per play type metrics against Arizona. The model, and America, doesn't think UCLA has an amazing offense, so that really hurt Arizona's ranking in some of these areas. It would be even worse if Utah did it though. Arizona has been connecting on blitzes at a decent rate, but they haven't turned those QB sacks and hurries into turnovers yet. They start doing that and things might even get rolling for them.
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