Estimated read time: 8-9 minutes
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SALT LAKE CITY - In one of the most historic seasons in Utah football history, there were many ups and downs. Between the 54-10 blowout win over BYU and the 17-14 loss to Colorado at home, it was definitely a roller coaster for Ute fans.
There were many moments that could have been the best moment of the year. Really, there was only one player who could be named the offensive MVP, but who was the team’s unsung hero? Which win was the biggest win of the season for the Utes? Who was the most improved Ute?
Utah Football Forecast Part 1
Oblivious resilience helped Utes save 2011 season, bowl game
Trevor Amicone takes a step back and looks at the Utes' 2011 season through the eyes of Saturday's Sun Bowl.We’ll answer those questions and more in our awards recap for the 2011 Utah football season.
Utah Football Forecast Part 2
Position-by-position season grades
In part two of our five-part Utah Football Forecast series, Trevor Amicone grades the Utes, position-by-position.Offensive Most Valuable Player:Junior running back John White. Was this ever really a question? White broke the Utes’ single-season rushing record, running for 1,519 yards on the season. White also ended with more single-season carries than any other Ute running back in school history (318). If that’s not enough, on the Sun Bowl-winning touchdown, White broke the school single-season record for rushing touchdowns (15).
| Utah Team Schedule (8-5) | |||
 | W 27-10 | ||
 | L 14-23 | ||
 @ Brigham Young Cougars (10-3) | W 54-10 | ||
 Washington Huskies (7-6) | L 14-31 | ||
 Arizona State Sun Devils (6-7) | L 14-35 | ||
 @ Pittsburgh Panthers (6-6) | W 26-14 | ||
 | L 10-34 | ||
 Oregon State Beavers (3-9) | W 27-8 | ||
 @ Arizona Wildcats (4-8) | W 34-21 | ||
 UCLA Bruins (6-8) | W 31-6 | ||
 | W 30-27 | ||
 Colorado Buffaloes (3-10) | L 14-17 | ||
 | W 30-27 | ||
That season is impressive enough, but to consider that teams were loading the box against White all season long with eight and sometimes nine players makes his season quite possibly the best of any football player in Ute history.
With the least threatening passing game in the Pac-12, every team they played knew the Utes were going to run the ball. It didn’t matter. White still carried the Utes on his shoulders all season long. Without White, the Utes finish 3-9 maybe 4-8. When White ran for at least 100 yards in a game, Utah was 8-0. When he didn’t, Utah was 0-5. If that’s not valuable, nothing is.
Runner-up: Junior wide receiver DeVonte Christopher. Christopher’s numbers weren’t huge, but that is hard to do with the pass game as inhibited as it was in 2011. The numbers, however, don’t tell you the importance of his presence on the field. When Christopher went down to injury early in the season, the offense immediately began to sputter.
Even though Utah came away from Pittsburgh with a win, the offense was badly constrained without Christopher. Then, in the Cal game, Christopher’s absence made an even bigger difference in the offense. The Utes’ probably wouldn’t have won, but the offense wouldn’t have looked as ugly as it did in San Francisco.
Why does he make such a big difference in the offense? He presents a deep and real threat to defensive secondaries. Dres Anderson and Luke Matthews are solid receivers but Pac-12 defensive secondaries didn’t take them as seriously because of their size. Christopher isn’t that big but his abilities make him much more of a threat than his fellow wide outs. This at least forces defenses to respect the pass game, which allows White to do what he does. Christopher does not receive near enough credit for his part in making the offense at least mildly effective.
Defensive MVP:Junior nose tackle Star Lotulelei. This one was almost as much of a no-brainer as the offensive MVP. Lotulelei was somewhat of an unknown coming into the program from Snow College, but he ended up anchoring the best defensinve line in the Pac-12.
Lotulelei was named to the Pac-12 first team in his first year at Utah. For me, however, the more impressive accomplishment was winning the Morris Trophy. The Morris Trophy is a unique award to the Pac-12 that is awarded to one offensive lineman and one defensive lineman. The voters? The Pac-12 O-linemen vote for the best D-linemen and vice versa.
That means that the offensive linemen in the Pac-12 feared Lotulelei more than any other defensive lineman in the conference. Now that’s impressive. The good news for Ute fans? Despite being the best pro-prospect on the roster, he’s coming back for his senior season.
Runners-up: Senior defensive end Derrick Shelby and sophomore linebacker/safety Brian Blechen. Shelby was the only other defender on the Utes to make the all Pac-12 first or second team. He made the first team along side Lotulelei. Blechen became the steady leader in the secondary after selflessly moving from safety to linebacker and then back to safety. We’re not done hearing about Blechen yet.
Unsung Hero:Brian Blechen. Blechen, although just a sophomore, became the leader of the secondary and one of the leaders of the defense as a whole. Blechen started the season by moving from his position at safety where he played in 2010, to linebacker.
When junior safety Keith McGill struggled out of the gates, however, Blechen was moved back to safety where he helped facilitate the quick development of freshmen safety Eric Rowe. Blechen steadied the secondary after big plays ravaged it during the early part of the season. By unselfishly playing wherever the Ute coaches wanted him, he allowed Trevor Reilly to come into the picture to make a big defensive difference. We’ll learn about why that was so important later.
Runner-up: Junior quarterback Jon Hays. Let’s face it, Hays simply does not have the skills to lead a team to a Pac-12 title. This was a kid who had no offers anywhere and was set to play at Nebraska-Omaha, a school that dropped football altogether. No other school in the Pac-12 tried to scoop Hays up, not one. That is, until Utah.
Hays gutted out the season and did as much as he could running the Ute offense. Hays’ lack of a skill set did not hold him back from stepping in and doing a more than adequate job, but he will likely fall to fourth on the quarterback depth chart in 2012, if he even remains on it. If he doesn’t, Ute fans owe him a large debt of gratitude for the tremendous heart he showed stepping in and leading the team in 2011.
Most Improved Ute:Sophomore linebacker Trevor Reilly. Reilly was an unknown linebacker out of Southern California coming into the season. He was listed on the two-deep as a second-string linebacker behind Brian Blechen, but by the third game of the season, after seeing limited action in the first two games, he was breaking records.
Over the course of the season, Reilly became a fixture amongst Utah’s defensive front seven, one of the best in the country. Reilly impressed the Ute coaching staff so much that they changed their defensive base package before he BYU game to get him more playing time.
Defensive coordinator Kalani Sitake, under the direction of head coach Kyle Whittingham, decided to move from the Utes’ traditional 4-3 defense to the 3-4 against BYU to take advantage of Reilly at linebacker.
“We just felt like a guy that can move like he can, we ought to find a way to get him on the field,” Sitake told the Deseret News after the game. It paid off, Reilly forced three fumbles in the game and helped lead the Utes to the 54-10 win.
The Utes will lose three of their key linebackers, but expect Reilly to be a big part of the process to replace the trio of Chaz Walker, Matt Martinez and J.J. Williams. We’ll look into that dilemma more in part-five of our series when we look at the 2012 season and beyond on Friday.
Best Moment of the Year:John White scoring the winning touchdown in the Sun Bowl. After clawing back into the Sun Bowl to tie it and send it into overtime, the Utes held Georgia Tech to a field goal in the first possession of overtime. Then the Utah offense drove down to the 8-yard line. Many Ute fans were resigned to double overtime, just hoping for a safe play to set up a field goal and a tie.Instead, offensive coordinator Norm Chow called a draw play and gave it to the best playmaker on the field. Eight yards later, White stretched into the end zone giving the Utes the Sun Bowl victory and capping off the season with a bowl win.
Biggest Play of the Year:4th-and-14. The John White touchdown will be remembered, but the biggest play of the year might not. Trailing by a touchdown with just over a minute left in the game, Utah was driving near the red zone, facing a crucial fourth down. On the third-down play before, there was a questionable officiating call in the end zone when a Georgia Tech cornerback held the right arm of Christopher as he went up to catch what would have been the game-tying touchdown with a minute and a half left in regulation.On the next play (4th-and-14), Chow called the same play, a fade route to Christopher. This time, however, Christopher came down with it on a perfectly thrown ball by quarterback Jon Hays and stumbled into the end zone to tie the game.
The do-or-die conversion set up the overtime victory that left a great taste in the mouths of Ute fans everywhere and topped off a solid first season in the Pac-12.
Coming up Thursday Jan. 5,we take a look at what the future holds for the Pac-12 conference. Where do the Utes fit in? Who is their biggest competition in the South? Will Oregon and/or Stanford drop off at all? What about all the new coaches, how will they fare? Find it in the fourth installment of KSL’s Utah Football Forecast.
Trevor Amicone is the sports director at 88.1 Weber FM "Ogden's Radio Station" and host of the sports talk radio show, "Fully Loaded Sports with Trevor Amicone". Follow his very entertaining Twitter feed at @TrevorAmicone.
