Holding the line: With Houston showing, Utah reminds it's still a defensive school

SALT LAKE CITY — Seconds after defensive back Jackson Bennee blew up Houston quarterback Conner Weigman and forced a fumble that defensive tackle Jireh Moe immediately jumped on, Devon Dampier rolled to his right, saw the opening and sprinted toward the end zone.

The touchdown extended Utah's lead over Houston, with plenty of time still left on the clock. It was the perfect setting for a highly-efficient offense, who had been mostly bottled up all night, to put together a late scoring drive and make it an interesting night in Salt Lake City.

Surely a 2-point try, which would have given Utah a 9-point lead if successful, instead of the PAT was up for debate, right?

"No," Utah head coach Morgan Scalley said. "Defense was playing really well. That's not, in my opinion, a time to go for two."

So Utah kicked the PAT to take a 21-13 lead over the visiting team. The onus was now on Houston.

It meant Houston had 2:09 to work with to orchestrate a potential scoring drive in hopes of tying up the game with their own successful 2-point try. But for Scalley, none of that made sense to extend the margin more than Houston could obtain in one possession, especially with how well his team's defense was playing.

"Others will disagree, but with our defense — go ahead, drive the length of the field, and then have to score, have to get a 2-point conversion, and then we go into overtime," Scalley said. "It's like, I believe in our guys at that point, obviously."

Most importantly, he trusted his defensive coordinator, Colton Swan, to keep the pressure on Houston.

Weigman managed two positive plays on the ensuing Houston drive — a 10-yard completion to Trent Walker and then a 41-yard toss to Koby Young — but Utah's defense won the final battle and forced four straight incompletions with a highly-aggressive pressure scheme to speed up Weigman.

In the end, in a game that was expected to be an offensive shootout, it was the defense who was the star of the night — even with an offense that came alive in the second half.

Most impressive, beyond the actual result, was that Utah held Houston to just 13 points and 86 rushing yards — numbers far lower than season averages of 39.3 points and 220.3 yards, respectively — and rattled Weigman to make his night uncomfortable to the tune of a 54% completion rate.

It was a prototypical Utah football defense, and one that has been questioned for its lack of sacks from the defensive ends and a relatively porous second half the week prior against Colorado. But on Saturday, Utah's defense delivered.

"Credit to our D-line," Scalley said. "I thought we did a really nice job of getting pressure on the quarterback, forcing him to throw the ball when he didn't want to throw the ball, getting tips, getting deflections where we needed him. Lance Holtzclaw was all over the field, very active. Jireh showed up again in a big way, and, obviously, the sack forced fumble from Jackson Bennee was the big play in the game that kind of put us in position to end it.

"Just proud of the guys for their fight."

Utah's defense ranks inside the top 10 in several standard statistical measures — including scoring defense (9th, 14.6 points), run defense (8th, 88.3 yards), passes defended (3rd, 7.0 per game) and red zone conversion (10th, 70.6%).

It's a unit that is devoid of a star — though a case could be made for several on the defensive side of the ball — and is greater than the sum of its parts.

But that's the hallmark of Scalley's whole operation as head coach: It's a team element where all the pieces working together make it all work. As such, Utah's is 7-0 on the season and in the driver's seat for a chance at an appearance in the Big 12 title game.

And with much of the talk focused on Kevin McGiven and Utah's unique offensive structure, Saturday was a reminder that Utah is still very much a defensive school.

"I would say that I'm most proud of us playing with really good technique," Scalley said. "Technique is what allows you to win. You can just be physically superior to an opponent, but really, when you're playing good on good, you better have fantastic technique. ... The technique, that's our guys, our coaches, are holding our guys accountable. That's what's allowing them to play so well; the effort is there. They're relentless to the football."

That defense will now be tasked with stopping a Cincinnati offense that put a top-10 Texas Tech team in a blender and made their afternoon tough in their first loss of the season.

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