A Tale of Two Halves as Utah Falls to 0-2
A dream first half turned into a nightmare second for the University of Utah football team Saturday night in Seattle. The Utes saw a 21-0 halftime lead disappear in the final seconds as Washington rallied for a 24-21 win to remain unbeaten in the Pac 12.
The turnover bug hit Utah again as the Utes began their season 0-2 for the first time since 2007 as the Huskies put together their biggest comeback since 1988.
The Huskies, who trailed the entire game, put together an 88-yard drive that was capped by a 16-yard pass from redshirt freshman Dylan Morris to Cade Otton with 36 seconds to play.
Utah's last gasp drive was snuffed when quarterback Jake Bentley threw his second interception on a night when the Utes gave up four turnovers.
"When you play good teams like USC and Washington and turn the ball over, you are not going to win," said Ute head coach Kyle Whittingham.
Ute players Bentley, Devin Lloyd and Bryan Thompson joined their coach in wondering what happened in the second half after they played a near perfect first 30 minutes.
"We weren't executing the way we can," said Bentley, who passed for one touchdown and ran for another. "I don't think we had a change of mindset or anything like that. It was a lack of execution on. We've got to practice more and get it right."
The Utah senior quarterback, who started his first game as a Ute, said the defense kept getting Washington off the field.
"It's frustrating to me because you think you let the team down," said Bentley.
Lloyd put blame on the defense for not stopping the Huskies when it needed to. But he found reason for optimism.
"The first half is indicative of what we can be as a team on offense, defense and special teams," he said.
Thompson, who caught a nice 13-yard touchdown pass and made a spectacular one-handed catch in the first half, guaranteed that the team would fix the mistakes that hurt it the first two weeks.
"We know we can play like we did in the first half," said the Ute receiver. "We are not a one-half team."
Utah put together a dominating performance in that first half, holding Washington's vaunted run game down and getting good all around play.
The Utes out-gained Washington 221 to 127 in the initial half.
Devin Brumfield scored on a two-yard scamper and Bentley, not known as a runner, got the Utes on the board with a 7-yard run. Freshman Ty Jordan had a good night with 97 yards on 10 carries.
Washington's offense got things going in the third quarter, scoring on the opening drive and finishing with 17 points in the period.
Utah settled down in the fourth quarter on defense, but the defense could not get that one big third down stop to end the threat.
Utah County product Puka Nacua, whose brother Samson could not play for the Utes due to an injury, made some key catches in that second half.
"It's a 60-minute game and we played 30," said Whittingham. "The encouraging thing is we showed that's who we can be."
He said the Utes stopped going to its playmakers in the second half but thought Utah used them better than the first week.
It was a weird week for the Utes in a time of Covid. They were scheduled to play Arizona State, but the Sun Devils program is shut down due to the disease. So they learned they would be going to Seattle on Tuesday.
"It's a mental challenge with the schedule in flux," said Whittingham. "The whole country is going through it."
The Utes are scheduled to play vastly improved Oregon State next Saturday, but the way this season has gone, that may be more of a suggestion than anything else.