While advanced statistics aren’t everything, they provide a pretty accurate measure of an individual player and/or team as a season progresses. The University of Utah beat the Weber State Wildcats on Thursday 40-16, a game in which was the first of the season, had a weather delay and it was against an FCS opponent—therefore, Utah ran vanilla schemes. Again, it’s fun to look at and dissect, but a couple weeks from now is when this will be more relevant data.

Here’s what PFF thought of the Weber State game. We’re only going to discuss players who got at least 15 snaps unless there’s something unusual about them, like Cam Rising’s quick impact in relief at quarterback.


Here’s the offense:

Quarterbacks

Brewer: 90.7 (#2 on the offense) including 91.4 passing on 57 snaps and 35 passing snaps. This is his third-highest single game rating ever, right behind his 2018 games v. UTSA and Kansas.

Rising: 80.1 (#4 on the offense) on 7 snaps. Below 15 snaps, so it’s a very small sample size, but he looked very good on 2 passes, 1 run, and 4 handoffs.


Running Backs

Thomas: 83.8 (#3 on offense) on 15 snaps with 12 runs. As you’ll see below, even with the fumble, Thomas is way ahead of the rest of the RB according to PFF.

Bernard: 69.9 isn’t terrible on 37 snaps with 6 runs. Bernard is clearly used more on passing downs, getting 23 passing snaps, 6 pass blocking snaps, and 2 run blocking snaps. He was targeted 3 times, caught all 3 for 41 yards.