Entering week two, Utah Football has worked their way into live action this spring. It’ll take some time for the players to ramp up, but so far so good for Kyle Whittingham’s Utes.

“We had some live work right out of the gate; about 10 minutes into practice when we cranked it up and went live,” said Whittingham. “It was very spirited, very competitive. It’s different practicing with pads, obviously, and some fatigue showed up.”

Tuesday was the first glimpse the media had of the new look Jason Beck offense led by New Mexico transfer Devon Dampier. Media is limited on what we can report on schemes, specifics, injuries and position, unless discussed by the coaches. One thing that was evident on the first day of viewing is that this is Dampier’s offense and the guys gravitate to him.

“He is the leader of the offense as far as knowing what to do and making sure everyone else knows what they’re doing,” said Whittingham. “He made the leadership council. Only having been here two or three weeks, we had the leadership council vote and he is on that and I would assume that at some point he’ll be a captain.”

Two standouts on the day were true freshman running back Daniel Bray and “playmaker” Nate Johnson as both had big runs. Dampier connected on a big pass with Daidren Zipperer, and he also had some nice completions on rollouts. The defense will have to continue to work on takeaways though, as one Dampier pass should have been intercepted, but was dropped.

With the new offense being an on-going install process, Dampier knows that now is the time to build rapport and take chances on the field, so when the real games come, the Utah offense can be back to the level of play that it’s been known for before the last two injury-plagued years.

The biggest thing was that they had a culture here, and we new guys learned the culture,” said Dampier.

However, trust in the transition process is also important.

“Trust is the big thing that we got going on around here,” he continued. “You can’t make it to that championship level without trust. So trust is the biggest thing. I allowed my teammates to see the way I work and they believe in me, so I believe in those guys.”

With Cam Rising no longer at Utah, player leadership is a needed ingredient. When he wasn’t on the field over the last two years, that was a glaring issue for the offense. Now with Dampier leading the charge, the positive vibe and energy that was needed is back and readily apparent for Utah’s offense.