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Pac-12 football picks: Oregon rocks WSU, USC struggles, ASU recovers and Utah batters (win or lose)
The Utes are known for exacting a toll. We wondered if it’s myth or reality.
We’ve heard it for years, from coaches and coordinators, from analysts and former players: Utah takes something out of you, something more than the typical opponent.
The Utes favor physicality over finesse. They’re bigger and tougher than most teams. Every lineman seems to have arms like Thor’s Hammer. The defensive backs don’t hesitate to punish. The running backs seek contact.
The week after Utah...
And the recovery requires more time.
www.denverpost.com
We’ve heard it since the early years of Utah’s time in the conference and don’t doubt that it’s true.
But what’s the material impact?
The Hotline watched Utah maul Arizona State and pondered the toll it might exact on the Sun Devils this weekend at UCLA.
So we ordered the crack Hotline research staff to check results for teams the week after playing Utah.
It was highly unscientific.
We didn’t examine point spreads. We didn’t consider how that particular team performed over the course of its season.
We didn’t even tally the results against Utah.
All we tracked was what happened the week after Utah.
(To that end, we excluded teams that had an open date between the Utes and the next game.)
Since the start of 2016 — a decent sample size — Pac-12 teams have a 10-14 record The Week After Utah (TWAU).
That’s not an off-the-charts number, except that Washington is responsible for three of the wins. The Huskies followed their duels with Utah with victories in ’16, ’17 and ’18.
So remove from the equation the team that compiled a 22-5 conference record and won two titles in that span, and everyone else was 7-14 TWAU.
That feels significant.
But there’s more.
We drilled down another layer and considered location: How did teams perform in road games TWAU?
(That’s Arizona State’s assignment on Saturday, after all.)
The results were exactly what we expected:
Utah’s conference opponents are 3-10 when playing on the road TWAU.
Washington’s 2016 playoff team owns one of the wins.
The others came courtesy of Washington State, which beat Oregon State last year, and Oregon State, which beat Cal last week.
That’s as far as our exercise goes — not far enough to draw definitive conclusions but far enough to spot anecdotal evidence that the Utes do, indeed, take something extra out of their opponents.
The Utes are known for exacting a toll. We wondered if it’s myth or reality.
We’ve heard it for years, from coaches and coordinators, from analysts and former players: Utah takes something out of you, something more than the typical opponent.
The Utes favor physicality over finesse. They’re bigger and tougher than most teams. Every lineman seems to have arms like Thor’s Hammer. The defensive backs don’t hesitate to punish. The running backs seek contact.
The week after Utah...
And the recovery requires more time.
Pac-12 football picks: Oregon rocks WSU, USC struggles, ASU recovers and Utah batters (win or lose)
We’ve heard it for years, from coaches and coordinators, from analysts and former players: Utah takes something out of you, something more than the typical opponent.
www.denverpost.com
We’ve heard it since the early years of Utah’s time in the conference and don’t doubt that it’s true.
But what’s the material impact?
The Hotline watched Utah maul Arizona State and pondered the toll it might exact on the Sun Devils this weekend at UCLA.
So we ordered the crack Hotline research staff to check results for teams the week after playing Utah.
It was highly unscientific.
We didn’t examine point spreads. We didn’t consider how that particular team performed over the course of its season.
We didn’t even tally the results against Utah.
All we tracked was what happened the week after Utah.
(To that end, we excluded teams that had an open date between the Utes and the next game.)
Since the start of 2016 — a decent sample size — Pac-12 teams have a 10-14 record The Week After Utah (TWAU).
That’s not an off-the-charts number, except that Washington is responsible for three of the wins. The Huskies followed their duels with Utah with victories in ’16, ’17 and ’18.
So remove from the equation the team that compiled a 22-5 conference record and won two titles in that span, and everyone else was 7-14 TWAU.
That feels significant.
But there’s more.
We drilled down another layer and considered location: How did teams perform in road games TWAU?
(That’s Arizona State’s assignment on Saturday, after all.)
The results were exactly what we expected:
Utah’s conference opponents are 3-10 when playing on the road TWAU.
Washington’s 2016 playoff team owns one of the wins.
The others came courtesy of Washington State, which beat Oregon State last year, and Oregon State, which beat Cal last week.
That’s as far as our exercise goes — not far enough to draw definitive conclusions but far enough to spot anecdotal evidence that the Utes do, indeed, take something extra out of their opponents.
