Dennehy offers high praise for No. 15 Utah

LOGAN — With teams like Clemson and Alabama on his schedule, Utah State football coach Mick Dennehy paid the University of Utah quite a compliment when describing the Utes earlier in the week.

"Overall, as a football team in all three phases, maybe the best team we face all year long," Dennehy said.

Maybe? How about the best team?

The Utes are 2-0 and ranked 15th in the nation. They have beaten the Aggies six straight times and 14 of the last 16.

"They're climbing up the polls and I think rightfully so," Dennehy said. "There's not an area you can look at and feel like they're weak."

He's right.

The Utes haven't turned the ball over in two games. They're scoring 32 points a game and allowing just 13.5 points. The defense leads the Mountain West Conference and is 24th nationally.

That only makes Dennehy's job a lot harder.

The Aggies (1-1, 1-0) are coming off a 14-7 Sun Belt Conference victory over Idaho, but they turned the ball over five times — two of which came inside the Idaho 5-yard line.

"We're not going to be able to do that very often and survive and be able to come off the field victorious. This is a week certainly where that's the case," Dennehy said. "We're going to have to execute and put the ball away as well as we possibly can."

At the same time, the Aggies will have to contend with a Ute offense guided by Alex Smith and a defense that is stingy.

"Alex Smith is a tremendous football player. He's a very intelligent kid and he doesn't make mistakes," Dennehy said.

"They do such a good job of running him in situations that are really appropriate and running him enough to where you really have to pay attention to him. To have to defend the quarterback is a little bit of an unusual situation."

Also, the Utes have Marty Johnson, who is averaging 150 yards per game in two games against the Aggies.

Overall, the Utes are averaging 454 yards a game in total offense.

Working in the Aggies' favor: They are coming off their best defensive outing of the year (232 yards allowed to Idaho), and Utah coach Urban Meyer has taken note.

"They have a very good defense," he said. "They did a great job against us last year shutting us down."