Comments about ‘Utah Utes football: Mike Leach has some mateys on the Utah sideline’

Washington State is a make or break game for Utah's season and bowl chances.

Win, and the Utes build momentum for a tough road game at Washington.

Lose, and I can see Utah's season completely imploding with losses at Washington and to Arizona, and a win at Colorado, to finish the season at 4-8.

Both BYU and Utah have byes this week; this should be an easy game for the PAC 12 south leading Utes.

White should have a field day running through Washington State's porous D; then again, Utah's DB's could be as equally over matched defending the Cougar's NFL caliber wide receivers.

If only the recent editions of the BYU brand of Cougars could continue the excellent and deadly passing attack instilled by Doug Scovil long ago. I'll never forget the Holiday Bowl BYU vs Penn St that ended 52-50, a close PSU win but what a game. BYU had no real defense so they had to outs core good teams and Ty Detmer's passing for 520 yards was the most laid on a JoePa team ever. Why we now have this option soup, of a little of this and a little of that is an amalgam that just doesn't work well. Mike Leach isn't given the credit he deserves as a recruiter, he has commitments from kid who would never have thought Wazzo. His first team is terribly undermanned but lookout, the guy does a super job in every area, it's not just some magic system that works. Texas Tech will forever regret running the guy out of Lubbock.

I hope Utah doesn't sleep on WSU. After watching them against Stanford, they can't be taken lightly. I really question whether leach will be able to turn things around at WSU. There's a big difference between getting Texas's High School scraps, than Washingtons. He didn't have a lot to work with when he arrived. I will with hold judgement for a couple of years.

I like our chances of ending the season 8-5. If you remember after last year's terrible start, nothing could stop us except our own kicking game. With only mediocre teams left, if the team plays like we did last Saturday and like we did after the mid point last year, an 8-5 record or at worse 7-6 is likely.

Hopefully every player and coach knows that if we feed White the ball a win is guaranteed, as we've seen from our record when we do this. An 8-5 record is very respectable for only our second season as we still try to take that next step up.

With the exception of Northern Colorado, all games on Utah's schedule are potential losses including the Colorado game. Utah needs to approach every game as if it were make or break.