#7 Utah Utes @ Florida Gators Preview & Predictions

Julian Martinez: [00:00:12] So a lot of pressure is riding on the Utah Utes early. Coming into the year, they're the number seven team in the rankings and they are going on the road in week one to Gainesville to face the SEC powerhouse or former powerhouse, I should say, in the Florida Gators. Florida has come off rough times. They've had some change at the head coaching position and the Billy Napier is filling in for Dan Mullens. They're a far cry from where they were during the Urban Meyer era. Meanwhile, a post Urban Meyer era for the Utah Utes. Actually, it's funny too. They both got the Urban Meyer ties between these two franchises. [00:00:48][35.4]
Kyle Ledbetter: [00:00:48] This is the battle of Urban Teams. Urban Meyer dismantled on his way out the door for Utah. [00:00:54][5.7]
Julian Martinez: [00:00:54] Obviously, Kyle Whittingham's doing a great job with that program and that's why so many people look at this Utah team and think they could be the team to represent the PAC 12 in that CFP. They currently are tied with USC as the favorites to win the conference. They got to do it early. This is going to be a statement game for Utah because regardless of how good Florida ends up being by the end of the year, they can't lose this game to a SEC team because that's going to just confirm what everyone thinks of PAC 12 University. [00:01:26][31.3]
Kyle Ledbetter: [00:01:27] Of course, and probably rightfully so for PAC 12 universities, especially PAC 12 schools that aren't USC and Oregon, who have these tremendous financial resources to compete in a conference that gets a television contract roughly about 22% the size of the SEC's TV contract. I should also apologize real quick. I, I forgot to acknowledge the 2016 Washington Huskies who did, in fact, make it to the College Football Playoff and lose, I believe, 24 to 7 to Alabama, which is, you know, about average based on four seeds that play Alabama. So I point to Washington. [00:02:04][37.8]
Julian Martinez: [00:02:05] We've seen a lot worse in the college football playoffs, that's for sure. [00:02:08][2.9]
Kyle Ledbetter: [00:02:09] You are correct. So apologies to Washington. They did make a college football playoff about six years ago. But in the eight year history, there have been two PAC 12 teams that make it. Utah is ranked preseason number seven. They would have to go either unbeaten or have one loss, probably an early season loss to in order to get to the college football playoff. And the line for this game being only three points between Utah and Florida suggests that this is a game where and I don't think of Florida as being a great team this year, they're in that same stage as like Texas last year where it's like you can kind of expect that they will lose a bunch of games because all of the players who were terrible last year have now transferred and this is the first year under a new coach. So I was surprised. The line is such Florida's obviously unranked, so it suggests to me that this is a game Florida can definitely win and a game that might be one of the big losses on Utah's schedule. Although if Utah wins, they have a nice, relatively clear path to winning the PAC 12. [00:03:13][64.0]
Julian Martinez: [00:03:14] This is a home game. This is a night game. Apparently, it's going to be hot. It's going to be human. And one thing you would say in Florida's favor, Anthony Richardson actually has surprisingly the 12th best odds to win the Heisman. So they at least have a quarterback that there's some buzz around and they haven't really had that for a few years in Gainesville. So at least Anthony Richardson and you have a dynamic quarterback in college football, you're going to win more games then you lose most of the time. And he's being talked about as a guy who's a potential first or second round prospect that that helps. But some of the big things for Richardson going into this game, going into the season for the Florida Gators, is he has to cut back on the turnovers. He was a bit of an inaccurate quarterback last year, threw for less than 60%. He also dealt with some injury concerns. Utah is a physical team. They're going to bring it to you. They're going to punch you in the mouth. So if you are Anthony Richardson, you just got to know that you're going to take some hits in this game, especially if you try and use some of your best attributes and be mobile and get out there. The wide receiving corps is not great for Florida. Their defensive line isn't particularly great either, and I think that's kind of like where Utah has the opportunity to exploit them. But I understand why this is a close line because one, people are going to underrate PAC 12 teams going into an SCC university to the factors I mentioned, the humidity, the climate. And three, again, I think Anthony Richardson has a little bit of an X Factor going into Vegas predictions for this game. Where do you kind of sit on it? Do you think that Utah is going to roll or are you kind of thinking upset over here? [00:04:51][97.2]
Kyle Ledbetter: [00:04:52] I don't know anything about Florida this year, so it's difficult to do analysis of Florida. But Utah is a very interesting school because 2021 Utah was a very heavy running football team. 2021 Utah was a. And I know when when you hear running, you think of boring offense like it's a connotation sometimes. This was a fun running offense last year. They were averaging close to seven yards a carry in that game where they beat Oregon in the regular season, they averaged 10.2 yards per carry before they put the backups in the game. And think about that. They put backups in the game because they were beating the shit out of Oregon so badly and they only threw the ball like 14 times in the entire game. So Utah wins the ball like that. [00:05:36][44.1]
Julian Martinez: [00:05:36] Let me ask you this. If Utah went undefeated, but their one loss was to what the Florida Gators, can they recover from it. [00:05:44][7.3]
Kyle Ledbetter: [00:05:45] For a college football playoff? Yes, because that would involve victories against, if I remember correctly, San Diego State, USC, Oregon and a PAC 12 championship game, which will which will be either Oregon again or whoever wins the PAC 12 North between, you know, Oregon State or Wasu or whoever it is. So I would say yes, for Oregon, for Utah can make the college football playoff. They might need a couple things to break their way. But any one loss conference champion is usually a shoo in for the college football playoff, barring a year in which there's like a really, really good team that doesn't win, like, say, Ohio State go or say Texas A&M goes undefeated but only loses to Alabama by seven points. So they don't play in the SEC title game, like if there's three teams or if there's two Big ten teams. But under most situations, conference champion with one loss will make it to the playoff. [00:06:41][56.7]
Julian Martinez: [00:06:42] So what do you think? [00:06:44][1.1]
Kyle Ledbetter: [00:06:44] I am going to go with Utah all the way. I don't know if Utah does this or not, but I will take Utah to win the game and cover the point spread. I think they are going to win, I would say, rather handily, but I assume this will be a low scoring game, although Utah's confusing sometimes. Utah was a low scoring team early in the year last year, and then they averaged like 38 points a game to end the season. So I assume this will be somewhere in like the 27 to like 17 range or something like that, you know, like an NFL type of score. It'll be it'll be a classic NFL type score. [00:07:18][33.3]
Julian Martinez: [00:07:19] And you know what, Kyle? Oh. All right. I'm sorry, Phil. This is a nice little upset pick or an upset spot. PAC 12 University traveling all the way to SEC Country Night Game. There's just a lot of things to kind of like if you buy into an upset narrative here. Plus, historically, Kyle Whittingham teams haven't performed particularly well at this early parts of the season. So coming into week one, you kind of wonder what they're going to look like. And Billy Napier, I think, is going to add a little bit of juice to this team. Certainly, I think that he can manage to get the most out of his quarterback, and I think that that's going to be enough to kind of least shocking all the Utah Utes in week one. But that's just my opinion. So I'm going to go a bit contrarian here. You're going with the favorites. It's all good. What do you think's on Buster's drop below when the comments? Are you riding with Utah? Are you going with the Gators? Go ahead and let us know. We've got like on this video. Go ahead and check out all our social media from juju talks sports to Kyle Ledbetter. Stay safe, happy, healthy. We will see you next time. [00:07:19][0.0]
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