Utah Football: 3 keys to victory vs. Washington State in Week 5

Utah football hosts the Washington State Cougars at Rice-Eccles Stadium Saturday evening. Here are three keys to a Cougar win.

The Utah Utes hope their redemption tour begins this weekend at home when they host the Washington State Cougars in Salt Lake City. The Utes do limp into this game with some key injuries.

Both Tyler Huntley and Zack Moss were banged up after the USC game, but Huntley expects to play while Moss is still questionable. The Utes played as poorly has they have in a long time. They were undisciplined in the trenches and secondary while killing key drives with penalties.

The Washington State Cougars hope not to waste another brilliant quarterback performance.

Imagine reading this headline, “Starting quarterback throws nine TD passes in losing effort.” Sounds insane, but that’s exactly what happened last Saturday night when Cougars starting quarterback Anthony Gordon threw for 570 yards and 9 touchdowns in a 63-67 loss to the UCLA Bruins.

Will this game be as wild? Can the Utes find redemption at home? Will the Cougars find a defense? Here are three keys for the Utes to hold serve at home.

3. Ground and pound

Sometimes a good offense is the best defense. Mike Leach has the Air-Raid humming on all cylinders so far this early season. The best way for the Utes to defend the Cougar offense is to make sure they aren’t on the field enough to  put up a lot of points. Even if Zack Moss doesn’t play, the Utes should be able to get what they want in the run game.

Without Moss, the Utes back up running backs gained 130 yards of total offense, and the Utes ran for 227 yards as a team against USC.

They threw the kitchen sink at USC via the run. They ran jet sweeps, wide receiver traps and got the ball to their perimeter speed anyway they could. The one thing they don’t want is Tyler Huntley running 18 times in this game.