Kyle Whittingham Had His First Bad Year and I’m Not Worried

Kyle Whittingham has been the head coach at Utah for 20 years. Twenty years. In an era where coaches get fired after two losing seasons, Whittingham has been running the same program since 2005.

In those twenty years, he’s had exactly one losing season. This one. 5-7.

You know what I think about that? Good for him. He earned the right to have a bad year.

Some people are going to panic. “Utah is falling apart!” “Whittingham has lost it!” “The Big 12 exposed them!”

Those people are dumb.

Whittingham built Utah from a mid-major curiosity into a legitimate Power Five program. Two Pac-12 championships. Multiple New Year’s Six bowls. A factory for NFL defensive players. He did all of that in Salt Lake City, which is not exactly a recruiting hotbed.

One bad year doesn’t erase twenty years of excellence.

Here’s what went wrong this season: Cam Rising’s knee never recovered. He was supposed to be the guy. The veteran quarterback who would lead them through the Big 12 transition. Instead, he looked like a shell of himself. Limited mobility. Hesitant in the pocket. The injury killed his career trajectory, and Utah’s season went down with it.

Jake’s note: The Rising injury was brutal. You could see it wasn’t the same guy. He was playing scared, which is understandable when your knee already exploded once. But Utah’s offense runs through the quarterback, and when the quarterback isn’t right, nothing works.

The offensive line had issues too. The running game wasn’t as physical as Utah usually is. The identity — that tough, ground-and-pound, win-the-line-of-scrimmage identity — wasn’t there consistently.

But the culture is still intact. The coaching staff is still excellent. The recruiting pipeline is still working. This was a down year, not a collapse.

Whittingham will fix it. He’s earned the benefit of the doubt. If Utah is 5-7 again next year, maybe we talk. But I expect a bounce back to 8-4 or better. That’s who Utah is.

— Mike