Cam Rising's return from injury didn't go as planned. The senior quarterback only completed 16 out of 37 passes for 209 yards with no touchdowns. Most significantly, he threw three interceptions, two of which halted crucial drives and eliminated any hope of a comeback win.
After the game, Coach Kyle Whittingham spoke to the media about Cam and the team’s performance tonight. Here’s the transcript from Utah’s Sports Information.
Intro
Kyle: Very similar conversation to what we had after the Arizona game, got out-rushed, we were awful in the red zone, lost the turnover margin and missed a bunch of tackles. So unfortunately and very disappointingly, it's the same storyline and as long as we have our holes in the red zone, we may not win another game this season until we get it fixed. That's just how important it is. It was not due to lack of time spent on it. We tripled the amount of practice time over the last two weeks and again, very disappointing that we didn't see better results. You cannot win football games rarely if ever with a bunch of field goals. You just can't, it just doesn't work. We had four field goals and that's as negative as it is a positive because you can't win kicking field goals as a general rule. So we've got our work cut out for us. We're a good football team, I firmly believe that. But again, shame on us for having the same storyline two games in a row. Give them credit, the tailback was tremendous, Skattebo, well over 150-plus yards. Micah Bernard had a terrific game for us, nearly 200 yards of total offense. So there were some positives but again, it goes back to the same dialogue I had after the Arizona game and the same problems and the same things that we've got to address and work on even more. That's where we're at.
On if there was any conversation sitting Cameron Rising at halftime due to injury
Kyle: No, he wanted to play and he felt very strongly that he wanted to stay in the game and he's won a bunch of ball games for us. It's very apparent that he's not at 100% but it's a coaching decision to decide who gives you the best chance to win the game and that's who you put in there. Like I said, Cam (Rising) has been terrific for us in the past and you could see the rust, it was three weeks off, four weeks, whatever it's been. But he's a heck of a quarterback and he'll bounce back.
On why they weren't able to stop the run
Kyle: We ran some zone pressures and some of our slant guys got cut off and when that happens, there's dead gaps and that back is as good as any back that we faced finding those gaps. Injuries are part of the game and we had guys out, but the guys that are in there have got to get the job done and that was it. The majority of those runs that popped were on the zone pressures, not all of them, but the majority. We either lost the edge or lost an interior gap by getting cut off.
On tackling efforts tonight
Kyle: Not good, not good. It seemed like we missed 20 tackles tonight. There probably won't be that many, but we are typically a single digit miss tackle team week in and week out. We had 13 or 14 against Arizona, I bet we had more than that this game. We worked on tackling in the bye week. We had full gear practices the week we didn't have a game and worked on tackling, worked on red zone. It's not for lack of work, it's not for lack of work.
Where do they go from here?
Kyle: Well, you certainly lean on your leadership, your seniors and captains. We got to be better as coaches. We got outcoached tonight, no doubt about it. It's very similar to what I said two weeks ago, we got to find out each and every one of us on what we can do to be better as coaches, as players. How we can improve. We know our deficiencies, I guess that's a positive, but we haven't seemed to be able to get them rectified.
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