Injured Cam Rising struggles in return as No. 16 Utah loses at Arizona State

TEMPE, Ariz. — For the fourth time in four games, Utah quarterback Cam Rising went through early warmups Friday night with a glove on his hand, then emerged from the locker room for Utah’s final, padded warmups in full uniform.

Just as he’d done before, Rising was throwing the ball shortly before the No. 16 Utes took on Arizona State at Mountain America Stadium. Following a reported finger dislocation and laceration suffered in Utah’s Week 2 win over Baylor, all signs were pointing towards Rising’s return, but this scene had played out before, with Rising warming up before games against Utah State, Oklahoma State and Arizona.

Utah fans, for good reason, weren’t going to believe it until they witnessed Rising taking a snap in game.

The Utes’ veteran signal-caller came out for the coin toss on a hot night in the desert, just as he did for the previous three weeks, but when Utah’s offense took the field for the first series, it was finally Rising leading them.

Isaac Wilson had kept the team afloat, helping it to a 3-1 record in Rising’s absence, but for Utah to reach its goals this season, it needed its starting quarterback.

Rising was seemingly returning at the perfect time for the Utes, who had lost to Arizona two weeks ago and couldn’t afford another loss if they wanted to stay alive in the Big 12 title race.

When he ran out onto the field for the first offensive series, it was like a collective weight had been lifted from Utah’s team and fanbase.

That feeling lasted for less than two minutes of game time.

As Rising threw his second pass of the game, all 285 pounds of Arizona State defensive lineman Jeff Clark landed on the veteran quarterback’s right leg, with Rising’s ankle appearing to take the brunt of it.

Immediately, Rising grabbed his right leg, and then came up limping. Inconceivably, just three snaps into his return, there was a new ailment for the seventh-year senior.

With his right leg hurting, it was a struggle for Rising to plant that leg and step into throws, and the velocity that he had shown pregame all but vanished. Utah’s veteran quarterback was essentially limited to checkdowns and short throws for the majority of the game.

Whether it was the leg or his hand — or a combination of both — limiting him, it was clear that Rising was not at 100%, and he didn’t look anywhere close to the quarterback that led Utah to back-to-back Pac-12 championships.

“He got rolled up on. Really a lower leg injury that limited his mobility for the rest of the game, and of course, he’s wearing the glove so he can increase the grip, help the grip on the football. So, yeah, he’s banged up,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said.

In Utah’s 27-19 loss to Arizona State, Rising finished the night 16 of 37 for 209 yards. He threw three interceptions and his passer rating was 74.5.

“I played like (expletive). That’s about it,” Rising said in response to a question about if it was the hand or leg — or both — that was limiting him.

There were a couple of moments when the Rising of old flashed, like on a 35-yard strike to Dorian Singer near the end of the second quarter, but overall, the veteran quarterback never looked comfortable, and just flat missed the mark on plenty of passes.

“I just wasn’t playing well. I think the guys were doing a great job getting open and stuff, and I just wasn’t able to throw the ball and get it to ‘em accurate and (we) just weren’t able to move it because of that,” Rising said.

Trailing 13-9 at halftime, with the game very much in reach, it would have been a tough decision to pull a clearly less-than-healthy Rising and insert Wilson, but it may have turned the game around in a must-win contest for Utah.

Instead, Utah stuck with Rising for the rest of the game.

“No, he wanted to play and he felt very strongly that he wanted to stay in the game. He won a bunch of ball games for us. It was 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,” Whittingham said.

“And like I said, Cam has been terrific for us in the past and you can see the rust. It was three weeks off, four weeks, whatever it’s been, but he’s a heck of a quarterback and yeah, he’ll bounce back.”

So Utah forged on with Rising, and while he helped lead the team’s only touchdown drive of the night with a 23-yard pass to Brant Kuithe and a 17-yard pass to Singer before Micah Bernard eventually punched in a 6-yard run, he threw two interceptions in the second half and clearly couldn’t make the throws needed due to his injury.

Bernard, who had 129 yards and a score on the ground, plus 61 receiving yards on five catches, was pretty much the entirety of Utah’s offense at points Friday night.

Even though he was facing a Sun Devil defense that was loading the box and keying on him with a hobbled Rising at quarterback, he still managed to have several explosive plays.

“Micah Bernard had a terrific game for us, nearly 200 yards of total offense,” Whittingham said.

The red-zone issues that have plagued Utah all season spilled over on Friday night, with Utah scoring just one touchdown and two field goals on four trips to the red zone, with Rising throwing an interception on the other drive.

“As long as we have our woes in the red zone, we may not win another game this season until we get it fixed. That’s how important it is. It was not due to lack of time spent on it. Tripled the practice amount of time over the last two weeks, and again, very disappointing that we didn’t see better results,” Whittingham said.

Once again, a mix of play-calling and poor execution doomed the Utes in the most important part of the field, but Whittingham deflected any blame from offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig.

“Blame me. Put it all on me. I’ll take all the blame for the red zone, so that’s where the blame goes,” Whittingham said, saying later that the Utes got “outcoached, no doubt about it.”

Arizona State running back Cam Skattebo ran for 158 yards and two touchdowns, while quarterback Sam Leavitt threw for 154 yards, a touchdown and an interception.

Early on, the Utes had trouble containing Leavitt, who rushed for two key third- and fourth-down conversions. As the night wore on, however, it was clear that this was going to be Skattebo’s game, especially late in the contest, but the Utes couldn’t stop him when it mattered most.

“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 in finding those gaps,” Whittingham said.

Shortly after Bernard’s 6-yard score that put the Utes up 16-13 in the third quarter, Skattebo ripped off a 50-yard touchdown run that featured no less than three missed tackles, continuing a season-long theme.

Later, with the Utes down one with a little under three minutes left and needing a stop, Skattebo got loose for a 47-yard touchdown run that widened the Sun Devil lead to eight and sent the black-clad fans into a frenzy.

Utah put an emphasis on tackling over the last two weeks, even doing live tackling over the bye week, but you couldn’t tell from the Utes’ performance on Friday.

“Not good. Not good. It seemed like we missed 20 tackles tonight,” Whittingham said. “There probably won’t be that many, but we are typically a single-digit missed tackle team week in and week out. And we had 13 or 14 against Arizona. I bet we had more than that this game.”

Yes, Utah was missing some key players on defense — linebackers Karene Reid and Sione Fotu and starting defensive linemen Connor O’Toole and Keanu Tanuvasa all were out on Friday — but even taking that into consideration, the overall defensive performance was poor, both at the line of scrimmage and in coverage.

“Injuries are part of the game. I mean we had guys out, but the guys that are in there have got to get the job done,” Whittingham said.

Six games into the season, the Utes are 4-2 and hold a 1-2 Big 12 Conference record. While they’re not officially eliminated from the conference title race, Friday night’s loss felt like a death blow for everything the Utes set out to accomplish in the preseason, and possibly the end of the Cam Rising era at Utah.