'Separation Saturday' Is The Theme For Utah's Final Scrimmage
When Utah takes the field on Nov. 7 against Arizona in its season-opener, the coaches and players can look back at what happened two weeks prior on that same field as evidence of who's making a difference on the field.
Utah will be at Rice-Eccles Stadium on Saturday for its final scrimmage of fall camp. And the theme of the scrimmage will be "separation" — which is exactly what the Utes coaching staff will be looking for among a number of things.
We want to be cleaner than last week,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said on Friday. “But we just have to get better and that’s really across the board. There’s no one specific area of concern. We just need to get better as a whole football team. Execute better on offense. Tackle better on defense. Just do everything, all the basics better than what we saw last week.”
Some of the main position battles that are still underway have come at the quarterback, running back and secondary spots.
Devin Brumfield, Utah running back
Rather than having a running back by committee approach, Whittingham would prefer to have one bell cow and then two others to spell him from time to time. Right now, it appears that Devon Brumfield and Jordan Wilmore are battling it out for the No. 1 spot, but don't count out true freshman Ty Jordan, who has thrived in camp thus far.
The secondary must replace all five starters from last season, and Whittingham has said he wants at least 8 guys he can count on. The only safe picks to start appear to be R.J. Hubert at safety and JaTravis Broughton at cornerback. But true freshman Clark Phillips at cornerback and Nate Ritchie at safety are pushing the envelope and with a good Saturday, cold find themselves starting the season opener.
Clark Phillips III, Utah cornerback
Courtesy of Utah Athletics
The quarterback battle is down to two quarterbacks, although Whittingham hasn't specified which two of Drew Lisk, Jake Bentley and Cam Rising are still left in the competition.
Saturday's competition will go a long way into determining who wins the job with the decision potentially coming at the end fo the scrimmage.
“But if we have two really good ones then we’ll have a tough decision to make. I don’t see a platoon situation,” Whittingham said. “And so we’re just going to see how it plays out. We’ve still got, what, 12 more practices before we play or something like that. So we’ve got some opportunity. But we’ve got to get it down to one and that will most likely be in place Monday next week.“
If we feel we need a few more days to look at them both on equal footing then we’ll do that. But I would say no later than Wednesday or Thursday, that would be the drop dead time when we need to get it completely finalized and then go from there.”
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