UTAH -1 2.2% PLAY
This would be a larger play, but my one hesitation is that Utah was at USC last week pulling off the upset, then to Texas for the funeral of another player death. However, these things tend to bond the team, and they have everything to play for in the PAC 12 being undefeated at this moment.
Both of these teams had similar results against BYU losing on the road. Arizona State has yet to prove that they can win on the road in a hostile environment. They’re just 5-8 on the road under Herman Edwards. They won at UCLA in impressive fashion, but UCLA does not really have an intimidating environment to be honest. Utah will be loud, and it will be colder (40’s) than Arizona State is used to. Utah also has a much better defense than UCLA as they can stop the run and stop the pass, where UCLA has been good vs. the run, but they rank 74th in qb rating, 106th in sack %, and 101st in epa pass defense. Utah ranks 33rd in epa pass defense, 45 in epa run defense, and they have earned those ratings coming against an average opponent offense ranking 38.5. Arizona State has a good defense too, ranking 17th, but that has come against an average opponent offense ranking 71.6.
Arizona State did play a defense close to Utah on the road and that was their loss at BYU where they put up only 17 points. Utah did face an offense as good as Arizona State and held USC, a TD under their season average held them to under 100 yards rushing, and gave up a lot of passing yards to Slovis, but held them to 2-4 TD’s in the red zone. I would argue that USC’s offense is a little better and matches up to the weaknesses of UTAH, and came away very impressed with Utah’s road win last week. USC has faced tougher schedule of defenses than Arizona State.
Lastly, Utah was missing something earlier in the season, which is why they lost a couple of games, but it seems to me that since Brewer left the team and Cameron Rising took over at QB things have been different. Rising seems to be at rue leader that the players rally around, and I think he could do enough here to give Arizona State some issues. The season long numbers on Utah are factoring when Brewer was QB, and the offense has gotten better under Rising thus in my opinion giving us some value on Utah.
