Utah Utes vs San Jose State Football Recap

The hapless San Jose State Spartans, having already achieved half of their 2009 victory total in a 16-11 win over Southern Utah, headed into Salt Lake City in high spirits.

They didn’t leave with the same lofty feeling, to be sure. 

At the very least, one could say that San Jose began this game with a mood as upbeat as one could reasonably expect for a group that had one win heading to the home ballyard of an undefeated, nationally-ranked team sporting a 20-game home winning streak. This statement doesn’t even account for the fact that the Spartans have the third most difficult schedule in the nation.

It wasn’t the right formula for one of the WAC’s lower-tier teams on Saturday.

One couldn’t help but feel for San Jose State as the Utah Utes rang up 49 consecutive points en route to a 56-3 victory. And amazingly for the boys from Silicon Valley, it just gets more daunting as 2010 unfolds. Looking forward, the Spartans are scheduled to play both Nevada and Boise State within the next three weeks. 

> Find a great selection of Utah Utes apparel & merchandise online as well as the MWC Football Scoreboard!

The offensive performance was pretty much textbook Utah football to this point in the season, with running backs Eddie Wide and Matt Asiata splitting the workload, while five others made their contribution to the 40-carry workload. 

It may just be the competition, but the Utes bucked a few rather worrying trends in this game: Utah didn’t commit any turnovers, had only 1 penalty for 5 yards, and finally controlled the ball for longer than its opponent. Teams can only tempt fate so many times before bad habits like these rear their ugly heads, so it must have been heartening for the Utah players and coaches to finally make the necessary corrections and head in the right direction.

Other than correcting mistakes that could cost Utah a win against better competition and helping Wynn to shake the rust off, the Utes’ third main goal was to deliver as pronounced a win as possible. While it’s not necessarily a way to make friends, rolling up a huge score is a required component of potentially being a second “BCS Buster” from the Mountain West Conference. If Utah can beat TCU later in the season, it needs to spank other opponents in order to challenge Boise State for non-AQ supremacy in college football. The further TCU and Utah make it through their schedules without a loss, the larger their November 6 showdown will be in Salt Lake City. 

First things first, however: One week at a time, Utah needs to take care of the task at hand – that means making adjustments and crushing inferior competition… just as it did against San Jose State.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer