NCAA Football Handicapping and Betting: Utah Makes it Look Easy against Oregon

by Trevor Whenham - 9/29/2015

The Utah Utes are the toast of the college football world. That's something you haven't been able to say since the 2008 season when they beat up on Alabama in the Sugar Bowl to finish 13-0. They earned their place in the hearts and minds of college football fans this time around with a shockingly ruthless massacre of the Oregon Ducks. In Eugene, no less. For years now we have thought of Oregon as a behemoth - an offensive superpower that couldn't be tamed. We expected them to beat teams - ones like Utah - by scores of 62-20. We never expected that they would fall from grace so fast and would be losing by such a score. Truly bizarre.

We're not focusing on the plight of the Ducks, though. What we want to look at today is Utah - how they are doing what they are doing, what it all means for bettors, and how to evaluate them going forward. They are a perfect 4-0 and 3-1 ATS. The one spread they didn't cover was still more than solid - they were favored by 11.5 against Utah State and won by 10. So, what to think about this team...

The good

Destruction of Oregon: Teams don't go into the home stadiums of Top 15 programs with long histories of success and dozens of blue chip players and beat them by six touchdowns. It just doesn't happen. A win of more than 40 points can't be a fluke, either. Utah played better than the Ducks. Obviously. Most significantly, though, they out-planned and out-prepared the Ducks. From almost the beginning of the game the Ducks didn't know what was going on, and they didn't know what they could do to stop it. It was as impressive a statement as any team has made this year.

Michigan win keeps looking better: The second and third opponents for the Utes weren't particularly impressive - Utah State and Fresno State are both a number of steps below where the Utes are. The first game is more interesting, though. At the time the storylines of note around the Michigan game were that it was the first game of Jim Harbaugh era and that it was a rare nationally-televised night game at Utah. The Utes won the game, but the primary reason was that they made fewer mistakes in what was a pretty sloppy game. Watching that game you would think that the Wolverines had a long road to travel to respectability. They have gotten dramatically better since, though, capping it with a 31-0 massacred of Utah's ranked rival from BYU. Suddenly Michigan looks like a force in the Big Ten, and Utah looks better for beating them.

Big-game hunters: This team has a habit of getting up for big games. Last year they had statement wins against both eighth-ranked UCLA in L.A. and Top 20 USC at home. In 2013 they stunned then-No. 5 Stanford. In both seasons they weren't as talented or experienced as they are now, but they got fired up for games that mattered most. This Oregon performance was just a more convincing example of what they have been doing for a couple of years now.

The bad

Oregon's issues: Beating Oregon in Eugene will always be impressive. When you look at it, though, Oregon was trading on their reputation more than usual for their ranking going into this game. The fact of that matter is that they were a troubled team. They didn't have a quarterback they trusted, and that ended up being a big story in this game. Statistics told the whole story on the other side of the ball - the Ducks were 105th in the country in total defense before the Utah game. This team was easy to exploit, and the Utes were a team well positioned to exploit them. In other words, beating Oregon - even this badly - isn't what it was in recent years.

Haven't carried momentum in the past: The team has had their big wins, but they haven't been able to carry them forward in the past. In 2013 they followed up the win over Stanford with five straight losses. Last year after beating USC they dropped three of four, and two of the losses were by very wide margins. They are a better team, but they also need to prove to be a much tougher team mentally or things are not going to end nearly as well as they hope they will.

Schedule stays tough: They have survived what was, on paper at the start of the season, the toughest game of their season. Things certainly don't get easier from here, though. Next up is Cal - a surprising team with a really dangerous offense. They have trips to USC, Washington and Arizona - all flawed teams that are tough to play against. They also host an Arizona State team that is better than they have been playing and a UCLA team that is probably the best in the Pac-12 even with more injured players on defense than healthy ones.

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