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September 4, 2025 • 13 mins
Taking a deep statistical dive into Utah's win over UCLA.
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:16):
What is up everybody? Welcome to statistically speaking, a ute
Nation podcast. My name is Ivan, otherwise known as ute
fan Ivan. I am honored to be joined today by
my friends Matt, Joe and Dustin and for our first
section today, we're gonna be talking about the u c
l A game this last Saturday. Why don't we start

(00:40):
with Joe real quick, because you're gonna be You and
I are both going to be catching a lot of
You know, Joe and I were both a little too
confident in u c l A last week. I think,
so don't Why don't we start there and then Dustin
and Matt can get in with the roast session they
surely have ready for us and looking forward to it.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
You can take our victory.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
I gotta come put the afterburners on for sure. I
thought this was gonna be a tight game with a
with a home field advantage for the u c l
A Bruins, and it turned out not to be a
tight game at all.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
It was.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
It was a snoozer from the beginning. You dominated wired wire,
very very impressive performance. I love to look at what
I call non dependent rate stats, so stats that it
doesn't matter about the situation that the teams. And so
an example of a dependent rate stat would be like
third down efficiency, Right, a third down efficient team. A

(01:40):
lot of times they're really good on first down or
second downs, and that's why they're they're good at third conversions.
So these are the basic stats. This is yards per pass,
yards per rush. You're really really simple stats, and that's
what I look to. I try to ignore things like turnovers,
large plays, all those swing things. And when you do
that and you take all of that extra stuff away,

(02:02):
you saw an extremely dominant performance from the Utah more
than double their opponent's total yards yards per play, was
off the charge yards for past with a big, big
advantage yards per rush over five yards per carry against
the legitimate team and a lot of legitimate players.

Speaker 4 (02:17):
And I just couldn't have been more wrong.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
I couldn't have been.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
More wrong about about this team and how ready they
were to play. And I think I was pretty wrong
about UCLA too, because because they didn't look like they
ever got off the bus.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
I'll just say this three words. Utah offensive line. Oh
my heavens, I tweeted during the game. There were two
moments that were just incredible, and one of them I said,
that just made me pregnant. I literally, I literally, It's

(02:59):
it's been so long since I've watched Utah football and
felt that felt just ecstatic.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
You know what I mean. So so yeah, I mean yeah.
We we talked about it last week.

Speaker 5 (03:21):
The offensive line is is definitely the strength of this team.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Uh. I mentioned I was nervous about Damn Pire. He
looked really good.

Speaker 5 (03:29):
There are some things that he needs to clean up,
but certainly, you know, that's an A plus performance out
of him. But Utah had more rushing yards than UCLA
had total yards.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Kyle's gonna want to run the ball all year.

Speaker 5 (03:43):
Behind that offensive line, and that called a great game
he got really gave them the opportunity to to put
put Utah in a position to be successful with the
run game. And when the run game wasn't working great, uh.
They were super successful in the passing game, both short
and long. There's some good long passes and just looked

(04:05):
really good in all facets on the offensive side. On
the defense, there are a couple of scary moments, some miscoverages,
some open receivers that Nico just completely overthrew. So I'm
glad Nico was what that thought he was because he
wasn't very good.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
It wasn't very good.

Speaker 5 (04:25):
Fifty percent completion, a turnover, over, throwing a lot of
guys that were open. But Utah's defense got a ton
of pressure on him, which helped. So my big concern
on the defensive side was the defensive line, and they
looked really good they did.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
I regret being as confident in Nico as I was.
I definitely thought that he was going to come out.
I still think there were moments where he ran the
ball or scrambled out of the pocket really well. He's
definitely got that athleticism. In fact, I would say I
still think that he has a good chance of being

(05:00):
not like an incredible, you know, quarterback this year, but
I definitely think with some adjustments and maybe just getting
more I mean, he didn't practice in spring with him,
I definitely think he still could be good. He just
needs to get his accuracy down and he'll be something
special in my opinion.

Speaker 6 (05:17):
But I think, I think, and he won't figure that
out until he can figure out how to handle pressure.
And you can see that in this game, and uh,
that's too bad. But I gotta tell you my favorite
stat the number eighty eight percent. Anybody know what that
goes to.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
An's completion percentage?

Speaker 6 (05:37):
Yes, and there was two eighty eight percent things. Dampier
was very accurate because he was taking safe passes, good
short passes. But the other eighty eight percent that I
love it was third down conversion. So those two things,
because Utah was so bad on third downs last season
and now that's not going to continue. They're not going

(05:59):
to you know, they're not gonna be eighty eight percent,
but they could be in the forties. And the reason
why is there's so many weapons and you don't know
who's gonna get the ball. And I love two things.
I love how Devin Dampier looks for the hole and
he just climbs down in there and he just gets
those yards. And way Sean Parker does the same thing.
He's patient, but not to a fault. He's patient, sees

(06:22):
the hole and boom goes right through the hole. And
those things. It's so hard to stop a team on
third down. And and and then when you have other
guys like Smith Snowden and Landerbarton, defensive guys that are
just strong and powerful, it's gonna be really hard to
stop Utah. From converting a third down this season. I
don't I don't care what team you are. That's just
tough to stop on third and short.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
Not if this makes sense to me, Sorry, Joe, give
me one second. All I've heard in the offseason is
Devin dam Pierre's a Mountain West quarterback. He's not gonna
adjust to you know, he can't. You know, he's not
gonna be able to run as much. He's not gonna
twelve and twelve, twelve and twelve, twelve and twelve. It's

(07:05):
all I heard all off season, and seeing this was
so vindicating for me because I'm like, there he is.
Give him the tools he needs, and look what he
can do, and it's only going to get better.

Speaker 6 (07:18):
In my opinion, the stars aligned though, right. He got
to keep his offensive coordinator. We talked about this last week.
Got to keep his offensive coordinator. Got one of the
best offensive lines in the country and has weapons around him,
and the youth's coaching staff has found other guys to
do that, and that's why they had to bring some over.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
You could see that.

Speaker 7 (07:36):
This is this is the picture of a Utah pass
that gave me the offenses comming.

Speaker 4 (07:42):
I'm reminded of this stat line looks.

Speaker 8 (07:46):
A lot and then not comparing the quarterbacks like I
don't have the caliberb of film review to do that anyway,
but the stat line reminds me of a Tyler Hugly
type performance with the youths for their app flip best
is it is a.

Speaker 4 (08:01):
Very very high efficiency performance.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
So the kinds of numbers somebody like me loves is,
you know, yards per pass completion percentage, how many wasted
plays did you have when you when you put the
ball in the quarterback's hands, how often does that play
go nowhere? And there were only four times that Devin
dan Pier wasn't able to do something with the.

Speaker 4 (08:26):
Ball and move that ball forward.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
And that's just an exceptional kind of performance. Given that
Utah is always going to base their performance around moving
the line and creating space, that the passing game is
always going to be the constraint for the defense. It's
always going to be the pressure that gets put on
them so that they can't just crowd upfront and I

(08:48):
will allow the running game to have just a little
bit of space and that's all that they need. That's
sort of the philosophy behind the top football and when
you see this kind of.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Performance with.

Speaker 4 (08:58):
Low usage, less than thirty attempts, but tons of tons
of completions at very high.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Per pass yardage, that's that's just a perfect recipe. And
sometimes it can frustrate Utah fans, I think because you
see the quarterback performing really well, but you don't you
don't often hear about it in a national sense or
seeing on the ESPN because it's a little bit dink
and dug and the total stats, you know, it's too touchdown,

(09:26):
it's two hundred and six yard that's not going to
be on ESPN Top ten, but it's still an exceptional
performance and gives the team exactly what they need to
just have their way and just be completely control.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Did you guys see who who interviewed Devin today? By
the way, it was the Heisman.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, he was something. He was like number six on
a Heisman odds list, which you can research. You can
do the stats on winning the Heisman, and I will,
I will spoil all youth fans.

Speaker 4 (10:00):
There's no you who's going to win the Heisman.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
You have to play for a top fourteen, you have
to score forty plus touchdowns, and that's just not how
the utes are built, but it's awesome to see his
name and wise so cool.

Speaker 5 (10:15):
I will say the the Joe, You're one hundred percent right.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Utah players.

Speaker 5 (10:22):
Utah quarterbacks don't oftentimes get a bunch of ESPN talk,
a bunch of ESPN promotion, because it's a lot of
you know, seven yard passes, a lot of yards after
catch them.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
Here's a different situation here.

Speaker 5 (10:36):
I've heard multiple ESPN talking hens compare him to Kyler Murray.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
I've heard it. I've heard it twice, lovely, I've recently
been wrong.

Speaker 4 (10:45):
So I think we're kind of done that. I can't
stop it before we say that. You just I mean,
you nailed this.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
You you called this game, you saw it then, and uh,
we're you know, we're not worried.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
I think even Matt gage Ucla too much credit.

Speaker 6 (11:07):
Did I gave them thirteen? I said thirty eight thirteen?
And you know, I probably spent way too much time
researching UCLA. I mean now still like, oh, I know
all this stuff, but it doesn't matter anymore. I don't
need to know. But it was really more just I
knew UCLA.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Wasn't that good of a team.

Speaker 6 (11:26):
That was the biggest factor so I'm still tempering my expectations.
Like when Utah was ranked twenty five, I thought, okay,
that's that's fair enough, because we still don't really know.
I personally, I put out rankings and I put them
at number nine, and that's just because I don't I
don't see how a team's gonna be able to stop
the weapons, just like I was talking about earlier. And

(11:47):
I think UCLA is a bad team, but I don't
think they're that bad. And so when I was looking
at teams like Indiana they got like a ten point win.
Was it over old dominion or something, I'm like, how
in the world are they even in the top twenty five?
You know, they were ugly even South Carolina's wins. So
so I think Utah from what they showed, they look
like a top ten team to me. But I might

(12:08):
be a little uh, you know, kool aid goggles or
whatever you want to call them.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
I think they're a little hesitant because of last season.
I think you know that the ESPN.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
You just had a lot more to learn about UCLA
and u c l A goes on and wins you know,
seven or eight games and has a strong offense and
and does good things, They'll wait, it will.

Speaker 7 (12:28):
Start to look better, and then those efficiency numbers will
all look really good. But on the other hand, if
UCLA continues to surrender thirty plus points to everybody, it's
not gonna look that special anymore.

Speaker 4 (12:40):
ABI wise, that's the ESPN's advanced. So that's Utah's right
about there that they're they're at.

Speaker 7 (12:46):
The twenties right now, which feels feels right to me.
There's gonna always be a huge gap from the top
five or so, and that, like next group has been
more of a bunch. Uh, just a great just a
great heck of an opening weekend for the Utes and
a little bit of a layup here coming this week.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
Which all right, you guys, that's gonna end it talking
about the u c l A game. Don't miss our
other video that we're gonna put out where we discuss
the upcoming cal Pauly Utah matchup in Salt Lake City.
Make sure you like and subscribe.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
This is statistically speaking, a Ute Nation podcast. We'll see
you next time.
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