Utah Utes College Football Pregame Quote, 11/10/2020

On getting to watch UCLA play against Colorado this past weekend:

There were a lot of points put up in the game. Their quarterback is a tremendous athlete and he has skill all around him. Their slot receiver is very good. Defensively they had a tough time stopping Colorado, but they have good athletes and we have our work cut out for us.

On if he sees it as a benefit to have current film on UCLA now where they don’t have current film of Utah:

There are arguments on both sides. Typically, the old adage is that you make your most improvement between game one and two, so they’ve got that on their side. As far as us, we’ve got a full game tape to watch, study and analyze from this year where they have nothing on us this year. Who knows. There are advantages both ways depending on how you look at it.

On his contract extension:

I think for recruits, knowing that the staff and the program is stable and has the backing of the university. Whether I finish out the contract or not is secondary to the fact that the recruits understand how confident our administration is in what we are doing. That really is what that is, a vote of confidence and that is good for recruits.

On how confident he feels to get the game in on Saturday:

We are trying and we hope to. Every day is different. We could get a few more positives this week and that could knock us out for this weekend, so it is a day-to-day thing. We are doing our best to play the game, but if we lose many more guys this week, it may be a situation where we are not able to. So, we are taking it day-by-day and we will see what happens.

On if they have enough guys currently to play the game:

Barely, we are right on that borderline. The difference is this week we have extra time to try and prepare some guys that have been getting zero reps because of their status on the depth chart. Last Friday, we were under the threshold as well but we also didn’t have the time to try and get some of the walk-ons up to speed. It was just an impossible situation. At least this week, even though we don’t have a lot of guys at our disposal, we have time to get guys trained up as best we can.

On possibly getting players back out of quarantine this week to boost numbers:

We hope, but that is an ongoing discussion with medical staff, county medical people both here and in Southern California because we are going to get on a plane and go down to their turf. They’ve got certain requirements that may be a little different than ours. So that is trying to be ironed out right now to know exactly what the outcome is going to be. We are hoping to get a few more, but that is not known at this time.