Utah strong safety Chase Hansen, a hard-hitting 6-foot-3, 220-pound junior, who went into the offseason as the lone returning starter in a five-man Utes secondary (two cornerbacks and a nickleback along with two safeties), participated in practice this week, the first time this preseason he’s been on the field.
Hansen had been sidelined with an unspecified injury, and spent much of camp rehabbing. Utes coach Kyle Whittingham said the plan is still to have Hansen ready for the season opener against North Dakota on Aug. 31.
“Chase is practicing, and that’s good,” Whittingham said. “We projected that last week. We thought that Monday would be the day that he’d be back. Lo [Falemaka] has been back for several days. We hope to get a couple more back before we line up and play in nine days.”
Last year in his first full season on defense, Hansen led the Utes in tackles and started all 13 games, including one at linebacker. He ranked second in the Pac-12 and tied for second nationally in fumble recoveries (four), intercepted three passes and scored touchdowns on both an interception return against Arizona State and fumble recovery against Oregon.
With Hansen out, junior college transfer Corrion Ballard had moved to strong safety with the first-team defense and Philip Afia slotted into free safety. Ballard is expected to move back to free safety when Hansen is ready to reclaim his starting spot at strong safety.
“[Hansen looked] good with what limited reps he had,” Whittingham said. “He’s not going to do anything too competitive right now. It’s more footwork drills, individual stuff, but he looks good.”
AP recognizes Wishnowsky
Utah junior punter Mitch Wishnowsky, the winner of last year’s Ray Guy Award as the nation’s best punter, landed on the Associated Press Preseason All-American First Team. The AP released the team, chosen by the votes of 51 members of the AP Top 25 media panel, on Tuesday.
Wishnowsky, a native of Perth, Australia, ranked first in NCAA Div. I in net punting (44.90) and second in punt average (48.0) and also led the country in punts of 50 yards or more (28) as well as punts inside the 20-yard line (34).
For starters
The Denver Broncos announced on Monday that former Utes offensive lineman Garett Bolles, a 6-foot-5, 300-pounder from Lehi, had been named the starting left tackle in his rookie season in the NFL. Bolles, the 20th pick in this spring’s NFL Draft, started 13 games at left tackle for the Utes in 2016 and earned All-Pac-12 honors. He was part of a program-record eight Utes selected in this past year’s draft.
Elsewhere, former Utah safety Jordan Fogal goes into this season as the starting free safety for Colorado State. Fogal, who came to Colorado State as a graduate transfer, was listed atop the depth chart going into this weekend’s season opener against Oregon State. Fogal spent the 2015 and 2016 seasons in the Utah program after spending two years at the College of San Mateo. He sat out the 2014 season at San Mateo after tearing his ACL before the first game.
Oh happy day
The Utes’ fan base is the happiest in the state of Utah and the 32nd happiest out of 128 FBS teams, according to ESPN’s “Fan Happiness Index”posted on ESPN.com. Utah has the 32nd happiest fans in the country, followed by BYU at No. 51 and Utah State at No. 102 out of 128 FBS teams.
The rankings were based on six categories: program power (strength of records from 2012-16 and current Football Power Index (FPI), rivalry dominance (five-year comparison of wins above expectation and FPI), coaching stability (based on Phil Steele’s stability rankings), recruiting trend (percentage of five-star, four-star and three-star recruits in current class), revenue growth (2016 compared to 2012-15) and Twitter buzz (percentage of positive tweets) on a scale from 1 to 100.
