Utah’s Utes are in need of a change, of a rallying cry.
They don’t have one. They play like they don’t have one.
Defensive end Bradlee Anae said the team’s motivators and motivations are … what’s this, “silent”?
The hell with that.
That’s fine for the research library or chemistry lab, lousy for the locker room.
Cook up a good, loud one, they should.
Nothing crazy or corny or stupid. Nothing involving the word “quest.” Just something with meaning that will ring in their ears, rattle their pride, soak through their consciousness straight to their soul, something to remind them of what they can be, what they should be.
The ’69 Mets had “We believe!”
Alabama has “Roll Tide!”
TCU has “Fear the Frog!”
Arkansas has “Wooooooo. Pig. Sooie!”
Kansas has "Rock Chalk, Jayhawk!”
The Raiders? “Just Win, Baby!”
Utah needs something like that, preferably specific to this team, this year.
A call to action after a disappointing start.
“Losing games makes us mad,” Anae said. “We want to win. There was a lot of stuff building around our team at the beginning of the season. It’s time to live up to it.”
Preach, brother.
Serve those words up with a clenched fist and let the angry men devour them. I dunno, not enough? Sound a siren. Blow a bugle. Bang a drum. Pound an audible stake into the ground and pivot around it. Establish a boisterous cue, one that reflects who they are, what they believe in, one that hits the throttle hard.
After two straight conference losses, and staring a possible third defeat in the teeth on the road at Stanford this week, there are other things the Utes need, too. Like avoiding penalties that negatively change the outcomes of games. Like establishing an authentic offensive identity. Like having both the offense and the defense play at an elevated level, in tandem, instead of tag-teaming it as they did on Saturday against Washington State. The offense flourished in the first half while the defense gave up a thousand passing yards, and then in the second, the defense stood tall, holding the Cougars’ attack to just seven points — a doozy of an 89-yard scoring pass though it was, and the Utes’ offense scrounged up just a field goal over that same span.
“It goes both ways,” Anae said. “It’s frustrating when the [offense] doesn’t produce, and it’s frustrating for them when we don’t produce. It’s taboo on our team to blame the offense or to blame the defense, so nobody does.”
“Don’t blame the offense!”
Nope, wouldn’t cut it.
On Monday, Kyle Whittingham was asked about the mental and emotional state of his team, considering those high expectations the Utes had for themselves coming in. His response:
“This team has got a bunch of tough guys. We have high character guys who are tough guys who work hard. We’re still early in the season. We’re only four games in. Yeah, we’ve dropped a couple of conference games, Washington is a heckuva football team, Washington State is a good team, as well. Every team is good. It’s too early, in my estimation, to have any signs of [distress] show up. No matter what happens on Saturday, you come back on Monday and get ready to go, get ready for the next opponent. And my guess is, these guys will handle it very well.”
They’ll have to.
“A win against Stanford can be a big momentum change,” said Anae.
If the Utes manage that, maybe their recent difficulties would be wiped away. A more manageable game the following week at home against Arizona would await, followed by an always-tough matchup against USC at home, and then … a gift-wrapped roadie against hapless UCLA. Thereafter comes Arizona State, Oregon and Colorado.
It’s the curse of doing business in the Pac-12 — Utah almost always plays a team that could beat it — and the blessing — Utah can get better quickly with a couple of timely wins. The line between victory and defeat is so very thin. Even last Saturday, if one penalty wasn’t called by a ref who, as Whittingham put it, “thought he saw something,” and Britain Covey’s big punt return stood, the Utes may have worked this week with happy hearts instead of having to find the inner strength to bounce back.
“We’ve just got to look forward,” said Anae. “We’ve just got to win this next game. … We’ve got to win our fans back because everyone jumped the ship, but … the frustration is fueling us to get that next win.”
The most aggravating part, he added, is that “we know as a team that we can be really good, but we’ve just got to win games. It’s that simple. We’ve got to find a way to set ourselves apart. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters — winning.”
He followed that by imploring his teammates to “have the right mentality” and to “work and prepare harder“ and to “fire off and compete.”
Anae leaned in the right direction, conjuring two candidates for Utah’s proper rally cry:
“We’ve got to come out mad to win,” he said.
“Mad to win!”
Not bad.
And this one: “We’re raging for a win.”
“Rage to win!”
Whittingham said: “We have to try to be better.”
“We try harder!”
Avis used that one five decades back.
Still not good enough? Don’t like the notion?
Sound the siren. Blow the bugle. Bang the drum.
Listen to Anae: Win a game.
GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Jake Scott weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.
