Utah v USC: Can We Win?

Oct 19, 2013; Tucson, AZ, USA; Utah Utes quarterback Adam Schulz (12) is tackled by Arizona Wildcats free safety Jourdon Grandon (26) during the fourth quarter at Arizona Stadium. Arizona beat Utah 35-44. Mandatory Credit: Casey Sapio-USA TODAY Sports

First a little side note, for all your Trojan needs, check out Reign of Troy, our sister site here at Fansided.  Although forgive them if most of their time is spent trying to understand how what they did was so much worse than Miami or worse than institutional enabling of child rape.

Now on to the Utes and the question of the the week is, well there are two questions actually…

1. Who will the QB be?

2. Can the Utes win with that QB?

Since we do not know the answer to the first question, it’s a little bit hard to guess the answer to the second.  So we’re going to operate on some theories here.

1. Travis Wilson will not play.

You all saw him against Arizona, he had no touch on the ball from the get go and that had to be from what happened to his hand at the end of the Stanford game.  It was made much worse versus Arizona so no way he plays.

2. If it’s Schulz, Utah cannot win.

I don’t like saying this and I’d love to be wrong.  But Utah’s big problem is all the weapons we’ve lost on offense.  Schulz has no touch so USC is going to look for the run and double Dres Anderson.  No amount of flea flickers beats this and Schulz doesn’t have enough talent to win on his own.

3. Do we pull a redshirt…

Well that answer will come today.  Knowing Kyle Whittingham we won’t.  But my thought is this.  Yeah Manning isn’t big but he has talent.  If that talent is enough to play smart and make plays, it makes USC winnable.  And if Wilson’s hand won’t be ready to make serious throws by ASU, Manning’s talent probably gives us a shot at ASU with three weeks of him taking snaps (provided what we’ve heard about him having a grasp of the whole playbook is true).  So if we can’t have Wilson back and ready by ASU, I think you have to give Manning a shot.

I know that is unpopular, but looking at what we’ve done at home, the ASU game is a winnable game this year and I’d hate to have it lost because we thought Travis might be able to go and then he wasn’t.  And we go with unprepared Schulz again.

Utah doesn’t have a lot of good or obvious choices in all of this.  We live in interesting times and that is indeed a curse.