Utah Football: Northern Colorado Preview and Prediction
Editors Note: I was looking at the calender and I saw how very far away Utah Football seemed. So I thought I’d start doing game by game previews and predictions for the teams we’re playing. If I do one each Monday, by the time I get to Colorado, we’ll be at fall practice. As always these are for entertainment purposes only please no wagering, unless of course you really want to.
Game One: Utah Vs Northern Colorado
Northern Colorado or the University of No Credit as it’s known to the people of Colorado, is located in Greeley, CO and has around 10,000 students. Their mascot is the Bears. They are coached by Earnest Collins Jr., who played at UNC but was hired as their head coach from Alcorn St. In his two seasons at UNC, Collins is 3-19 including 0-11 last season.
Offense– The key to Northern Colorado’s offense will be Seth Lobato the QB who transferred from Colorado. He’s a big boy at 6-5 and 220 lbs. Last season he threw for nearly 2,500 yards and 17 touchdowns. And according to this article, he’s all growds up and ready to go. His main target will be Jace Davis who missed the 2011 season because of academic issues.
It looks like they need a whole lot out of Mr. Lobato (Domo arigato, come on you knew you thunk it too) because last season they only rushed for 56 yards per game, which is amazing because they don’t play defense in the Big Sky.
Defense– The defense will be led by Senior Marcel Gibbons who is listed as a safety but plays all over the field. He had 90 tackles, 12 for loss. Outside of Collins there will be three new starters in the secondary. Up front they’ll be led by Devontae Chappel, who was a freshman All-American on the FCS level. But outside of that they’ll have a bunch of new faces as well.
Prediction– I wish the following was the predicition
But I’ve seen far too many Kyle openers against a warm-up team to think that is the case. I can write the review of this game right now.
Utah will be in control the entire game but plays closer than expected. No one will notice the fact that we only ran three offensive plays the entire game. People will be freaking out and there will be calls for Jordan Wynn’s head because the only time he’ll pass will be in 3rd and long situations. For a week there will be hysteria, dogs and cats living together. I’ll write a post or two saying we do this every year and there is nothing to worry about. No one will accept that. We’ll even have some saying if we play like that in Logan, we’re going to lose. Among people saying that will be Kyle Whittingham who will list a whole bunch of things he wasn’t happy with.
Did I mention we’ll win the game and UNC will never threaten.
Join me next Monday for the preview and prediction about the Utah St. game.
And if you want to read more about Northern Colorado, please go to UNCBears.com