Here are the reasons we aren’t going to see many surprises come Saturday:

1. Whittingham doesn’t trust the offense. He trusts his offensive line enough and trusts Micah Bernard a lot to make running the ball a central part of his offense. This is not a surprise. This is the Whittingham offense for the last 20 years. He has lost Money Parks so he has Singer and Kuithe. He will sneak in there a long pass here and there but 80% of the time he will run Bernard.

2. Whit trusts his defense with good reason. They deliver with their base defense. Retzlaff also has enough turnovers or almost turnovers to have Whittingham licking his chops. This is where Whit believes he needs turnovers to offset their poor offense. We have seen in tape all of the flavors of Utah blitzes, wacky defenses and personnel sets that Utah has to offer. We know they will pull out all of the stops to confuse and rattle Retzlaff.

3. Whittingham doesn’t have a dawg on special teams and will not be doing too many fake FG or fake punts. There is no Covey walking through that door onto the field to play his 10th year of eligibility. Their special teams are as mediocre as Utah special teams ever have been. Their kicker is good but not great. Their punter is fine but not great. No where do you see someone who stands out and will make the game breaking plays we have seen before with a kicker, punter, or returner.

I am not saying this game will be easy but it will be better than expected and lead to

BYU 24 Utah 16 (1 touchdown and 3 fieldgoals)