The spring football sessions continued to wind down this past weekend with a handful of teams holding spring games or scrimmages. With the regular season still months away it is still very early in the preparation process but that didn’t keep college football fans from voicing their complaints. Here is a look at the three biggest losers from Saturday’s spring games.
Utah Quarterback Troy Williams
Utah entered the spring games with finding a replacement for four-year starting quarterback Travis Williams as one of their biggest priorities. Our first look at his potential replacement didn’t go as expected when Troy Williams was knocked out of the spring games with an undisclosed injury. There were reports he suffered from a sore throwing arm but the bottom line is that he didn’t play in Saturday’s spring game, which resulted in true freshman Tyler Huntley and Brandon Cox starting on Saturday. Huntley went 17-of-26 for 233 yards and a touchdown while Cox went 17-of-31 for 146 yards and an interception but the majority of the talk after the game was about not getting a look at Williams. The most experienced of the Utes’ current quarterback crop will be treated with caution but his absence was definitely an early red flag with Utah turning the page on offense after losing Wilson and offensive workhorse Devontae Booker this offseason.
West Virginia’s Passing Game
Senior Skylar Howard is the favorite to start at quarterback for West Virginia this season, but he isn’t a lock to start with some competition brewing in the Mountaineers’ camp. Howard was 18-of-26 for 270 yards and three touchdowns with one interception in Saturday’s Gold-Blue Game and head coach Dana Holgorsen was critical of his pick after the game. Holgorsen alluded to the 31 turnovers they had last season and talked about how the team’s biggest focus has to be on protecting the football this season.
This is an important season for Holgorsen as he’s one of the coach’s entering the year on the hot seat. As you might recall, he took over West Virginia after being the offensive coordinator at Oklahoma State where the Cowboys ran up the score all the time. However, after his first couple of seasons where West Virginia was an offensive juggernaut, they have slowed down significantly. Much of that has had to do with the lack of production at the quarterback position. Last year, West Virginia had a very challenging stretch where they played Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Baylor and TCU in consecutive weeks. All of the games proved to be losses but what’s concerning is that they only averaged 24.5 points per game in those contests. Against the weaklings in the Big 12, Holgorsen’s teams have scored around 30 or more points but the offense hasn’t been consistent enough against the big boys. That’s why the focus of spring is to improve the offense – specifically the quarterbacking – or this team is again going to be in that seven or eight-win range.
Howard is still the favorite to start for West Virginia this season and there were some positives to take from his spring game performance but the focus was on his one mistake this past weekend as Holgorsen continues to try to shake up the mentality of his offense.
College Football Fans
Perhaps the biggest losers from this past weekend was the college football fans that realize there are just four more FBS schools set to host spring games. After that, the fans will have to wait until the fall before they get their next taste of the college game with a few months to go before we see some actual football. Conference media days don’t begin until the middle of July when the SEC holds its event over four days and the rest of the leagues will follow suit throughout the rest of the month. The 2016 college football season doesn’t officially begin until late August when California will play Hawaii in Australia so for college football fans the waiting game has officially begun with the countdown to the actual season about to get underway.
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