10/26/2026 2:04 PM | Football
SALT LAKE CITY – University of Utah head football coach Morgan Scalley held his weekly press conference on Monday with members of the media inside the Spence and Cleone Eccles Football Center.
Selected quotes from Coach Scalley can be seen below. Click here for the full press conference video.
Opening Statement…
Thanks for coming. We have some rivalry matches coming up this Friday for volleyball and soccer, both down at BYU on Friday night. Good luck to those teams. Saturday morning, cross country. Coach Kepler and crew are going to be in Oklahoma to run in the Big 12 Championships. Wish them the best there. And it's hard to believe the basketball season is a week away. Crazy, right? Men's basketball has already started. It all starts on Monday against Long Beach State. They had a great win over Oregon. Coach Petersen and the women are [hosting] Eastern Washington next Tuesday. So, it's almost here. Our recap of the Saturday night game, fans were awesome. Atmosphere was one of the best that I've been a part of. So, can't thank our fans enough for showing up in a big way. The game in and of itself, obviously, slow start, something that we haven't had. I thought we drove the ball well at times, but, definitely, things needed to be corrected at halftime and were. Credit to our offensive staff for not panicking and working through some stuff. 226 yards rushing was huge, Devon with 150. And, like I said, I was asked that in the first quarter by Quint Kessenich, is this sustainable? I said, no. And it was, kept running. But that's not, obviously, what we want, but, Devon is that competitor. I thought Daniel Bray, for his three carries, averaged 11 yards. I was really proud of Daniel running from the tackles, playing physical. He got every bit out of his three reps. Rush defense showed up in a big way, 86 yards rushing to a team that had been rushing the ball fairly well. Obviously, those wide receivers are dynamic. I thought we did a nice job against them. The red zone defense, again, showed up in a huge way. They were one-of-three, in terms of touchdowns. Tackling, overall, it was just awesome, open field tackling, linebackers, the safeties, they all did a really nice job. Noah Bennee, five catches for 52 yards and made some guys miss, which is a nice thing. His penalty in the end zone is the craziest thing I've ever seen. He didn't know that wasn't his teammate. I think he was trying to celebrate. We love Noah, but we can't have penalties like that. Credit to our defensive line. I thought we did a really nice job of getting pressure on the quarterback, forcing him to throw the ball when he didn't want to throw the ball, getting tips, getting deflections where we needed them. Lance Holtzclaw was all over the field, very active. Jireh Moe showed up again in a big way. Obviously, the sack and forced fumble from Jackson Bennee was the big play in the game that put us in position to end it. Just proud of the guys for their fight. This is one really good job in preparation. I think Colton Swan had a really good gameplan. Obviously, defense showed up all night long and offense got going in the second half. We have a great team in Cincinnati that we're facing. Obviously, they just beat a top 10 program in the country, Texas Tech and they're hosting another one. It's going to be a great environment on Halloween. We're excited that we're going to have to be road warriors for the next, three out of four weeks that we play. That's something that we're excited about. Their offense is humming right now. Statistically, 20th in the country in total offense. Eighth in the country, second to West Virginia in the Big 12 in terms of rushing offense, so another game where we're going to have to be really stout up front. They're 22nd in the country in pass efficiency offense with a quarterback that's playing really well. Obviously, Coach Satterfield did a great job bringing in a new quarterback and getting him going. He's 15th in the country in completion percentage. He's efficient. They don't turn the ball over. They're doing some really good things and they're playing with confidence. They're going to be playing at their house, their packed house. This is a great challenge for us.
On if they'll plan on implementing more designed quarterback runs…
Designed QB runs, we've got a bunch of them and we have some for Byrd. We also have a very good running back that we like to give the ball to. Devon's going to end up running just simply because teams are going to crash on the dive in option and he's pulling. He's taught to pull. He's smart enough to know they're going to have different ways of handling your read option plays. Sometimes you're going to crash with your end and you're going to bring that backer around, gap exchange. He did a really nice job, as well as our offensive line, of seeing that, handling that, and creasing. A lot of his yards weren't necessarily Devon saying, I'm going to put the team on my back. It's just him taking care of his responsibility , which, there are those times where he does say, I feel I'm the best player in the field and I'm going to make this happen. When you're playing with a guy like that, who is so competitive, 90% of the time, he's going to be right. There's two kinds of players that you struggle with. The first is those that never do anything that you tell them to do and then the second type are the ones that only can do what you tell them to do, meaning they can't ad lib. They don't know, OK, I can take a chance here based on what I see, based on film study. He's really, really smart and we don't want to put the handcuffs on if he's going to continue to make plays for us. The offense does a really good job of balancing that out.
On how he makes sure his players don't buy into hype after a big win…
Make sure that they understand what wins and loses football games and what's on film and that nothing people say determines football games. You get teams that have unbelievable big wins, emotional wins, and then the next week you have the letdown effect and so, again, we're just going to continue to preach that every game is a championship game because it's hard to win. There's parody. You don't know what other teams' motivations are. When teams are playing ranked teams, they're going to bring it. They're going to be more excited. Whatever that is. We just have to be us. We've got to do it week after week after week, day after day after day and this is the only game that matters.
On where he feels the team can improve the most between now and the rest of the season…
There were some things on the offensive line in terms of ID stunts and some things up front that I thought we did a better job of in the second half. We can't turn the ball over. There's them taking the ball away and then there's us turning it over just with bad decision-making. We've had a couple of those. Those are two off the top of my head. Defensively, communication in combo coverages, stuff like that, maybe a little bit more disguising what we're doing. Our coaches are doing a really good job, game by game. It's just something different that shows up, just trying to correct it as you go.
