Copyright Salt Lake City Deseret News
Through nine games, the defining characteristic of the 2025 Utes is their leadership, coach Kyle Whittingham says. “I would say great leadership. We have tremendous captains this year. Not that we haven’t in the past, but fortunately they’ve all been able to stay healthy and intact. That’s a big part of it,” Whittingham said. This year’s captains are offensive linemen Spencer Fano and Jaren Kump, defensive lineman Logan Fano and linebacker Lander Barton — all veteran players that have been at Utah for at least three years. They helped teach Utah’s culture to the new transfers and freshmen, and along with upperclassmen and other leaders like cornerback Smith Snowden and quarterback Devon Dampier, have turned around a team that went 5-7 last season. The hallmark of this team’s leadership has been how the team has responded after each of the Utes’ two losses. Both defeats — a 34-10 loss at home to Texas Tech and a 24-21 loss at BYU — were crushing defeats in big-time games. The Utes, however, have not let it bleed into the next game, winning both games after losses decisively. “We had a couple of really disappointing games that we had to bounce back from and I credit the leaders for really making that happen,” Whittingham said. As the No. 13 Utes embark on the most important stretch run for the program since the 2022 season — still alive for a Big 12 championship game berth or their first-ever College Football Playoff appearance — that strong leadership will be paramount. “Practice is as good as it’s ever been here as far as the energy and the focus and the juice. And so again, that’s probably the No. 1 thing that has really driven this team and helped us get seven wins,” Whittingham said. How did bye week benefit the Utes? The plan worked before, so the Utes aren’t changing a thing as they prepare for Baylor off a bye week. Whittingham and the Utes are following the same bye week plan as they did during Utah’s first off week to start October. “We pretty much followed the same exact format as we did in bye week No. 1, so not much change there,” Whittingham said. “We felt like that was a pretty good way to handle it and so we repeated it.” The Utes gave their players a few days off at the end of the open week and will “front-load” practice this week as 7-2 Utah travels to take on 5-4 Baylor Saturday. Monday is usually a walkthrough day for the Utes, with no pads, but that changes off of the bye week. “We’ll be back on the field today in full pads, frontload the week just like we did again the last bye week and taper down and be ready to go play Baylor on Saturday,” Whittingham said. Last week’s bye was perfectly timed for the No. 13 Utes to get as many players up to full health as possible for the closing stretch of the season, featuring a road game at Baylor, a home game vs. Kansas State, and the season finale at Kansas on Black Friday. “We feel good about them and we’ll find out more today because they’ve had three days off and so hopefully they’re in a pretty good place today. So we’ll find out more today,” Whittingham said on the health of his team. The bye week also gave the Utes a jump on preparing for Baylor, which is coming off a bye week of its own after defeating UCF 30-3. The Utes will travel to Waco, Texas, on Friday, leaving the state of Utah for the first time since a Sept. 27 win at West Virginia. Being at home for seven weeks in the middle of a football season was a tremendous gift from the Big 12 schedule makers, and the Utes took near full advantage, going 4-1 in that stretch. How has in-season recruiting changed? With the addition of early signing day in December, which has become the de facto signing day for Power Four college football programs, in-season recruiting has taken a bit of a backseat. A lot of players now sign in the summer, and the Utes already have 16 commits in their 2026 class. Bye weeks have traditionally been times for coaches to hit the recruiting trail, and while it isn’t an all-out blitz like it used to be, Utah still utilizes the open week to pitch potential players. “We do a good deal of recruiting on the bye weeks. The NCAA has scaled back how much you can be out. I think it’s now 40 days, 40 total. So if you send seven coaches out for one day, that’s seven days. One coach goes out for four days, that’s four days. So 40 total opportunities,” Whittingham said. “I think we only have a few left that we haven’t utilized. And so yes, we do it, but not as extensively as we have in the past because of the limitation.” Utah’s 2026 high school recruiting class is ranked No. 46 in the country by 247Sports and No. 9 in the Big 12. In terms of average recruit ranking, Utah is No. 5 in the conference with an average recruit ranking of 88, but their overall ranking is lower than other Big 12 schools due to class size. Whittingham was asked about the “negative recruiting” other coaches do against the Utes, and said the key is getting players to actually visit Salt Lake City. “I wouldn’t say more challenging. I would just say more of the same, what we’ve dealt with for years. They say, ‘Oh, you’re going to go on a trip to Utah, you’re going to dirt roads and covered wagons and each coach has six wives and all that stuff,” Whittingham said. “And so yeah, we have come across this before and it’s something that is part of recruiting. You just got to say, ‘Hey, come up here and take a visit and see what you think. Decide for yourself.’ And I don’t know if we’ve ever had a guy say, no, I’m not coming because of all the things I’ve heard about it. So it really doesn’t have as much of an impact as I’m sure that people that are negative recruiting would like it to, but we’ve learned to deal with that through the years.”
