Morgan Scalley adopts a high-risk philosophy to exploit defensive alignment errors.
The Utah Utes have developed a new trend under Morgan Scalley.
After scoring touchdowns early in the past two games, the team elected to attempt a two-point conversion. Scalley was asked to explain the logic behind the play call during Monday's press conference.
“The thought of going for two is, first of all, we want to make people pay that they aren’t necessarily disciplined in how to align to these different formations that we show,” Scalley said. “Part of it too is forcing teams to have to prepare for something that you don’t spend a whole lot of time aligning to stuff like that, so getting that on film.”
Utah surely isn't new to this and isn't trying something out of the box. In fact, this is straight out of the pages of Chip Kelly's playbook from his days with the Oregon Ducks. The offensive mastermind maintained the philosophy that teams should be battle tested. Dan Lanning's teams have also incorporated those attempts into their game plan. Not saying this is strictly an Oregon thing, just very interesting.
Of course, the strategy is nice if it works. However, there's always that chance that it won't, and you're taking points off the board. Normally, a team would go for two when math or game context dictates that it maximizes the chance to tie, take the lead, or avoid overtime, such as when scoring a touchdown to pull within 8, 5, or 2 points. Just trying to take a 15-point lead doesn't make much sense early in the game. Yet again, being able to practice the situation during the course of a season could pay off.
Scalley loves being aggressive in his approach, which can't hurt to bring attention to the program. Does this mean more two-point conversions? Without a doubt. If Scalley's comments are any indication of what's coming during the Big 12 portion of the schedule, there will definitely be some higher-level play calls for special teams.
“We felt like we had it, and unfortunately it wasn’t there, but I’m an aggressive guy by nature and I like taking advantage of stuff that I see. It didn’t work. Some will work, some won’t, but we’re not going to ever do anything without reps for it and being prepared,” Scalley said. “But you’re going to see more of it. Let’s just put it that way.”
No. 15 Utah opens up Big 12 play against Iowa State on Saturday (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX).
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