Few programs are expected to win more games than Utah football this season
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Following spring football, Utah came in at No. 14 on ESPN’s power rankings.
In the latest from ESPN’s Football Power Index, the Utes are No. 15 overall.
Phil Steele ranks Utah No. 16 ahead of the 2023 season, while the Utes come in at No. 11 in the NCAA’s own preseason projections.
No. 15 is where Utah falls in 247 Sports’ projections, and whenever the preseason AP poll comes out you can expect the Utes to fall squarely in the top 25, likely in the top 15.
By and large, Utah is expected to contend for yet another Pac-12 championship this season — even if that might prove to be more difficult than in recent seasons — and that means being one of the 15 best teams in the country.
What does that actually look like, though? How many wins? How many losses?
Per Action Network’s Collin Wilson, it is a lot more wins than you might think.
Utah is projected to win more games next season — by Action Network — than all but five programs, notable ones at that.
Only Alabama, Georgia, Louisville, Michigan and Washington are projected and/or favored to win 12 games in 2023, while Utah is projected to be an 11-game winner, placing the Utes on the same level as Clemson, Florida State, Liberty, UNC, Ohio State, Oklahoma, South Alabama, Texas, Toledo, Tulane and Wisconsin.
Action Network’s projections aren’t that far off from the Football Power Index, if more optimistic.
Utah is slotted between eight and nine wins in 2023 by ESPN, but the Utes should be favored to win every one of their home games and might be the underdog in two or three road games (at Baylor, USC and Washington) at worst.
Win the games they are supposed to and the Utes are staring at another 10-win season, which would be a third straight and the fourth in five years (Utah only played five games in 2020 due to the pandemic).
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Utah would slot higher in preseason rankings if not for a couple of things mentioned time and again, No. 1 being quarterback Cam Rising’s unknown health after offseason surgery and No. 2 centering on the depth and quality of the Pac-12.
Wrote Steele: “Injury concerns have some worried about quarterback Cam Rising ahead of the 2023 season but the most physical team in the Pac-12 year-in and year-out figures to be there again.”
On the Rising front, Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham has been optimistic when discussing the quarterback’s status, telling On3 Sports in April that Rising is “about a third of the way through ACL rehab, and doing very well and on schedule, and we fully expect him to be ready for our season opener against Florida.”
As for competition in the Pac-12, most expectations are that the top programs — USC, Utah, Washington, Oregon, UCLA and perhaps Oregon State — will beat up on one another, preventing any team from gaining truly elite status, with Sports Illustrated calling the Pac-12 race “a more crowded field,” this year.
Historic precedence suggests that Utah will be just fine, though. Since 2014, the Utes have won at least nine games in all but two seasons, one being the pandemic-marred 2020 campaign, the other coming in 2016.
With Rising back, among others, and Whittingham at helm, odds are Utah wins a lot of games yet again.
“The Utes are the two-time defending Pac-12 champions but are going to again be underappreciated compared to the likes of USC and others in their conference,” writes NCAA.com’s Wayne Staats. “Coach Kyle Whittingham and his group are used to that and will again compete for conference honors.”
