Morgan Scalley Weekly Press Conference: Utah State
9/14/2026 2:50 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…
I want to start out by thanking our fans again for showing up. Huge factor in any home game, but the atmosphere is always electric and one of the best in college football. A lot to cheer about on the hill and I don't get to do this often. I am going to do it now because there are other sports here at the University of Utah. Women's cross country, Allie Bruce finished fifth out of 33 at the Beehive Invitational this Thursday. They'll be in Indiana this week competing in the John McNichols Invitational, so Coach Kepler and crew, good luck. Our golf team starts their season out in Frisco, Texas at the Jackson Stevens Cup. Good luck to Coach Clegg and crew. Women's soccer had a big win over Long Beach State this past weekend and the Big 12 opener will be Friday at 8 p.m. in Tempe. Coach Henderson and the baseball team will be in Arizona this weekend as well, playing in the Major League Baseball Desert Invitational. Good luck to those boys. Men's and women's swimming have their alumni meet this Friday on campus and women's volleyball has three games back-to-back-to-back this week. Show up and be loud to go support Coach D'Errico and those awesome ladies. As far as the game, can't say enough about the coaches, their game plans. As a head coach, it's all about the culture and how we do things and the game planning really is up to Coach McGiven, Coach Swan, Coach Shah, so credit to those gentlemen and their staff for putting that game plan together and proud of the offensive and defensive lines for their physicality all night. We talked about a few guys, with Noah Bennee and Jireh Moe and Devon Dampier, Wayshawn Parker. Going back and looking at the film, really pleased with the backers, how active they were, how physical they were. I thought Nate Ritchie had his best game as a Ute, very good tackling day for him, some PBUs. Hunter Andrews and Will Monney. You go back and watch that film and they are blocking their tails off. Very good game by those guys and I thought Daniel Bray ran hard. Can never give too many shout outs to the special teams guys. Dillon Curtis, 100% on his PATs so far, kicking the ball out of the end zone, which as a defensive coordinator, kick that thing out of the end zone every time, never give them the opportunity to return a ball. Orion Phillips had an unbelievable punt, netted 60 I believe, and then Logan Castor, our snapper. He never gets enough credit. That guy's on our leadership council and you don't notice a snapper until you don't have a good one and then that's when you notice them. Credit to Logan for what he's been doing. In terms of our opponent coming up, Utah State, so much respect for Bronco Mendenhall. Anywhere he's been, he's created a culture and he's true to who he is. He's a very good coach, has produced everywhere he's been. So much respect to him and his team. Robert Anae is a guy that I've respected as well. The way he runs an offense, his discipline, nature, the way he coaches, and then Coach Howell is a very good defensive mind. We know we're going to get the Aggies' best shot. You watch those guys play, they play hard. They've got two athletic quarterbacks. Another one of those games where you really got to be concerned about an extra guy in the box for the for the Q-run game and they've got speed on the edges. Defensively, very sound, very good tackling team and they hit. They run to the ball and they're well coached. This is 114, I believe. 114th time the Utah Utes have played the Aggies and, in 1960, Bud Scalley, scored the only touchdown against Merlin Olsen and that crew here. That was my first memory was seeing my dad's newspaper clipping. The tradition is strong and excited for us to host the Aggies.
On the meaning behind the rivalry with Utah State and the importance of playing them regularly…
Anytime you get to play the the in-state schools, there's something on the line, right? You never take it for granted. I was in Logan when we lost to Chuckie Keeton and that crew. They want to win this thing. You got recruiting on the line. You got bragging rights in-state. At the end of the day, that's always going to be important when you're playing those in-state schools and I love the rivalries, whether it's BYU, Utah State. It's just healthy, in my opinion.
On the challenges of defending Utah's offense…
What you try and do each snap is know what offensive personnel is coming out on a football field, particularly if you're a man coverage team and you're trying to match good-on-good and when you have athletes that can play multiple positions, right? Daniel Bray could line up as a wide receiver, could line up as a running back. Byrd [Ficklin] you see lining up as a wide receiver. He can also be a quarterback and when it's a quarterback who can also throw the ball after a handoff or after a backwards pass, we got to stay on coverage. First of all, got to be aware that he can still throw throw the ball. These are the issues that you face every single snap and when you've got 40 seconds on the play clock, play ends and really, you don't have 40 seconds, you have about 15 seconds to figure out what's going on. Who's coming on, who's coming off? The most stressful, most stressed out person in the entire stadium on game days is your personnel guy up in the booth that's trying to, it's 12 personnel, no, no, no, it's 10 personnel. All the while the coach is like, let's go, let's go. They have a hard time and the more you can create chaos with guys coming on, guys going off, and still be able to snap it in time and and be efficient. That's what we're trying to do. Creating different tempos as well. You go from being a huddle team to quick on the ball and so teams don't get into a rhythm of, okay, they're always going to huddle. They're always going to break the huddle and we get to see the formation. You have to be able to mix that stuff up as well and we're constantly having conversations back and forth as to what's too much, what can we get away with? All the while, you're just trying to make sure that you're getting your guys the ball, right? Figure out who your guys are and we've got a bunch of them. You can have that. There's that. Do you want to be someone or do you want to do something? If you want to be someone, you can go someplace and go start or you can be a part of a great team and do something and our guys have a great attitude right now, great mentality. You may get yours one week, you may not get as much the next week, but it doesn't matter who scores, it matters that we score and guys are bought into that right now.
On the physicality and development of Utah's offensive and defensive lines…
We got to continue to see where we're at. We're two games in and, like I said, you really don't know who you are until probably midway through the season. I like our progress. A lot of the being physical is not just trying to tee off on people. It's actually using really good techniques. Inside hands, vertical leverage is what we talk about all the time and that's showing up and you got to be able to promote it when you see it. Our guys are doing a really good job of that, both on the offense and defensive side of the ball, using their hands, driving piles, finishing. That's the stuff that I want to see and that's what we're seeing in games one and two. You're always going to have minuses, stuff that you gotta clean up, whether it's footwork, but for the most part, I think coaches are doing a really good job of teaching these guys really good technique.
