Morgan Scalley Weekly Press Conference: Iowa State
9/21/2026 2:31 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…
Back by popular demand, the state of the U. The volleyball team swept all three of their matches. Coach D'Errico and squad are 8-3 on the season and they open up Big 12 play this weekend with matches against Colorado and Baylor. Women's cross country in their invitational this weekend took second in Indiana. Great finish from Erin Vringer, 10th overall after beating out nine other runners in the final two kilometers of the race. Awesome job. Women's soccer is back at home this Thursday to take on TCU, first home Big 12 game of the season and then Big 12 schedules came out for both women's and men's basketball. I can't believe regular season is tipping off in early November for both Coach Jensen and Coach Petersen's crews. Go Utes. In terms of the game recap, pleased with the outcome, obviously. Defensively, stellar job. Anytime you get a shutout, no matter who it is, it's to be commended. The rush defense was solid. The sudden change moments for the defense, for them to be able to capitalize when they were put in bad situations for whatever reason, they did a really nice job, doing a good job with red zone defense all season long for that matter. Looking back at the film, Rabbit Evans probably had one of his better games. Very twitchy. You can tell that he's kind of pre-injury, back to Rabbit Evans mode, making a ton of plays, his first career interception. The linebacker crew in general, we knew that we had depth there, but they just continue to show up, from Trey Reynolds and his double-digit tackles to Cyrus Polu, Elijah Elliss, what he's providing in both defense and special teams and obviously Johnathan Hall. A really good job by that group and then the D-line, although they're not necessarily showing up in the sack category last weekend, they are hitting the quarterback. They're forcing the quarterback out of the pocket. They're doing a lot of good things, so very pleased with the D-line. [James] Chenault continues to show up as a guy that is really good in man coverage. Pleased with the progress he's made. On the offensive side of the ball, really good start to the game, and then, like I said, in the second half, a little bit disjointed and there's reasons for that. The burden of execution is always on the offense. You could have four guys wide open and they got to catch the ball, so whether it was penalties, dropped balls, whether it was miss identifications in the run fits. Perimeter blocking showed up as something that needs improvement. The good thing is there's a lot of good stuff on film. The offensive line did a really good job of getting push at the line of scrimmage and it's a pretty good defense that they went up against. Utah State, they run around the right way with great technique and there's a reason they caused Washington fits and caused us a little bit of fits there, so credit to that defense, Coach Howell and Coach Mendenhall and that crew, they did a really good job. Pleased with obviously Braden Pegan. I thought Daniel Bray showed up in a big way, just how dynamic he is, hits the hole well. The added weight has helped with breaking tackles and if you go back and watch that film, Wayshawn Parker is all over that film in terms of blocking, running downfield. He's really a complete back and so happy for him and what he's doing. Special teams-wise, Dillon Curtis continues to show up and 54-yarder, gained a ton of confidence. Excited for him. Orion, another great punt. Obviously, the special teams guffaw is on me in terms of clarifying when we want to take those chances on a punt, but I think the other thing I'm very pleased about is we're in the top 10 in the country right now with penalty yards per game. Playing clean football has been something that we harp on with our guys and really the intolerable penalties, the delay of games, the false starts, all that stuff. I think three of those penalties are delay of game on our part, but I think we're playing clean football. So with that, we've got Iowa State for our first road game, our first Big 12 game this season. Coach Rogers, I know him, and he does a heck of a job coming from Washington State. They've got really a brand new crew. I think they lost 90% of their production on the offensive side of the ball. You see some of the defenders that he brought with him from Washington State. They play hard. They played Iowa at Iowa in a very close game, lost by a field goal. They're very stout, very tough on the defensive side of the ball. They run the heck out of the football and the offense, with a dynamic quarterback as well, this is going to be a really good test for our guys. It's probably going to be in inclement weather. It's going to be probably raining and on grass. We have to bring our big boy cleats and make sure we're not sliding around.
On what he likes about his team and where he thinks they can improve heading into Big 12 play…
I like the efficiency from the quarterbacks. I like the improvement in the defensive run game. I'm very pleased with the effort, the culture showing up on the field, guys blocking downfield. We need to improve. Offensively, I'd say perimeter blocking, wide receivers, tight ends in space. I'm pleased with how clean we're playing in terms of penalties, but again, I still believe we'll continue to find out who we are as a team the more we go through this schedule, but I love the effort and the attention to detail from our guys. There's always stuff to clean up, but I'd say probably on offense, it's the perimeter blocking and then defense, we're tackling really well right now, particularly in space. Those one-on-one tackles in space were very, very efficient. Our third down defense has been pretty good and we just need to continue to get aligned correctly. We're giving up stuff. It's really us just not aligning and assigning properly. It's not necessarily something that they're doing against us. So far, pleased with what I see, but obviously, there's things to work on.
On Devon Dampier's improvement…
He's done a lot of work on his own with Coach Gunderson, Coach McGiven on studying this offense and being able to recognize defense. The other thing too that helps us out is because of the different threats that we have. You get one wide receiver that's a dude or you get one running back that's a dude, you can't really work your game plan without taking those guys out, but when you have multiple threats, it makes it a lot easier. Offensive line is doing a really good job in protection too. That's another thing I failed to mention in the recap of the game. The protection from the offensive line has been really good this season.
On the journey and play of Trey Reynolds…
I mentioned this I think to the television crew that was doing our game in our production meeting. Those are the guys that you cheer for, that you want so badly to have success because they don't quit, they don't give up, they keep working, they keep developing and they stay committed to the process. He's playing at such a high level right now, the tackles in space, the ability to get to the quarterback and what we call contact courage, taking on linemen as they come climbing the second level. He's really good with his hat and hands, plus he's a great leader. He's an unbelievable kid and happy for him. It was a good day for the Reynolds family.
