Let’s start with two questions important enough that Utah’s football season hangs on their answers, a double-dose best suited for Sigmund Freud, or one of his successors in the study of the human condition.
How do you undo a significant part of what makes a player great? How do you break him down and rebuild what’s in his body and brain, what’s in his attitude, what makes him him?
Calling Dr. Freud — Kyle Whittingham needs you. His quarterback needs you.
When Cam Rising bolted to his left during Saturday’s win over Baylor near the end of the first half, sprinting across the field from east to west, football in hand, a fleet-footed, 290-pound defender with bad intentions barreling down on him and the quarterback still glancing forward with half a mind to find any open target when his whole mind should have been dialed in on self-preservation, on getting out of bounds or sliding to safety … therein is Rising’s and thereby Utah football’s problem.
Instead, as everybody saw, the Baylor defender plowed Rising from the field’s boundary violently into a Gatorade stand, messing up his throwing hand, forcing him to place a towel over that hand and head straight for the locker room and minutes later into street clothes. It was, indeed, a cheap shot. Apologists and liars can pretty it up all they want, make excuses all they want, but the shoving of the quarterback into the coolers was nothing less malicious than that.
But — and this is a big but that cannot be liked, nor lied about — Rising allowing himself to be hit like that, in a vulnerable position by which he was unloading the ball instead of curling into a protective one, is further evidence of what he has not learned, not the hard way, not any which way.
He’s been told a thousand times, all plain and simple: Make a play if you can, protect and preserve yourself if you can’t.
Whittingham and Andy Ludwig have definitely said it. The surgeons who have repaired his numerous serious injuries of the past have said it. The folks who are shelling out the cash for his NIL payments have said it. Everyone who cares about Utah’s success this season has said it.
But Rising processing outside urges to save himself still have not canceled out his own urges, the ones that have made him the quarterback he is. Throughout his time at Utah, the healthy times, he has played with abandon, unafraid of getting hit in the pocket as a means of getting the ball delivered, unafraid of dodging defenders to pick up yards on the ground or of diving ahead for an extra bit of real estate if necessary, and maybe when it’s not necessary.
Why? Because it’s in his freaking nature. You don’t have to have studied cognitive dissonance or triangular love or behaviorism theories to recognize that. Fully understanding that nature is a little more difficult. And rearranging it in a competitive athlete who has built his career on it, despite the hundreds of hours of pain and rehab it’s presented him? Good luck with that.
It’d be like telling Einstein to think hard, but not that hard, like telling Edison to invent, but in a different way, like telling Shakespeare to write, but only in simple sentences, like telling Trump to go ahead and lie, but not quite so much.
It ain’t happening.
Humpty Dumpty is going to sit on that wall, and he’s going to fall off that wall. It’s written right there in the rhyme. Just like it’s written that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.
Why you’d want horses on that task is something of a mystery.
Either way, Utah coaches do not want their star quarterback’s egg cracked. They’d rather have him compromise his game by controlling his instincts and having a substantial number of drives curtailed in that process than risk what happened on Saturday, the exact consequences of which have not as of this writing been completely diagnosed or announced.
Whittingham said he might be back for this week’s game. Of course, when it comes to Rising’s status, the coach has been known to present wrong information before. Again and again.
So, who knows exactly when the quarterback will be able to properly grip and spin a spiral again. One thing that’s obvious — when Rising is on the field, the Utah offense is turbo-boosted, when he’s off it … well, the Baylor game presented the facts. The Utes scored 23 points in the first half (with some defensive help). In the second, that attack scored none.
Hmm. What was the difference?
Thing is, a fully indoctrinated and compliant and reprogrammed Rising, which is to say a careful one, is far better than no Rising at all. What precisely would get that to directly penetrate and firmly lodge and forever stick in the psyche of the only one who matters in this circumstance?
Hypnosis? Autosuggestion? Mesmerism? Thoughts and prayers? The dark arts? Black magic?
Beats me.
But solving the problem is the single most important element to a Utah season with enough promise to make it worth trying just about anything, at least anything legal. Saturday’s first half made the Utes look like a top five playoff team. The second half made them look like a team that might be lucky to win as many games as it loses in the Big 12.
Call Dr. Freud, then. Call Dr. Voodoo. Call Merlin the Magician. Call Pavlov’s dogs. Call anyone who can possibly save Cam Rising from himself. Call Cam himself. Call, call, call for as long as it takes, even if the task is impossible. Just don’t call all the king’s horses and all the king’s men because, by then, it’ll be too late.
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