In their ninth game of a down-and-mostly-up season on Saturday night against Cincinnati, the Utah Utes had many goals, and two major intentions. Foremost among those designs was to keep their dim-but-not-wholly-bleak hopes for a slot in the Big 12 championship game alive — a kind of pitstop achievement, at a bare minimum, only victory could provide. The second was necessary to realize the first — contain and control Bearcat quarterback Brendan Sorsby.
They got both done, winning by an impressive 45-14 count, holding Sorsby, one of the league’s best quarterbacks, to 221 yards passing on just 11 completions in 33 throws, including a touchdown and an interception. More than a few of those Sorsby yards came after the game was pretty much decided.
Those Utah successes underscored the best of college football, the competitive part of it anyway — witnessing how a team responds in a game against a quality opponent it has to win. The Utes had put themselves in that serious situation — predicament — by way of earlier losses to two of the Big 12’s top teams: Texas Tech and BYU. The Bearcats represented a third team in that discussion and this third time for the Utes would be either a strike — apologies for the baseball analogy, Blue Jays fans — or a charm.
“We know we have to win out,” Utah quarterback Devon Dampier said afterward. “… One game at a time.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Utes quarterback Devon Dampier (4) throws a pass at Rice-Eccles Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025.
Yeah, turns out, it was the latter, the charm. With that came the bonus that Utah, despite the aforementioned setbacks, still belongs in the same hovering discussion. For the Utes, just like on Saturday night, just like Dampier said it, and every day and night from here on out this season, every game is a playoff game, every game is a must-win. As such, every game reps the best part of the greater college thing. And their potential reward — as slight or fortuitous as it might be — for conquering Cincinnati, and then Baylor, Kansas State and Kansas? Another playoff game, the title game in Arlington. And if they were to win that … OK, let’s just stop with the far reaches right there. And let’s take a thought taxi back to the immediate matter at hand.
That much, the Utes handled all proper and decisive.
Sorsby hadn’t run or passed into the kind of resistance he experienced at Rice-Eccles since Cincinnati’s first game of the season — a loss to Nebraska in which he struggled, throwing for a mere 69 yards. Everything since then had seemed easy, leading to seven straight W’s, five of them in league. He had thrown for 1,843 yards, 20 touchdowns and just one interception, and run for 429 yards and seven TDs.
Everything good in the Bearcats’ attack circled around him — until on this night it surrounded him and held him captive.
Morgan Scalley knew this, the Ute defensive coordinator building a plan, his players executing it, that centered on messing with the quarterback — no small deal, considering Cincy’s stellar pass protection, heretofore allowing just two sacks — enough to cause discomfort, disrupting his timing and his preference for RPOs, and then depending on the backend to stay and interfere with Sorsby’s balanced plethora of targets.
“The secondary did an outstanding job,” Kyle Whittingham said. “And the pass rush was good, too.”
The Utes did all of that. In the first half alone, that Utah D limited Sorsby to 113 passing yards, some of that yardage coming in the final minute of the second quarter, when the Utes were already up, 24-7. The lone Cincinnati touchdown over that span came on a 22-yard Sorsby scamper. Other than that … nothing.
An emphasis for the Utes was standard issue — keep the Bearcats out of the red zone. But in Cincinnati’s case it was especially important, the Bearcats having scored in all trips to the red zone this season except for one. It wasn’t just a bunch of field goals. They’d crossed the goal line in nearly 77 percent of those ventures.
Utah busted that up, forcing Cincinnati to spend much of the game muddling around at its own end and/or somewhere in the midfield, far away from putting any consistent hurt on the Utes.
When Utah had the ball, it did precisely what Whittingham has harped on, again and again, at least this season and in more recent ones, too, namely that he wanted a balanced attack. He got it here, from beginning to end. Utah ran the ball more than it passed it, but the Ute yards were split relatively evenly, 213 in the air and 267 on the ground.
“We ran it effectively,” Whittingham said. “We passed it effectively.”
The second half was same as the first, the Utes continuing their barrage, on offense and defense — except for one big play inside the first five minutes of the third quarter, when Sorsby hit Cyrus Allen on a 88-yard deep ball for a touchdown. That cut the margin to 24-14, and reminded the Utes that if they drifted too far from focus on their intentions and goals, trouble would not just be their shadow, it would accompany disappointment straight into the shade of the rest of their season, darkening it directly to also-ran status.
Cincinnati was not Colorado, the Utes’ most recent Big 12 victim, the Buffs having fallen behind and completely capitulated at Rice-Eccles in a Utah romp. The Bearcats tried to fight back, to no avail.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah wide receiver Creed Whittemore (80) breaks a couple of tackles to score a touchdown for Utah, in football action between the Utah Utes and the Cincinnati Bearcats at Rice-Eccles Stadium, on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025.
On their next possession, the Utes fired down the field to threaten, but a bad throw by Dampier killed that move, Cincinnati picking off the wayward pass near the end zone.
The Bearcats couldn’t make anything of it.
Utah, thereafter, gathered itself, not allowing for any backtrack toward the bleak fate. Instead, it took possession, led by Dampier, and re-established its 17-point lead with a determined drive, punctuated — after adversity in the form of a holding call — by a touchdown scored with equal determination by receiver Creed Whittemore, who essentially punched his way into the end zone near the end of the third quarter.
The defense did its deal from there, as did freshman punt returner Mana Carvalho, who brought a Cincy floater back 75 yards for a touchdown, making it 38-14, and leaving the Bearcats to wish they were at the Utes’ level.
They were not, are not.
“We’re starting to get some momentum now,” said Whittingham. “We just have to keep it going.”
So it is that Utah won the game and kept hope alive for more playoff games ahead, games that will stay that way as long as the Utes win and a couple of other teams stumble. There’s even a possibility that they could face You-Know-Blue-Who in the Big 12 title game. Decent enough motivation. Weirder things have happened.