Playoff odds23% → 26%CFB Zeitgeist forecast, before and after
Saturday: vs. HOUHouston
Sat Oct 24, 10:15 pm ET · HOUNo. 14 Houston is 6-1 · First meeting between Scalley and Willie Fritz as head coaches · Utah’s chance to win: 46% (the site’s model)
Well done, App State. That was a blast to watch, midweek football for the win
Getting too cute on offense will lose you the game (looking at you, Utah coaching staff)
The late kick favors Utah
Fan mood · last 3 weeks · more upbeat than 3 in 4 FBS fan bases
Offense: 23rd of 138 per play. Defense: 38th.
Through 6 games. Each tick is an FBS team, adjusted for opponent strength (CFB Zeitgeist model); the dot is Utah. The other two rows are where Utah stands furthest from the middle. Early-season numbers move a lot.
6 games left
Sat Oct 24vs. HOUHouston (6-1)46%
Sat Oct 31at CINCincinnati (4-2)80%
Sat Nov 7vs. BYUBYU (6-0)48%
Sat Nov 14at ARIZArizona (5-1)48%
Sat Nov 21at TCUTCU (3-3)55%
Fri Nov 27vs. WVUWest Virginia (4-3)95%
Percent: Utah’s chance to win, from the site’s model. Records are through today. Networks as announced; the rest are set closer to kickoff.
How the season got here
Where Utah stood among 138 FBS programs by stature after each game (1st is the highest; the CFB Zeitgeist ledger).
Each week as this page showed it at the time. Weeks marked rebuilt came before this page existed: they were built afterward from only what was known by the end of that week.
Stories are headlines grouped by what they are about, counted through Oct 23.
What others say about him
Obviously, Morgan Scalley isn’t going to flip everything upside down in Salt Lake. This guy is a Utah lifer. He’s been in that building his whole career. Morgan’s a hell of a football coach. They’re still going to be aggressive on defense. They’re still going to be good on the offensive line, and now is a chance for him to put this program in his image.
Coach Scalley was tremendous. I mean, he was an unbelievable relationship builder, energy, detailed
This extraordinary commitment by Morgan and Liz Scalley speaks to everything that makes them special and demonstrates their absolute love for the University of Utah
Obviously, Morgan Scalley isn’t going to flip everything upside down in Salt Lake. This guy is a Utah lifer. He’s been in that building his whole career. Morgan’s a hell of a football coach. They’re still going to be aggressive on defense. They’re still going to be good on the offensive line, and now is a chance for him to put this program in his image.
This extraordinary commitment by Morgan and Liz Scalley speaks to everything that makes them special and demonstrates their absolute love for the University of Utah
Hired into 50–51, Power Program II. Rough match, not calibrated yet — ranked on what the job inherited alone. Coaches hired into this same job aren’t used as comps.
Of the 5 closest comps, 2 left the program higher than he found it and 3 left it lower. Median stay: 4 seasons.
Every coach hired into a Power Program II job since 1990 (39): typically -1.4 after year 1, +0.5 after year 2.
His year 1 here (2025) overlaps a mid-season coaching change — that season’s composite may reflect more than just his own games.
<1%chance he’s out by the end of this seasonCool133rd-hottest of 137 FBS jobs
0%50%+
Our hot-seat model, on his record so far, the win chances for every game he has left, and his contract (a bigger buyout, relative to pay, makes a change costlier). Ranked against the 137 FBS head coaches with 3+ games this season.
His first rated season here.
His hot seat, week by week
The chance he’s out by the end of that season, as it stood after every week of his tenure here, by today’s model.
← swipe for earlier seasons
He took over during the 2025 season (1 game); that year is unrated, since each season counts against whoever started it.
What drives his number
The biggest factors, each against the typical FBS job today.
▼ Cooler
1-0 over his previous season here
▼ Cooler
Year 1· tenure, which this model overrates(why?)
Tenure is one of this model’s strongest inputs, but its weight was set when retirements like Nick Saban’s and Bob Stoops’ still counted as being pushed out, so it overstates how much tenure matters.
▼ Cooler
6-0, outscoring opponents by 152 · AP-ranked
What happened to coaches like him, 2004–2025
A different comparison: past coaches, not today’s, grouped by one fact at a time. Neither line knows the games he has left or his contract, so they can sit above or below his chance.
Were 6-0 after 6 games
0% pushed out over results · of 231 coaches
Were in year 1, after 6 games
1% pushed out over results · of 525 coaches
The outcome
Pushed out over results — a firing, forced resignation, mutual parting or non-renewal, each read case by case. Leaving for a better job, or retiring on his own terms, doesn’t count.
Buyout
No figure on file for this coach. The salary database predates the last coaching carousel; a name mismatch is suppressed rather than misattributed.
How good is this number? Checked on every FBS coach from 2010 to 2025, with its percentages calibrated each season on earlier years only: they track what happened — coaches it put near 25% were out about a quarter of the time — and a version pricing the games left with the previous season’s ratings ranked jobs as well as the ranking this page used before. Each week it learns from coaches who were still on the job at that point, so a firing during the season counts. In the Boiling zone it has run a few points high. Every job, and the method.
Our poach model, on his record so far, the win chances for every game he has left, his program, his pay and his background. Ranked against the 137 FBS head coaches this season. The zone words describe the market’s interest; none of them says he is leaving.
What drives his number
The biggest factors in his profile, each against the typical FBS head coach today. The games he has left are priced into the number, not listed here.
▼ Lower
His first season at Utah
▼ Lower
Age 49 · coaching at his alma mater, in the state he was born in
▲ Higher
1-0 over his previous season here
How good is this number? It ranks a head coach who leaves for another head-coaching job ahead of one who stays 78 to 82% of the time, and its average came within a point of the share who actually left. What it can’t do
Tested on every FBS head coach from 2012 through 2025, each season scored by a model fit only on the seasons before it. From three games on, given one coach who left for a head-coaching job elsewhere or an NFL coordinator job and one who stayed, it ranked the one who left ahead 79 to 82% of the time; in a season’s first two games, 78%. Its average chance came within a point of the share who actually left. It counts a move a coach makes while he still holds the job; when his school ends it, that doesn’t count, even if another school then hires him.
The live number prices the games he has left with the power model’s ratings from this season. The test priced them with each team’s rating from the season before, because ratings made during past seasons were not kept, so this live version could not be replayed.
Programs new to FBS have no FBS record before this season in the data it reads, so their coaches are scored without one.
It is frozen: it learns nothing from 2026 until a deliberate refit.
A coach hired in December needs his background (age, alma mater, the state he was born in) added before his first game, or he shows as not rated.
Outperforms his recruiting talent on offense and performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on defense.
Offense vs. talent
+41.6 pts
#4 of 208 · top quarter
Defense vs. talent
+11.1 pts
#62 of 208 · middle half
Recruiting talent is team-wide (no offense/defense split exists in the source data) -- both sides are scored against the same talent input, only the outcome is side-specific.
Who they bring in
Brings in smaller-than-position-typical players than most.
Recruits younger transfers than most — more of a development bet.
Avg. size (raw)
6′2″, 219 lbs
across 33 of 38 arrivals — unadjusted for position mix
Size vs. position-typical
-1.3 lbs
#243 of 255 · bottom quarter
Avg. class year
So
#254 of 255 · bottom quarter
Avg. portal rating
3.1★
rated arrivals only
Top states: CA (11), TX (3), GA (2), FL (2), UT (2)
On3’s modeled estimate (social reach / exposure), not money actually paid — shown per player, never totaled.
Who won the portal our read
Talent added
55.8
position-weighted
Talent lost
58.2
position-weighted
Net
-2.5
arrivals minus departures
Best addition: Devon Dampier (QB) from New Mexico
Biggest loss: Isaac Wilson (QB) to the portal
Position-value-weighted (QB/CB weighted highest, depth-decayed within each position) — the same scoring engine as the Portal Heat feed, not a separate grade.
Where the roster comes from, by position
Buys Wide receiver via the portal
89%
#4 of 243 stints
Buys Athlete via the portal
25%
#17 of 146 stints
Grows Interior line from high school
80%
#176 of 224 stints
Grows Safety from high school
80%
#177 of 218 stints
Postseason detail2025: Beat Nebraska 44-22 SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl
AI Narratives — “Utah's Offseason Moves and 2025 Outlook” and 3 more on the team page.
7-0
Big games
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
ATS is his record against the spread: did his team beat the closing betting line, winning by more than it or losing by less? Lines start in 2013; a dash means fewer than 6 of those games had one. One-score games carry no spread record: a big favorite that wins a close game has almost always failed to cover, so that number would say nothing about the coach.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Passed more than the situation called for under Beck.
74 run and pass snaps at Utah, 2025–2025, his own games, one row per offensive coordinator. Each cell is how much more often he passed than the rest of FBS did in the same situation (field zone, down, distance, score, quarter, same season), in percentage points.
passed moreran morewithin noise (95% range includes 0)
Pass rate, stint by stint
Where each stint’s offense sat between run-first and pass-first, and how far it moved from one season to the next, against the FBS-wide average of 41% pass. The band is that stint’s real season-to-season range, not a fixed-width box.
Pass rate — share of offensive plays that were pass attemptsfirst covered seasonmost recent covered season
How good is he so far?
Too new to grade — in-season movement only
Utah’s composite stature has held about steady since preseason: 50.0 entering the year to 50.0 through week 8 (Power Program II) · #138 of 138 in movement since preseason · bottom quarter.
Part four · How he builds a team
Three numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
No class below is fully his yet — every one was inherited or signed mid-transition, so none counts toward a verdict.
2026
#27
Transition
Transition — he was hired mid-cycle
Rank is each signing class’s national recruiting rank (#1 is best). Only a class he had a full signing cycle to build counts as his; inherited and mid-transition classes still show here, faded, but stay out of the average.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
42%His own players
of his 2026 roster arrived on his watch — 48 of 114 players. The other 66 are holdovers from before he was hired.
Arrived under him 48Inherited 66
Of his own players on this roster, 27% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
Everyone he has brought in, 2025–2026Counting players who have since left: 27% of the 48 arrivals we can classify came through the portal.
“His own” means the player arrived while he was head coach; “inherited” means a predecessor brought him in.
Where he recruits
UTTop state
is his biggest recruiting state: 12 of 46 signees (26%) across his 2025–2026 tenure, drawn from 17 states in all. Next: TX (9).
Where his signees came from, 2025–2026 (46 high-school, JUCO and prep signees)
43% of his signees come from UT and its 5 border states (NV 3, AZ 2, ID 2, CO 1).
Off this map: 2 signees to the east (GA, MI) and 1 to the north (WA).
By region
West
32
South
12
Midwest
2
Roster distance from campus (Rice-Eccles Stadium, UT)
median hometown distance
519 mi
within 100 mi
30%
within 500 mi
42%
beyond 1,000 mi
24%
107 of 114 roster players with a known hometown (94% coverage)
The map counts signed recruits across his tenure; the distance figures cover his current roster, transfers and walk-ons included. Two different groups, kept separate on purpose.