- Utah enters the season as 34.5-point favorites over Idaho in first-year head coach Morgan Scalley’s Utes debut.
- Idaho already has a game on tape after a 38-34 loss to Cal Poly, while Utah opens cold.
- Quarterback Devon Dampier passed for 2,490 yards and ran for 835 more for Utah last season.
- Utah replaces both starting tackles, each one a first-round NFL draft pick in April.
SALT LAKE CITY – No. 21 Utah (-34.5) opens Morgan Scalley’s first full season as head coach at home Thursday night against Idaho, a Vandals team that enters 0-1 after a 38-34 shootout loss to Cal Poly in Week 0.
A New Coach, A Rebuilt Line
Scalley takes over a program that Kyle Whittingham ran for 21 seasons before leaving in December to become Michigan’s head coach, a departure that also cost Utah five portal players who followed him to Ann Arbor, including edge rusher John Henry Daley.
Scalley, Whittingham’s longtime defensive coordinator, was named the permanent successor in December and made his head-coaching debut by beating Nebraska 44-22 in the Las Vegas Bowl. That run helped Utah open this season ranked 21st in the AP poll, one of four Big 12 teams to crack the preseason Top 25. That’s the kind of ranking legal college football betting markets consider when setting the five-possession spread in favor of the Utes.
The bigger question for Thursday is up front. Utah loses its entire starting offensive line from a year ago, including both tackles: Spencer Fano, picked ninth overall by Cleveland, and Caleb Lomu, taken 28th by New England, the first time the program has produced two first-round picks in the same draft, according to the Deseret News. Replacing that pair with no game snaps yet is the real variable behind Utah covering the 34.5-point spread in Week 1.
What returns behind that new line is a proven starter. Dampier, a New Mexico transfer, threw for 2,490 yards with 24 touchdowns against five interceptions last season and added 835 yards and 10 more scores on the ground. It’s a dual-threat profile that gives Scalley an established answer at the one position where continuity matters most, even as the pieces protecting him are new.
Idaho’s Head Start
Idaho is the team walking in with rhythm. Redshirt sophomore quarterback Joshua Wood completed 18 of 25 passes for a career-high 363 yards and two touchdowns in the Vandals’ Week 0 loss to Cal Poly, and receiver Tony Harste added a career day of his own with nine catches for 180 yards and two scores, including a 75-yard connection, according to Idaho’s own game recap.
The Vandals piled up 482 total yards on 59 plays in that game, production that came up short against an FCS peer but production nonetheless from a group that has now played a real game under game conditions. Idaho’s defense got a career-high 12 tackles from senior linebacker Cruz Hepburn and finished with five tackles for loss, numbers that suggest a unit that can still generate pressure even in a loss.
An FCS opponent with 59 live snaps of 2026 tape squares off against a ranked Big 12 team that has none, breaking in a rebuilt line and a first-time head coach in the same night. The matchup makes Thursday’s legal sports betting spread an intriguing one.
