Koa Misi goes down

UPDATE on Utah Football - Koa Misi, a Utah defensive lineman, is out with injury! This greatly weakens Utah's defense and forces Utah to rely on it's depth.

You can check out Koa Misi's profile and some statistics here and can also check out the article detailing what went down at practice here and here. Personally, I prefer the first of the two - the Salt Lake Tribune pays a lot more attention to Utah Football than the Deseret News does... I think it has to do with the fact that the Deseret News loves BYU and the SL Tribune loves Utah.

Regardless, 1320 KFAN in SLC has some good sound bytes from Kyle Whittingham on Koa Misi. You can hear them here.

So, the question: How does this affect USU and game one of the season.

This is one more in a long line of injuries that is coming out of Salt Lake City and Provo during training camp. I, for one, am somewhat stunned to hear that all this is going down. All it does is help USU and give our boys a better chance of winning.

Taking a closer look at Koa Misi, it's obvious to see that he is a pretty valuable player on that Ute Defensive line. He's a 6'3", 263 pound senior on the end of that line. Over the last two years at Utah after transferring from a California Junior College, Misi has amassed 135 tackles, 60 of which have been unassisted, and 65 of which have been tackles for a loss. In other words, almost half of every time this guy gets to your ball carrier, he's going to get to him behind your line of scrimmage. Over the course of the last two years, he's got 28 sacks. That's an average of more than one per game.

You can see where I'm getting at.

Sure, Utah has a formidable line, but it is extremely difficult to replace that kind of talent. Utah is now forced to play with untested underclassmen who, according to Whittingham, will be rotating in and out of that position every few plays. It is plainly obvious that this loss is really a loss, despite Utah's depth.

Look for USU's offense to shine that much more, especially if the O-line has a good game. The likelihood of USU winning just went up.