He danced in the pocket, he skedaddled out of danger, he bombed the ball down the field at will.
The Tyler Huntley Utah fans fell for in September returned on a balmy November Friday night.
And the recurrence of form that showcased why he won the starting quarterback battle in fall camp is what allowed the Utes to finally snap their four-game losing streak — their longest since 2013 — in resounding fashion at Rice-Eccles Stadium.
“He’s just a true sophomore, but he’s fiercely competitive,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said of Huntley. “He’s very confident. And nobody took the last several losses any harder than he did. It’s great to see him come back and perform the way he did tonight.”
Facing the downtrodden UCLA defense, Huntley ushered the offense past a sloppy first-quarter performance into an outing undoubtedly needed to keep Utah’s bowl hopes alive. The sophomore quarterback routinely punished the Bruins when they had him bottled up, and for the first time since leading Utah to a 4-0 start, was able to launch the ball down the field.
Utah QB Tyler Huntley on the offensive explosion the Utes had in the 48-17 win over UCLA. pic.twitter.com/Dqo6b7p4Vm
— Chris Kamrani (@chriskamrani) November 4, 2017
Huntley finished 15 of 22 for 234 yards and tied a career-high with four touchdown passesh. He added another 93 yards on the ground on 18 carries. It was his first touchdown of the night, a lofted 25-yarder to the pylon, that dropped in perfectly to wide receiver Darren Carrington II. Utah’s leading receiver snagged the ball before casually tapping his toe in the end zone.
That helped the Utes escape their lackadaisical first quarter.
“You know with Tyler, it’s never done,” Carrington said. “We — not he — we had a losing streak. This was our game to get back on track, get back on our feet and get back to Utah football. Just to see him come out and never give up on us as a team, being our quarterback, it’s just good to see. He’s got years to come here. It’s never over for him.”
From then on, it was all Utah, and the orchestrator was Huntley.
On the first play from scrimmage in the third quarter, he launched a pass down the Utah sideline to a wide-open Troy McCormick, who jogged untouched into the end zone for the Utes’ longest play from scrimmage this season, 75 yards. Utah’s offense finally found its footing, counter-punching the UCLA defense with runs by running back Zack Moss and with the ball in the right hand of Huntley.
“We came out, threw one to Troy, he ran for his life and got the touchdown,” Huntley said.
Midway through the third quarter, Huntley capped a lightning-quick three-play, 60-yard drive with a 13-yard touchdown pass, again to McCormick.
The designed quarterback runs that were often featured the first four games of the year were back and played an effective role in gashing the Bruins. Huntley, who suffered a right shoulder injury at Arizona on September 22 that kept him out for a month, was admittedly working his way back to full health the past two weeks.
On Friday, he made defenders miss, rolled out of the pocket and waited to get outside. The ad-lib plays were dazzling, too.
Early on, Huntley managed to evade a sack deep in Utah territory by getting off a pass to Carrington as he was being dragged down. Later, he softly floated another pass to Carrington as he was forced out the sideline, a completion later negated by an offensive penalty.
Huntley capped off his banner night with a 2-yard touchdown pass to fullback Cody Ippolito.
“As an offense, we did a good job of putting the ball in the end zone,” Huntley said. “It was kind of fun today.”
On a night that didn’t start all that hot, it ended impeccably.
The Tyler Huntley of September, the one that briefly left after being slammed into the turf in Tucson, had returned.
“He was back to his old self tonight,” Whittingham said.