Here’s the simple look at Whittingham
2000 4-7 pre Meyer/Whittingham
2001 8-4 pre Meyer/Whittingham
2002 5-6 pre Meyer/Whittingham
2003 10-2 Urban Meyer
2004 12-0 Urban Meyer
2005 7-5 Whittingham
2006 8-5 Whittingham
2007 9-4 Whittingham
2008 12-0 Whittingham

I like the consistent improvement. It looks especially good considering that Utah lost one of the most exciting coaches in Urban Meyer. I’m sure that made recruiting pretty tough for the next few years. Whittingham doesn’t look flashy to me, but he sure gets the job done.

When Meyer left, he took the entire offense with him. Seriously, I mean that in nearly ever respect.

Mike Sanford, Utah’s OC, left for UNLV.

Dan Mullen, Utah’s QB coach, left for Florida and became Florida’s OC.

Alex Smith, Utah’s quarterback, decided to forgo his senior year and entered the NFL draft.

Marty Johnson, Utah’s star running back, graduated.

Steve Savoy, one of Utah’s best receivers, left.

Paris Warren, another great receiver, left.

That doesn’t include the offensive line they lost. In 2005, Utah started Brian Johnson, who only saw limited time playing scrub minutes once Alex Smith and Utah had the game in hand.

To say Whittingham had to essentially start from scratch would be an understatement. He took a team over that lost nearly all its offensive production, a good chunk of its defense and still managed to get through the season with a winning record. At times it was ugly, as growing pains clearly hindered the coaching staff, but they managed to beat Arizona, beat BYU and then Georgia Tech in the Emerald Bowl. Those last two games, the Utes were without Brian Johnson, who was injured in the 2nd to last game of the season.

In 2006, it was tough as well, since Johnson still wasn’t fully recovered and they redshirted him in favor of Brett Ratliff, who wasn’t a terrible quarterback, but also was only a junior college transfer who wasn’t very highly touted. Utah also had to replace Quinton Ganther, their running back who graduated and couldn’t find any type of production on the ground. Even then, they still knocked off a nationally ranked TCU team and should have defeated a nationally ranked BYU team, unfortunately, the Cougars scored with no time left and won for the first time in four years over Utah.

2007 was a weird year for Utah. The Utes opened up against the Beavers and looked solid at the start, but then they lost their starting running back Matt Asiata to a season ending injury. A quarter later, Johnson again went down, forcing him to miss the next three games of the season. Replacing him was Tommy Grady, who did not have any grasp of how to run an effective offense. In the second game of the season, Utah not only lost a heartbreaker to Air Force, they lost arguably their best receiver — Brent Casteel — for the season. Somehow, they still bounced back and defeated #11th ranked UCLA and then hit rock bottom with an embarrassing 20-0 loss to UNLV. That loss was important, because Utah has only lost once since.

Johnson returned a week later and Utah ripped off a seven game winning streak, defeating Louisville, TCU and almost, again, beating BYU, only to lose after coughing up the lead with a minute left. That was their last loss and they bounced back to defeat Navy in the Poinsettia Bowl to finish 9-4.

The thing is, Utah has faced so many injury problems and rebuilding issues since Whittingham got here that you could never really get a grasp of what he was capable of doing. Ute fans knew this year would be the year and expected everything to come together and it did. But what kept Utah going was the fact they never crumbled. There were so many times over the years where Utah’s season could have gone into the crapper, but Whittingham managed to keep the ship straightened and it paid off this season.

With that said, I don’t think Whittingham goes to Washington, but if he does, he’ll be a hell of a coach. Whittingham is very passionate and tough and I’d expect Washington to play just like him. I’ve had my criticism of Whittingham in the past, but none have been about the toughness of his teams. They rarely go down without a fight and generally play above their heads when backed into a corner.