SALT LAKE CITY — With FOX’s “Big Noon Kickoff” setting the stage, the excitement for a home conference game against two ranked teams was palpable.
Utah fans showed up for the 10 a.m. game, filling Rice-Eccles Stadium before kickoff, but the Utah offense didn’t.
In a matchup that was a sort of “prove-it game” for both teams — one about buying a roster and the other a chance to show 2024 was an anomaly — it was Texas Tech who withstood the traded punches (and mistakes and turnovers).
The one thing certain was both team’s had a defense that came to play … until Utah’s had had enough late in the fourth quarter.
In the end, No. 17 Texas Tech left Salt Lake City with a convincing 34-10 win over a No. 16 Utah offense that failed to live up to expectations.
“Defense played lights out for three and a half quarters, and then went from 13 to 34 in the blink of an eye, and that can’t happen,” Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham said. “I mean, that can’t happen; you’ve gotta finish the games. You’ve gotta keep your poise and keep doing the things that you were doing the first three and a half quarters. You can’t let things get away from us like that in the fourth quarter.”
After stalling out for much of the day, Utah’s offense came alive with just over 12 minutes left in the game, and Devon Dampier orchestrated a 75-yard drive in seven plays that was capped off with a 5-yard rushing touchdown by Wayshawn Parker to make it a 3-point game two minutes later.
Texas Tech wasn’t phased by the score, though, as backup quarterback Will Hammond escaped for a 32-yard run into Utah territory on the next series, and then finished off the drive with a wide-open toss to Terrance Carter Jr. for a 24-yard touchdown to all but seal the game.
But the Red Raiders weren’t done there and took the chance to make a statement. In the final minutes of the game, Texas Tech (4-0, 1-0 Big 12) added two more touchdowns — including a 24-yard run by running back Cameron Dickey and a 21-yard reception by Reggie Virgil.
“That’s a really good football team we played. I give them all the credit,” Whittingham said. “They’ve assembled themselves a really good roster, and they’re talented, physical. It was a good football team that we faced. We didn’t do anything to help our own cause, particularly on offense.”
Hammond finished with 169 yards and two touchdowns on 13-of-16 passing, while adding 61 yards on the ground on eight carries, in backup duty for the win. The Texas Tech offense finished with 484 total yards of offense.
Texas Tech opened up the game hot by forcing Utah (3-1, 0-1 Big 12) into a three-and-out series, and then starting quarterback Behren Morton connected on a short pass to J’Koby Williams, who dodged his way through traffic en route to a 73-yard gain that highlighted initial poor Utah tackling.
A couple plays later, Dickey found pay dirt on a 1-yard run to take the early 7-0 lead.
From there, though, the two teams traded defensive stops, which included forcing Utah into lost fumbles and Morton into two first-half interceptions. Morton’s second interception came when Utah defensive back Jackson Bennee stripped the ball out of a receivers hands in the end zone to avoid an early double-digit deficit.
Morton eventually left the game for good in the third quarter after sustaining a hit to the head on a scramble play up field. The veteran quarterback finished throwing for 142 yards and two interceptions on 12-of-19 passing for the day.
As his replacement, Hammond moved the ball against an otherwise good Utah defensive performance for much of the day.
But Utah couldn’t capitalize on the change at quarterback, or the 14 Texas Tech penalties — including seven false starts — and continued to stall on offense as the Red Raiders cut off short passes and screen plays.
Utah has, at times, lacked a rhythm on offense this season, but Saturday was the worst performance of the year. The offense only managed 256 total yards and just over 100 yards (101) in the run game, but with no real star in the performance.
“I never would have believed if you would have said we would lose the line scrimmage — never would have believed that a million years — but we did,” Whittingham said. “We didn’t win the line of scrimmage.”
Dampier, though, credited his offensive line, saying the line is “gonna hold up for us,” but his “connections to receivers just needs to be a lot more efficient and a lot more cleaner.”
“We put ourselves in some tough situations,” Dampier added. “You try to minimize the self mistakes — we consider those more self mistakes than them making plays. So, that’s just something we want to control a lot better going into these next following weeks.”
Dampier finished the game throwing for 162 yards and two interceptions — his first of the season — on 25-of-38 passing. He added 27 rushing yards on 11 carries in an otherwise lackluster performance.
Texas Tech Red Raiders defensive lineman Dylan Singleton (93) jumps on a loose ball during the first half of the game against the Utah Utes at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Sept. 20, 2025. (Photo: Rio Giancarlo, Deseret News)
As a team, Utah was just 4-of-14 on third downs and had four total turnovers — two fumbles and two interceptions. Texas Tech had the two interceptions.
“I think the biggest thing is just staying efficient, putting ourselves in a lot of third-and-longs,” Dampier said. “Those are hard to overcome in football. We try to stay as efficient as possible.”
Whittingham said he didn’t have a clear answer on why Utah has struggled to get into a rhythm on offense at times this season, but said the team needs to “find a way to get us right” at the wide receiver position.
“We didn’t get much involvement with the wideouts today, but you’ve gotta get open,” Whittingham said. “You’ve gotta get open to get the ball, and so we’ve gotta do a better job of coaching to help them get open.”
Utah will look to get their first conference win next week in a road game in Morgantown against West Virginia before the team’s first bye of the season.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.