Fall camp is one week old, the pads go on this week, and the depth chart fights are officially live. Morgan Scalley’s first camp as head coach has been heavy on two themes so far: the summer strength gains under new strength coach Steve Saunders, and the number of jobs that are genuinely open after Utah lost elite production on both lines and in the secondary.
That combination is exactly how breakout seasons happen. An 11-2 team that just won the Las Vegas Bowl does not usually have this many snaps available. Somebody has to take them.
We are not talking about Devon Dampier or Wayshawn Parker here. Those guys are established. This list is the next tier: five Utes who have shown you flashes, who the coaches keep bringing up unprompted, and who we think finish 2026 as names every Utah fan knows. Three on offense, two on defense, and one of them has never played a college snap.
1. Kash Dillon, Edge
Start with the most obvious math on the roster. Utah’s two starting edge rushers from 2025 combined for 16 sacks and 92 tackles, and both are gone. Those snaps do not disappear, they get inherited.
Dillon is first in line to inherit them. He put up 35 tackles and 3.5 sacks last season while playing behind two veterans, which is legit production for a rotational rusher. Lance Holtzclaw is the steadier, more proven player in the room and should lead it, but Dillon is the one with the higher ceiling as a pure pass rusher. He has spent his whole Utah career waiting behind established guys. There is nobody left to wait behind.
Our call: Dillon leads the team in sacks. If he gets to seven or eight, the entire defense looks different, because a real edge presence covers for a rebuilt defensive tackle room and a corner group full of new faces.
2. Cyrus Polu, Linebacker
Nobody generated more buzz relative to his snap count this offseason. Polu played just 96 defensive snaps in 2025, and yet he was one of the most talked-about players on the roster coming out of spring camp. That is usually a tell. Coaches and beat writers do not keep mentioning a backup linebacker for no reason.
The room in front of him is good but not crowded. Johnathan Hall is the anchor after a 67-tackle season with 6 tackles for loss, and Trey Reynolds brings experience and a pair of interceptions. Polu is the physical, athletic wild card, and even if he does not win a starting job outright in camp, he is the first linebacker off the bench and the kind of player who forces his way onto the field by October.
Our call: Polu ends the season starting, and by November he is the guy making the tackle that gets Rice-Eccles loud.
3. Daniel Bray, Running Back
Wayshawn Parker is RB1 and it is not a conversation. But Utah ran for 3,462 yards and 41 touchdowns last season, roughly 266 yards a game, and a run game like that feeds more than one back. The question all offseason has been who eats behind Parker, and Scalley basically answered it himself during spring camp, calling Bray “the biggest positive so far” in the room and praising how he has “built his body up” while buying into the culture.
When the head coach volunteers your name as the biggest positive in the room, you pay attention. Bray already gave Utah fans a preview with 121 yards against BYU as a freshman, in the biggest game of the year, on the road. The talent was never in question. The rebuilt body and a full offseason in Kevin McGiven’s offense are what turn flashes into a role.
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Our call: Bray clears 600 total yards as the clear number two, and there will be at least one Saturday where he is the best player on the field.
4. Larry Simmons, Wide Receiver
Fifteen catches, 280 yards, six touchdowns. Read that stat line again. Simmons scored on 40 percent of his receptions last season and averaged 18.7 yards a catch. That is not a role player stat line, that is a starter’s stat line compressed into a rotational player’s snaps.
The obstacle is that this is the deepest receiver room Utah has had in years. Braden Pegan arrives as the presumed top target after going for 926 yards at Utah State, Kyri Shoels brings 768 receiving yards from San Jose State, and converted quarterback Nate Johnson might be the most fascinating athlete in the building. But depth is not the same thing as a ceiling, and nobody in that room has flashed a nose for the end zone like Simmons has. Dampier threw 24 touchdowns last year and McGiven’s offense is going to spread the ball around. The big-play, red-zone specialist role is sitting right there.
Our call: Simmons doubles his catches and stays absurdly efficient. Something like 35 for 600 and 8 touchdowns, and Utah Twitter spends October arguing that he needs more targets.
5. Kelvin Obot, Offensive Line
Yes, we are putting a true freshman on this list, and no, we do not feel weird about it. Obot is Utah’s first-ever composite five-star signee, a 6-foot-5, 300-pound tackle out of Fruitland, Idaho, which happens to be the same small-town Idaho program that produced his new position coach, Jordan Gross. You could not script it better.
The path is wide open too. All five 2025 starters are gone, and while the projected first unit is built on veterans who have waited their turn, the right tackle spot is a live camp battle and Obot has the talent to force his way into the conversation anywhere on the line. Freshmen linemen almost never start at Utah. Freshmen linemen also almost never look like this.
Our call: we already said it in our OL deep dive and we will say it again here. Obot is in the starting lineup by the BYU game in November, and by December people are talking about him the way they talked about Spencer Fano as a young player.
The Common Thread
Four of these guys fit the same profile: they produced in limited chances, the opportunity in front of them just expanded, and the new staff keeps talking about them.
Obot is the exception, a player so talented the opportunity does not need to open up, he just takes it. That is the breakout formula. It is also, not coincidentally, the profile of this whole team in year one under Scalley. A lot of guys who have been waiting their turn, finally getting it.
What’s Next
Our position-by-position deep dive series rolls on this week with the cornerbacks, the biggest question mark on the defense and a three-man transfer battle between James Chenault, Elijah Reed and JC Hart that camp needs to sort out.
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