WVU Football Suffers Demoralizing 48-14 Loss to Utah

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – On a day about honoring West Virginia’s past, both by wearing a 1965 throwback uniform and celebrating the school’s 2025 Hall of Fame class, the current WVU football team was unable to provide the fans much reason to be proud of the present.

With Jaylen Henderson under center, WVU’s offense stalled early and then Utah cracked the game open with back-to-back touchdown drives in the first quarter.

West Virginia’s defense came close to forcing a couple turnovers, but the Utes were able to march up and down the field with ease, mostly thanks to Utah quarterback Devon Dampier’s arm and running back NaQuari Rogers’ legs.

This trend would continue into the second quarter, highlighted by a 32-yard bomb from Dampier to Ryan Davis. A failure to convert the one yard needed for a first down that led to a turnovers on downs with 8:46 left in the half sucked out any enthusiasm left in the crowd.

And even through West Virginia did flip the field right back with an interception, the offense still showed little signs of enough to live threaten getting on the scoreboard at all.

Utah punched one more touchdown in before the end of the first half to administer more pain for WVU fans.

Some of that would briefly subside when Khalil Wilkins replaced Henderson. Wilkins got West Virginia on the scoreboard, throwing a 39-yard pass to Vaughn, who then ran the rest of the way to the end zone.

At the time of his exit in the third quarter, Henderson was just 3-of-7 for 22 yards through the air while running for 28 yards on 13 attempts on the ground.

Then, after Utah tacked on a field goal to increase their lead to 38-7, Wilkins aired it out even more. He was 3-for-6 for 63 yards during his first two series, granted it didn’t matter. A touchdown pass to Rodney Gallagher was called back for an offensive holding call, which eventually led to Utah taking the ball over on downs.

Diore Hubbard joined Wilkins to provide some offensive success, running for 49 yards and a score in the fourth quarter. But at the end of the day, the score didn’t lie – it read Utah 48, WVU 14.

With the demoralizing loss, West Virginia is now 2-3 overall and 0-2 in conference play. The Mountaineers will now turn their attention to a long road trip and a trip to Utah to take on BYU before finally earning a break with a midseason bye week.