College football 2018: Top 30 breakout players to watch

Tyler Huntley started ten games for Kyle Willingham as a sophomore in 2017. His first season as a starter had a lot in common with Utah’s season as a whole — there were peaks and valleys, frustrations and setbacks, but also signs of promise. Overall, Huntley’s 2,400 passing yards, 15 touchdowns and 10 interceptions won’t be looked back on as a smashing success, but like the team’s 7-6 record, it also wasn’t a total failure.

Tyler Huntley doesn’t have the prototypical build you think of in great Pac-12 quarterbacks but he has above-average athleticism (537 rushing yards last season) and a cannon for a right arm. He got off to a red-hot start before a shoulder injury caused him to miss two games in early October last season. Utah lost both games he missed against Stanford and USC by a combined four points. When Huntley returned, he looked out rhythm and timid at times in his next two starts and it took the young quarterback and his young team a couple of weeks to bounce back to the way they’d started the year.

Utah came within a field goal of upsetting No. 9 Washington on the road and within a touchdown of upsetting No. 19 Washington State. They ended the season on high notes by beating Colorado in the regular season finale then West Virginia in the Heart of Dallas Bowl.

As a second-year starter in 2018, he’ll have a 1,000 rusher coming back along with two of his top three receivers. If he shows year over year development in the form of better decision-making throwing the ball into traffic and learns to protect himself outside the pocket, the team’s trajectory is likely to mirror his and Utah could find themselves with double-digit win totals, contending for the Pac-12 title.