Utah fan here who lives in Big XII country - I come in peace. For what it's worth, I do think that this year's Utah team was probably better than their record, albeit not a great team. They had two bad losses their year - 1 to Oregon and 1 to Arizona State - but they did lose close ones to USC (1 point), Washington (3 points), Stanford (3 points) and Washington State (8 points - so only semi-close). They lost fair and square, but had a ball or two bounced differently they could have had wins against at least three teams who went to major bowls.
The Utes spent a lot of the season waiting for the OL to gel and they seemed to play somewhat better near the end of the year. Also, the QB (Huntley) was a first time starter this season and either missed a few games due to injuries or was playing at less than 100%. So some games the Utes had better offense than others. I'd say the WVU game Ute offense performed only so-so (the Mountaineers did a good job of getting some good rushes).
The Utah defense is usually the best group of the team. The DL you saw was probably the healthiest its been in weeks (the bowl game prep time allowed for some guys to get healthy). It seemed to me that more often than not they were winning at the line of scrimmage during the bowl game (I realize that WVU was missing linemen). The Utes were playing without 4 other defensive starters for the bowl game - both starting safeties, their best LB, and a CB.
I would have liked to have seen how the Utes looked against Grier. They'd played a lot of good QBs in the Pac-12 this year (Darnold, Rosen, Browning and Falk) so I think it would have been a good challenge.
Historically, this season was middle-of-the-road for the program since joining the PAC 12, in my opinion. There were two years in a row a few years back when had only 5 wins. The program is not upper-tier Pac-12, but I'd say they're middle-tier. They have probably top 3 facilities in the conference and have more players in the NFL than all other conference teams except USC and Cal (
http://www.ncaa.com/news/football/a...most-represented-2017-nfl-opening-day-rosters). For perspective, the only Big XII team with more players on opening day NFL rosters was Oklahoma. The Utes are good at finding diamonds in the rough and then developing them into quality NFL players (e.g., Steve Smith, Alex Smith, Eric Weddle, Devonte Booker, etc.)
Anyway, good luck next year. All of the WVU fans I met at the bowl game were complimentary and good sports despite the weather and final score.