Just like old times
Is it the uniforms? The Cougs beat Air Force 62-41 on Saturday. Sounds like a score from back in the day doesn’t it? Let me say that BYU’s offense looked awesome as it ran over the Falcons, racking up nearly 700 yards in the process. Sure the Falcons have the worst defense BYU will see (except perhaps in practice) but it was fun to see an old-school shootout again.
Here are some of the positives and negatives I saw in the game.
Positives:
• We have a great running game going. Curtis Brown and Fahu Tahi look really good. They have probably gotten better but I suspect it is the offensive line that deserves most of the credit for the turnaround in the running game. AFA coach Fisher DeBerry caught some heat for calling the BYU O-Line 400 lb. 30 yr. olds in the week, but they certainly made him pay on Saturday.
• John Beck is a solid QB. I keep being surprised that he doesn’t suck. I should probably get over that…
• Hey, who is that new guy catching the ball? Why it’s freshman receiver Michael Reed. He had a breakout game with more than 100 receiving yards. That may be good news for Todd Watkins actually. I think Watkins probably misses Elder Austin Collie more than anyone else on the team right now. If Reed can step in as another real deep threat then teams won’t be able to double cover Watkins as much as they have all season.
• 219 rushing yards for Brother Brown. ‘Nuff said.
• Our D-Line and Linebackers look good – at least against the run.
Negatives:
• Our defensive backfield is, ummm, not good… still. Why on earth would anyone even try to run on us? The corners we have right now are apparently ill equipped to handle any D1 receivers. It seems to me that we will see a lot of passes against us until we can stop anybody’s air attack. We seem to do best when we rush three and drop eight in to coverage. Maybe we’ll see more of that.
• Special Teams? Yeah… not good this week. We might want to put a little more focus on that area of the game.
I suspect the only ones that were (secretly) happy that we gave up 34 points in the last 16 minutes of the game were the offensive starters. The defensive and special teams stinkfest gave them an excuse to rack up those gaudy numbers (instead of letting the backups come in for mop up). Sure, it may be fun for them and for us, but will it work in Laramie or against Utah?
With the Cougs now at 4-4 I’m stickin’ with my 6-5 prediction for now. Until we can stop any passing attack I’m afraid to predict any better than that. Then again, with the offense steamrolling opposing defenses lately maybe we don’t need defense anymore…
http://deadspin.com/sports/college-football/feeling-fisher-deberrys-pain-134125.php
A somewhat interesting, short little blurb about AFA/BYU and DeBerry’s comments. Not sure what he’s actually saying, but I think he’s making fun of BYU.
Comment by Pris — October 31, 2005 @ 10:47 am
Pris,
I think DeBerry mostly got in trouble for saying his team is too slow because they don’t have enough black athletes. I actually don’t know where he made the 400 lb. 30 yr. old comment about our linemen but I think it is a pretty funny snark (even if it back-fired on him).
Comment by Geoff J — October 31, 2005 @ 11:03 am
Yeah, I got that–the “he” I was refering to was the author of the linked page. I was unsure how he was making fun of race-issues at BYU.
Comment by Pris — October 31, 2005 @ 11:43 am
It’s had to judge too much from this game. Air Force unfortunately is one step above that division 2 team we played earlier in the year. Our defense really did look horrible though. The big game, as we all expect, will be Utah. In certain ways we’re two peas in a pod this year.
BTW – did anyone else expect Watkins to be a bigger force? I admittedly didn’t see the 4th quarter. But in the first half while he had a few good plays he still didn’t break out like I expected. I think a lot of us who expected big things from Watkins this year are a tad surprised. Admittedly weakness elsewhere meant he was getting double teamed a lot. So it’s not all his fault. But I wonder if the past two games have got to his head and psyched him out a tad.
Comment by Clark Goble — October 31, 2005 @ 12:51 pm
I forgot to mention that November will show if the Cougars really are getting better throughout the season or not. Over the past three years BYU headed into November in basically the same shape they are in this year — hovering near .500 in wins and losses. In each of those Novembers the Cougs lost more games than they won. If BYU can pull out 2 or 3 wins it will bode well for the Mendenhall era. I said it before (to the objection of some of our participants) but I thought that weak finishes were the worst trait of the teams under coach Crowton.
Clark – I expect we might see another big game or two out of Watkins. But time is running out for him and his NFL career so if it is a mental glitch he needs to get over it quickly. Also, I agree that we need to work out our defensive woes because even though UNLV doesn’t look tough, Wyoming is never easy in Laramie in November and Utah will likely even be tougher.
Comment by Geoff J — October 31, 2005 @ 1:24 pm
Geoff said,
You can find a score like this “from back in the day,” but scoring like this didn’t happen very often (Geoff, no doubt you were waiting for me to chime in ). In fact by my count there was only one game in the Edwards era (actually 1976–2000, I am missing the first few years of the Edwards era) where BYU scored 60 or more and the opponent scored 40 or more:
1980 Utah State 70 — 46
The number increases to 12 if you look at games were both teams scored 40 or more; which is about 3.9% of the games. The rate was lower in the Crowton era (only about 2% of the games), but the univariate difference is not statistically significant (p-value=0.52).
Comment by Karl D. — October 31, 2005 @ 1:51 pm
The defense is still very worrisome. I think that it is a combination of talent and scheme. The talent doesn’t fit the scheme, making the scheme ineffective. Although, Air Force really didn’t expose the secondary as much as Notre Dame did. I kept hoping that we’d get another down lineman in there as BYU’s safety blitz isn’t very effective against an experienced O-Line.
Also, Harmon says that the second and third string players went into the game late in the third quarter only to be pulled out when things started to get out of hand. I think that this just means that the first string can shut down a bad offense but if we lose any more players our upcoming opponents should consider late Heisman campaigns for their quarterbacks.
Comment by Matt — October 31, 2005 @ 2:17 pm
I think our defense is sufficiently bad that it’ll be pretty hard to stop evenly vaguely good teams. Our offense has come together well. However our defense seems to get almost worse, if that is possible. To let Air Force get 41 points is simply embarrassing. Yea a win is a win. But come on…
It’s weird as under Crowton our defense was typically pretty good all things considered. It was usually a lacking offense that was the problem. Now our offense is looking good (if not yet great) and our defense looks horrible. Admittedly the injuries have had a lot to do with that as does the players in the backfield. However I think that charge that’s been haunting Bronco all seasons remains. Is he able to be both head coach and defensive coach?
Comment by Clark Goble — October 31, 2005 @ 2:19 pm
I think it is pretty hard to argue that the defense was that good in 2001, but I agree that it was pretty good in 2003 and 2004 (both Bronco years). Here is a summary of the Massey computer ranking for the offense and the defense:
year Offense Deffense
2001 3 118
2002 129 67
2003 113 42
2004 53 47
There is just not enough data and too much variance to make many generaliztions about the Crowton era. But the data are consistent with Clark’s generaliztion.
Comment by Karl D. — October 31, 2005 @ 2:39 pm
Geoff, no doubt you were waiting for me to chime in
Indeed I was (Sheesh, how much goading does it take, Karl?)
Nice pull on how anomalous a score this high by both teams is even for BYU. I suppose that shootouts just stand out in fans’ memories. If anything, I think this team is beginning to resemble the 2001 team under Crowton. The difference is that team came out of the gate with a great offense and this one has taken half the season to fire on all cylinders. (Let’s hope this team doesn’t implode in the finale like that one did though.) But that team had a terrible defense too — so much so that Ken Schmitt lost his job over it if I remember correctly. I think Matt is right that our personnel just is not fitting the 3-3-5 well this year. Our weakness is the secondary so why put 5 of them out there this year? I thought the pass defense looked best when we rushed three and dropped eight late in the game (unsurprisingly I guess).
So Karl, how many times did we score over 40 in the Lavell years? This years pass defense is especially bad I think — certainly a lot worse than the average Lavell team. I think this game should have ended at a score of something like 49-14. As I mentioned earlier, the defense was so bad that it justified and even required pushing our score into the 60s.
Comment by Geoff J — October 31, 2005 @ 3:07 pm
Comment by Karl D. — October 31, 2005 @ 3:35 pm
Oops, comment 11 should look like the following:
That happened a lot; over 30% of the time in the Edwards era. Here is a breakdown by sub-period:
1976-1980: 40%
1981-1985: 38%
1986-1990: 34%
1991-1995: 25%
1996-2000: 22%
It also was fairly common in the Crowton Era, but only because of 2001:
2001-2004: 28%
2001: 71%
2002-2004: 11%
Note: I did not include division 1-AA opponents in the preceding summary stats.
Comment by Karl D. — October 31, 2005 @ 3:37 pm
This team is also starting to compare to the 2001 team in terms of computer rankings. For example, the 2001 Sagarin ranking was 28. Right now, BYU’s Sagarin ranking is 43. If BYU can win the next three games, then I think the ranking will be pretty similar. Although, we might drop in the computer rankings even if we beat UNLV (it is going to hurt our strength of schedule).
Comment by Karl D. — October 31, 2005 @ 3:50 pm
The schedule in 2001 was definitely softer than this year’s schedule. I personally think if we could win out and win a bowl this would be a better overall year than that one (as shocking as that sounds to me right now…)
Comment by Geoff J — October 31, 2005 @ 4:43 pm
Another thing, how many games in 2001 were won by a hair? It seems like we were contstantly getting lucky that year. So many of the games could have gone either way.
Comment by Eric Russell — November 1, 2005 @ 10:41 am
five: UNLV (35-31), New Mexico (24-20), Wyoming (41-34, Staley scored with about 2:00 minutes left for the go ahead touchdown), Utah (24-21), and Miss St. (41-38)
Let’s compare this to the national championship year (1984): Pitt (20-14, Bosco threw to Adam Haysbert for a 50-yard touchdown with 1:30 remaining to take the lead), Hawaii (18-13, Kyle Morrell’s goal line stand saved the game), Wyoming (41-38, 4th quarter go ahead touchdown pass by Bosco), Air Force (30-25), and Michigan (24-17, go ahead touchdown with 1.23 left).
The 2001 win a lot of close games, but it is not without historical precedent.
Comment by Karl D. — November 1, 2005 @ 11:25 am