BYU Football: Offense making football boring again

BYU football’s offensive attack once again struggled to score against UCLA as they did against Utah, and was a far cry from what their fan base and brand expects.

Before the evolution of the pass in the modern college game (which many credit in part to the legendary LaVell Edwards), there was this type of football people called “3-yards and a cloud of dust.”

BYU football’s offense seems to be trying to resurrect it.

The huddle seemed like a great idea. Time to look your offense in the eye, to get the play right. But Saturday night against UCLA, with ten minutes to go in the fourth quarter and down two scores, it seemed to grind the life out of the stadium. And not just because there wasn’t much of getting the play right.

BYU Cougars

There was no feeling of urgency. Even after three quarters of struggle—passing inconsistently, scraping for yards against a stacked box of UCLA defenders, and upping punter Johnny Linehan’s stats on nearly every drive—they just plodded on.

So when Ty Detmer’s offense inevitably stalled again, looking like they were nonchalantly striding through the game plan, many in the crowd predicted exactly what would happen:

The defense would get a stop. The offense would have a successful drive in the last two minutes. And then there would be just enough time to watch UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen do a few deep knee bends as the game trickled away.

In BYU’s final drive, Nick Kurtz’s late touchdown catch was received less with celebration and more with mild relief. ‘Well,’ the crowd thought, ‘at least with this we won’t look quite as bad.’ The more tepid fans had already long abandoned the stadium for the night and their long, somber drives home.

That is not BYU football.

The coaches are almost all former players. They lived the days when the name “BYU Cougars” meant “offensive juggernaut.” They surely know that 14 points on a bare 273 yards of total offense does not coincide with the school’s brand, does not cut the offensive mustard, cannot continue if they want to even get to a bowl game.

But there wasn’t a single place to pinpoint that could fix the mess. Blame was being passed all around in double scoop helpings.

Receivers dropped passes. Wide open receivers were overthrown, or under thrown, or just plain missed. The offensive line had inconsistent pass blocking, even worse on the run. And frankly, Taysom Hill is looking a far cry from his former Longhorn-leaping self.

It’s all the more a shame for a defense that did almost everything that was asked of it. UCLA’s punter got almost as sweaty as BYU’s. But even they only managed a single sack and interception, most of the time meeting UCLA running backs in that dusty cloud in the middle of the field.

Eventually, the Bruins settled into a comfortable pattern: run for short, run for short, long pass for a first down. It was good enough to get the points needed for the win with a BYU offense excelling in 3-and-outs on the opposite side. But not much else.

This combination produced what is decidedly one of the dullest, most disappointing outings in recent memory for the Cougars. It resurrected fears from the Utah game that this might be a repeat of the Cougar’s 2012 team—a superior defense saddled to a mediocre attack.

There wasn’t even that usual deflating feeling of loss as the final seconds ticked away. It was a glacial defeat: not a question of if, but when BYU would lose.

Much like when you read the plot of a movie on Wikipedia, the game was stripped of the romance of college football, the uncertainty of its amateurism, the feeling that comebacks are always possible. It was flat, predictable, and far short of what the actual experience is intended to be.

It’s hard to say how the Cougars will proceed from here. Change the speed of the pace of play? Bench Taysom? Mix up the play calls? There are many paths open to first year head coach Kalani Sitake and his green offensive coordinator.

But surely another lackluster offensive like this is something no one wants—no fan, nor player, nor TV partner hoping to sell a game late on a Saturday night.

Because a college football game should not be something to help you fall asleep at night.