BYU football vs West Virginia: 3 things we learned

The BYU football team fell to the West Virginia Mountaineers on Saturday. Here are three things we learned from the loss.

It wasn’t all bad for the Cougars at FedEx Field. Ty Detmer‘s offense moved the ball better than it had all season long and the offensive line sustained blocks. Unfortunately for the Cougars, they couldn’t keep up with the Mountaineer offense. Here’s what we learned from the 35-32 loss.

The BYU football WRs struggle against man coverage

There was a lot of talk through the first three weeks about BYU football’s offense. Was it the offensive line? Or the wide receivers? Maybe it was Taysom Hill?

Well, the Mountaineers may have given us a more clear answer.

The wide receivers struggled to get open for the third week in a row, despite Hill having time to throw.

West Virginia has an athletic defense – so it’s not crazy to see the wide outs struggle. But the degree to which they couldn’t separate against man coverage was concerning.

They were able to find soft spots in the zone coverage, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.

If they aren’t able to beat their defenders to make catches, then it’s up to Detmer to scheme them open and get more mismatches.

But that brings me to my next point.

Ty Detmer still has a way to go

All offseason, the entire narrative about the offense was how Detmer would be a dominant offensive mastermind.

Through one-third of the season, it doesn’t really look like that.

They play calling has largely been fine, And it’s important to remember that this offense, while incredibly talented, isn’t filled with his recruits. Plus, he’s a first-year coach. So there’s bound to be a bit of a learning curve.

So what’s a good way to judge Detmer? Plays coming out of timeouts seems to be a fair area.

Unfortunately for Detmer, he doesn’t grade too well.

The biggest black mark come on the Cougars’ two-point conversion tries. Especially this mangled mess of over-coaching.

There was also the squandered red zone drive in the second quarter. Jamaal Williams broke a 56-yard scamper to get into the red zone. The quarter ended, and the Cougars entered the second quarter with a chance to score.

The first play after the break? A hand-off.

Now I understand that BYU just gashed WVU, but doesn’t that seem like a great time to break out a play action pass? Instead, the run got stuffed and Williams never got another touch. The Cougars settled for a field goal.

Tough to extrapolate those results out over the entire game, but maybe the game ends in a BYU victory with a touchdown there.

Taysom Hill is… bad? Good? I don’t know

For three weeks I’ve been writing about how the Cougars need to move on from Hill. By this point, everyone that watches BYU football understands what he struggles to do and what he’s good at.

But at this point, I’m kind of lost.

Hill had his best game of the season against West Virginia. He ran for over 100 yards and completed 66 percent of his passes. The “Thorterback” also made better reads with the football, wasn’t afraid to hang in the pocket and went through his progressions.

On the flipside, he single-handedly cost the Cougars the win.

Hill threw three interceptions on day, including a terrible pick six on a lazy throw. He also threw interceptions on each of BYU’s final two drives – although they did hit off receivers’ hands. He now has TD to INT ration of 4:7.

So is he good? I don’t know. Is he bad? I don’t know. When the Cougars have to rely on his arm, it seems to end poorly more often than not. But if he can start running with the reckless abandon that he did against the Mountaineers, maybe they won’t need to rely on his arm quite this much.

However, if the game plan is to have him throw the ball, I think it’s tough to have any confidence in him. He made some nice reads, but his deep ball just isn’t there. It’s either eight yards too deep or two feet too short.

Still, the sky shouldn’t be falling in Provo. The Cougars are 1-3, but are a handful of plays from being 4-0. With a rookie coaching staff, there’s no reason to be overly concerned.

The BYU football team returns to Provo next week to take on Toledo.