After a small decline at linebacker last season, position changes and a coaching switch may have the Cougars back in the linebacker business.
A year ago, fans were raving about the linebacking corps. All three starters – Francis Bernard, Butch Pau’u, and Fred Warner – were returning from a huge 2016 campaign. Some even said it could be the best BYU football had ever seen.
But then things changed.
Bernard was declared ineligible by the university. His replacement, Matt Hadley, who converted from safety, got injured early in the season. The combined losses proved to be too much for the Cougar defense to recover from.
Then, Butch Pau’u saw a slight drop in production. Even though the numbers weren’t far off from the previous season, it was evident that Butch had lost a step and wasn’t reacting with the same speed and force he had before.
Graduating senior Fred Warner, on the other hand, didn’t disappoint. But his performance wasn’t enough to boost the position group’s output to the level that Cougar Nation was expecting.
Now that spring ball has concluded, let’s take a look at the linebackers for 2018:
The Returning Starter
Butch Pau’u (6’0, 225, Sr) is the only returning starter from the 2017 team. He’ll try to return to the heights he reached as a sophomore at middle backer. Lamb assures us that he should, saying, “… (he) has really improved his body composition from last year to this year. I think his going to be much more looking like his 2016 form.”