BYU Football: The good, the meh, and the ugly

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SALT LAKE CITY, UT – OCTOBER 7: The Stanford Cardinal offense runs onto the field during the first half of an college football game against the Utah Utes on October 7, 2017 at Rice Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images) /

The Ugly

BYU looks completely outmatched at Arizona, as Khalil Tate minces the Cougar defense and Tanner Mangum is completely ineffective in moving the ball on offense.

Things look slightly better at home against Cal, but not enough to get the Cougars in the win column, and a blowout loss at Wisconsin moves BYU to 0-3.

Blessed relief finally comes against the FCS school, but the Cougars only manage to edge McNeese state by four.

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Another demoralizing loss against a Top 5 Washington team has BYU on the edge of another nightmare season, and that nightmare becomes more real when the Cougars lose to Utah State in back-to-back seasons for the first time since the Nixon administration.

BYU manages to keep their bowl hopes alive by winning a shootout against Hawaii, but Northern Illinois invades LaVell Edwards Stadium and dashes those hopes with a convincing win.

The Smurf Turf proves to be too much for a reeling Cougar squad, and so does the trip out east for an early matchup with UMass. Two straight losses to Utah State is bad. Two straight losses to UMass takes the ineptitude to a whole new level.

At least the Cougars manage to put together one last decent showing on Senior Day, as BYU picks up the third win of the season against New Mexico State.

Utah decides to unveil their new “2008 Anderson & Hester National Champions” banner next to their “2015 PAC-12 South Co-Champions” one when they host the Cougars. BYU can’t even keep it close this time, as the Utes finally win a decent November game in convincing fashion.

Regular Season Record: 3-9

Bowl Invite: None

Final Ranking: NR

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If BYU ends up doing worse than my worst prediction once again, it’ll be time to make some wholesale changes with the football program. And I’ll never try to predict anything ever again.

Fortunately, that’s not likely. There are enough winnable games for BYU to improve on last year’s win total.

Of course, they lost most of their winnable games last year…

dark. Next. Scouting the Schedule - New Mexico State

Here’s my real prediction for BYU Football in 2018:

Regular Season Record: 7-5

Bowl Invite: Frisco Bowl

Final Ranking: NR

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