They weren’t perfect, but BYU’s defense played well enough to win, despite the 29-7 loss. If you had told me that the Cougar defense would get six tackles for a loss, four sacks, five field goal attempts, and hold them to six total points in three of their five Red Zone attempts, I would have loved BYU’s chances. They did all of that, and still lost by 22.
That tells me they battled, but were worn down without help from their offense. The Cougar defense held Texas Tech to 368 total yards, which wasn’t terribly beyond their average of 318.3 per game, which had been good enough for 26th in the nation. The 29 points they allowed were different; it was 12 above the 17 points per game they had been allowing, which had been good enough for 15th in the country.
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Texas Tech ran the football much better than the stat line suggests. For the game, they had 43 carries for 149 yards against BYU’s 43rd-ranked rush defense that was allowing 129.4 yards per game. That is deflated by BYU’s four sacks, which meant Behren Morton would finish the game with five carries for minus 47 yards. Tech’s running backs had 199 yards on 36 carries and a touchdown, grinding BYU down. The Cougars also gave up 219 passing yards and a touchdown.
Surprisingly, BYU actually had a slight edge in time of possession. They had the ball for 30:35 to Texas Tech’s 29:25. It seemed like the Red Raiders had the ball for the lion’s share, but it was nearly even. They had a slight edge in running 75 plays on offense to BYU’s 65. The grinding down of the Cougar defense made this feel more lopsided than it was.
The bottom line is that Texas Tech took care of the ball and, with one exception, got points when they were available. BYU’s defense was 15th in the nation in forcing turnovers coming into this game, with 16 on the season. They didn’t get a single one out of Texas Tech. Couple that with a kicker that makes five field goals on five attempts, and a top ten team gets a win at home against just about any defense. BYU has to have a short memory, though, as next week they host TCU's prolific passing attack.