Is LSU THAT good, or are we THAT bad? I hope the former, because if it’s the latter, Utah will destroy us, Wisconsin will bury the body, and this season is over almost before it starts. I did not believe we had ANY chance to beat LSU, but I NEVER thought we would be completely embarrassed like that. It was terrible to see, and it makes me believe the talent gap between BYU and top programs is even greater than I thought. I see lots of “little league” parents with small or slow children buy them expensive gear and put them in fancy camps and think it will make a difference. However, I tell them that stuff doesn’t matter; I tell them, “85% of success in football is what body God decides to put a kid in and whether a kid is aggressive.” We all knew LSU would be bigger, faster, and better, but is the gap really THAT big? They could have scored 50 if they wanted to, but their coach knew that game was over by the second quarter, and they just ran the clock to do a mercy kill. We were totally outmanned, and I have never seen a worse demolition of a D1 team that was supposed to be competitive. Almost every guy on our team was manhandled. And I don’t even want to get started on our QB play…YUK AND YUK.
I hear you and it was humiliating and a nightmare before bed time. it was UGLY, not crossing the 50 yard line was bad and only 6 1st down. I believe Gary Crowton canceled the LSU game when he became coach at BYU.
SEC is getting stronger every year and who knows when we will see two SEC in the playoff. LSU is like Alabama and they will get bigger, stronger and faster. We luck out against Nebraska, Michigan St, Texas, Oklahoma and few PAC12. I was surprise that we got LSU on our schedule for this year.
I am not upbeat about our coming up game this Saturday. We lose again, then I don’t have to listen and see those Pukes making snickers at us.
We were clearly outmatched and outmanned in this game. Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do but try your best, and this was one of those games. Despite what some have said, we did not give up or have “weak” attitudes. We did the best that we could, and our complete inability to run the ball also made it difficult to pass.
None of us really knew what to expect. Not really. We hoped for a competitive game where we acquitted ourselves well, but I think most of us would have been stunned to have upset them. I, personally, thought that the line of 14-17 points was about right, although I hoped that it would be closer. In the back of all of our minds was also the possibility that we would be blown out of the water (think: disaster games, like Hawaii over the years, or Texas A&M 64-10). I found this game to be less maddening than the 3-0 loss to Utah in the snow, where both teams played not to make a big mistake.
I found the game to be less stressful than a tight game where we have a chance. We were clearly outmatched and weren’t going to be able to move the ball at all on offense. Our defense, although giving up a lot of rushing yards, played really well, I thought — especially considering how long they were on the field. We played to contain (we didn’t stack the box to force them to pass, in order not to give up big passing plays), and we held them to two field goals, a 4th down goal line stop, and a missed field goal deep in the red zone. So, despite surrendering 4-5 yards a carry, our defense is actually really good.
I still think Tanner Mangum is our man, but his confidence is shaken. He (and Detmer) were clearly trying to avoid sacks and interceptions, and this limited the passing game. He could have waited longer in the pocket, in hindsight, but he got rid of the ball fast. I think hearing footsteps (or anticipating hearing footsteps) affected several throws that were simply off (he uncharacteristically missed several receivers who were open). He has demonstrated in the past that he is an accurate passer — much more so than Taysom Hill.
I’m not normally one to call for the backup, but I was hoping they would put in Hoge to simply provide a running threat at QB (to give the defense more to think about for coverage). Hill’s horrible passing games drove me nuts, but I think we would have had a better chance in this game with Hill because of his running ability. Going with Hoge also wouldn’t have been a sign that Mangum had been “dethroned;” it’s just situational and a matter of matchup.
I’m really getting tired of trying to run up the middle with Tre Dye. He’s tiny! That’s a bad call even against Portland St. Squally Canada is also really small to go up the middle. That leaves us with running around the ends, and I don’t think our guys are fast enough to concern many teams.
I also don’t fault Linehan for yet another bone-headed fake punt. At least he was trying to do something! And, it was the difference between losing 20-0 or 27-0. Yes, it’s scary to have someone with a maverick attitude like that going rogue, but it ended up being one of our longest runs from scrimmage (he was about a yard and a half short of a first down).
Given how the game was going, and how our defense was holding them deep in our territory, I would have gone for it on 4th and not punted it as much. We didn’t gain that much in terms of field position, overrall, and both our defense and our offense needed us to have more offensive plays and extend drives. Worst case: we turn it over on downs, and our exhausted defense needs to hold 'em again.
At this point, I feel a lot better with the game in our defense’s hands than the offense’s.
I’m not sure why were were so non-competitive in this game. We have been able to hang with the elites in games in the past (although, we have also been blown away embarrassingly before, too). Portland St. and now LSU make the upcoming Utah, Wisconsin, Miss. St., and Boise St. games really concerning.
We will have a much better idea of the coaching ability of Sitake, Detmer, and Co. after this season.
Wake up it will not get better. Sitake and detmer dont know what they are doing. The offense was brutal last year also whenever they played anybody decent. We lack talent plain and simple. We recruit way to many poly’s to the team. Recruit a few poly’s to play interior line and that is it. 70% of the starters seem to be slow poly’s. Do you notice any poly’s playing anything other than line for any sec, big ten or acc teams or any that start at all in those conferences. no speed or athletic players on this team plain and simple. Big time change needed in recruiting philosphy
Recruiting won’t get any better because the athletic players don’t tend to be LDS and have no interest in going to a school outside a major conference that also has high academic standards and an honor code. Even a lot of outstanding LDS players don’t want to go to the Y. I suppose if BYU got every single blue chip LDS athlete then they would be a real player nationally but that has never happened, never will happen, and the church isn’t even interested in seeing it happen.
BYU should drop Utah from the schedule so the fans won’t have the irritation of being beaten by them year after year and then having to endure some of their fans needling. Just let it go and admit they have surpassed us and tell them congratulations. I think a big part of the dissatisfaction with BYU’s current situation is watching the traditional rival play in a major conference, do fairly well, and then beat you year after year in the sports that get national attention; football and basketball. BYU needs to go a mid major conference in football… Unless the church decides to get out of the education business and BYU becomes U of U at Provo sponsored by the state, lowers its standards in academics and no longer insists that students obey the word of wisdom, the law of chastity, and a number of other Christian standards then BYU has little realistic hope of cracking the big time. There can be an occasional whiff at it but no year after year expectation of being relevant on a national scale. I am afraid BYU reached its peak in 1984, which was a fluke, and only got close to that standard one other time since then in 1996.
If BYU fans really want nationally relevant teams they need to go out and be super member missionaries and convert a bunch of 17-18 year old jocks who are big, quick, and fast and they won’t find that many of them in Utah. They would need to be converted, not just baptized, otherwise we might be reading about them in the papers for things other than athletic exploits and then see them transfer away.
If being a mid major isn’t good enough, with an occasional great season, then BYU needs to just scrap sports altogether like they did at BYU Idaho and BYU Hawaii. Big college sports is a cesspool of corruption and if you want to be relevant you play by their rules otherwise you won’t get the blue chip players but at least most of your athletes will be prepared to do something other than mop floors and clerk at 7/11 if they don’t make it in the NFL or NBA.
Well written, Rubicon. I was also bothered that BYU kept the game plan on both sides of the ball throughout the game. Shake it up, Geez. Hoge could have done no worse, so give him some game time rather than set records for how fast a game can be over.
Aro, normally I agree with just about everything you write and enjoy all of your well thought out posts but I hope this post is about frustration and not how you really feel?
Sports is the lifeblood that keeps us sane. It gives us a vacation from politics, from work, from even sickness, injury and illness. Utah football and BYU is an institution. It’s like fall conference.
I hope you are feeling the burn of frustration rather than believing there could be anything good come out of dropping Utah?
People who call for BYU to drop sports if we begin to fall behind the powers that be surprise me. The Cougars are my team, no matter what. I enjoyed watching them play against LSU, and roll my eyes at people who say that they gave up or didn’t display any effort. These people haven’t ever played in a sport against a team that was a lot better than them. It happens.
We’re a spoiled fan base. BYU was terrible in football before Tommy Hudspeth and then LaVell Edwards. We had a great run in the 1970s through the 1990s, and are struggling to keep up over the last 20 years. Usually, we are competitive with the big boys, but sometimes not (A&M in the bowl game Detmer’s Heisman year, Florida St. every time we’ve played them, usually Notre Dame every time we’ve played them, etc.).
Even if we are a .500 team this year, the sky is definitely not falling. Things need to be put into perspective.
I seriously dislike Whittingham and UofU football. But only because they are our rival school. I actually liked McBride, but that was easy cuz we drilled him seemingly every year. So I hate Whit, but mostly because I’m mad that he beats us every year. I think it continues to be a great rivalry. UofU has dominated the last 12-15 years but I think nearly every game has been decided by less than a TD. That means the talent/execution gap is certainly not insurmountable.
Watching us play LSU was a joke. It showed that we are nowhere close to the elite programs. But Utah is not an elite program. They are a middle of the road team in a power conference, and we beat lots of team like that. I don’t think we will beat them this week, because I think our offense is THAT bad, but I have 100% confidence that Sitake and Detmer will be able to recruit better talent and put us on the rise.
I love being Indy because we get lots of fun games and they are all on TV here in Oregon. But I still was hoping we would join the American Conference when they were expanding. We played almost every team in the conference, and those games were both fun and very competitive.
“Recruit a few poly’s to play interior line and that is it.”
I guess I’ll just say we strongly disagree about that. We need the best athletes at every position, regardless of who they are. BYU football was seriously damaged when Norm Chow left and the Poly Pipeline went from BYU to UofU. We have a HC that has a recruiting niche advantage, and we should take full advantage of it. Race matters in recruiting, and it matters at every D1 school. Geography matters too, and the race niche we have with Coach Sitake is no different than the geographical recruiting advantage we gain in Texas with the Detmer family. If 70% of our starters were all recruited from Texas, no one would care if they were the best kids we could get.
Athletics means a ton to BYU in terms of recognition. I don’t see BYU ever dropping athletics.
That said, I have some unique insight into the challenges we have between athletics, HC and fielding winning teams in football. As someone inside the program told me, “Hey, it’s not that hard to find 10 awesome students who are also awesome basketball players, but it’s pretty dang hard to find 100 awesome students who are also awesome football players.” Aro I agree with you that the recruiting challenge will never get better or easier.
I also agree that BYU would be just fine in a mid-major conference. But I disagree about dropping UofU or USU for that matter. I think those games matter, and the rivalry is fun.
Part of what I wrote was frustration. I wouldn’t want to see athletics dropped. It was more of a resignation that BYU is mid-major with an occasional great season and that is about the best that can be hoped for given the restrictions of who they can recruit and expect to sign. What I was trying to say, but didn’t make clear, is that fans who can’t live with the fact that BYU is mid-major, and not likely to ever be anything but mid-major, that the alternative is to just drop athletics.
I haven’t found the Utah game to be fun in a number of years. I now have a sense of what Utah fans must have dealt with in the 70s and 80s. If we are doomed to lose to them 80-90% of the time I would just as soon see it end. The problem is that I don’t see things getting better as long as BYU is a mid major. BYU will be a mid major absent a Notre Dame type schedule and winning 7-8 games yearly against power 5 teams.
We are all frustrated, buddy, all of us. Shocked is the word I would use when it comes to Mangum and his performance so far this year. He seems to have taken a big step backward from 2 years ago when he was slinging the ball around. It may not be his fault, it may be that back in 2015 Mangum had a number of veteran receivers to throw to and this year, a lot of new talent. Who knows?
But I will say this, he had better figure things out fast because Utah, WU, BSU and MSU smell blood.
Mangum proved himself an accurate, high-yardage quarterback his freshman year (3,000+ yards). It looked from the LSU game like he (and the game prep) was worried about sacks, fumbles, and interceptions, so he got rid of the ball fast and “overthought” his passes (which turned them into bad passes; some were way underthrown to open receivers over the middle). But, he looked that way against Portland St., too. And before that, the Wyoming game was not a great passing game, either — even allowing for the rainy conditions. So, maybe there were signs of trouble then.
Beau Hoge didn’t look very good in his games where he spotted the injured Mangum two years ago. He provides a good change as a mobile, dual threat, which might have helped against LSU (but probably wouldn’t have).
What really worries me is our running game, which I think is going to make it very hard to pass, because everyone can key on that. This is definitely a big problem and challenge for Detmer and the quarterbacks to overcome.
I usually don’t get involved in these kind of blogs. There are too many would-be geniuses that believe they have the answers to their teams problems and the solutions, when in reality they are overwhelmingly underqualified or not even in the game.
Usually things are quite simple and the answers are not too difficult. LSU IS BLESSED WITH GREAT ATHLETES WITH GREAT SPEED. MATCH THEM against Ohio State, Clemson, Alabama it becomes a different game. MATCH THEM against a team like BYU with good athletes and good speed, besides having what might as well be a home game, and this is what you get.
I see names like Hill and Mangum being thrown around and it’s not a fair comparison. Hill was and continues to be a great athlete. I don’t think BYU gives Hill enough credit for all the times he bailed the offense out making plays with his sheer athletic ability. Magnum is a more accurate passer, but for him that’s where it ends. Get in his head and hurry him and he will miss receivers and throw picks.
Losing Bernard was a big loss for the defense and really wasn’t handled well. This BYU defense WILL COME TOGETHER but will miss Bernard. They have some good athletes.
Many of you are calling for changing qbs It’s really not that easy. It would involve at least a 3 game turn around which would probably mean 3 losses. Give Mangum these next games to regain his con fidence and hope the defense pulls them through.
Good luck BYU and give up on the ridiculous notion that Tanner goes to the NFL next year. Get your head in the game!
It is the same notions that get BYU fans thinking the LP3 was going to make it to the final four. It’s called “delusion” and is something that has always seemed to be part of many BYU fans belief system. I hate it because it takes the collective BYU fan down several notches on the fan IQ scale and is embarrassing really.
All it takes is some mythical high school basketball title or a hail mary pass to win a game and fans fall for it hook, line and sinker…
Sundance:
I agree with almost everything you say; however, I’m not sure how long you have been reading cougar fan, but I really don’t think we have many “would-be geniuses” who are overwhelmingly under qualified. This is the ONLY message board of any kind I have ever posted on, and I do it because my experience with this board for many years is that most of the guys are smart, opinionated, and thoughtful, and reading their posts makes me like BYU sports more than I already do.
Not much really so I don’t have a body of works to fall back on. I guess I wonder when I hear things like TM will be going to the NFL after his Junior year, it makes me wonder about the intellect. At the same time some are ready to throw him under the bus after one game. Football is a team sport and personnel decisions can be far-reaching and complicated. No offense being intended, I think fan solutions can be short-sighted and many times unrealistic, but probably for the blogging crowd-good entertainment
We are glad to have you posting on this board. You will find this board has a community feel–enough posters to get differing opinions, but not so many that it’s annoying to read and try to follow 1000 messages every 5 minutes. I have been a head football coach for a long time–I’m an attorney but also a paid head coach in the school district (I coach the 8th grade varsity team in our middle school; our district starts football in 8th instead of the more common 9th). So sometimes I think I know stuff but then read messages that make me think, “dang, why didn’t I think of that.” So welcome and we are glad to have you posting!