BYU has the "feel" of a team that has turned the corner

The Corner being that they are acting more like a ranked team then a wantabe team. Bronco used to drive us all crazy with his Nat Champ rhetoric when he had a bunch of average, very hard working, disciplined but yet average players here at BYU.

Two and three star players will only get you so far and that was all Bronco could ever get to sign. It was his “football is fifth on his list of priorities” rhetoric. Sitake comes in and in his first year is 8 points from a undefeated season and that got every recruit’s attention…and fast.

Sitake is the real deal…He took Bronco’s recruits and gave us a season we could be proud of. The naysayers would say that we won the games we should have and lost the ones that we were supposed to. I say that it was the way BYU competed in every game, no blowouts that tells me that we are in for greatness again.

Just some personal observations:
We have three head coach prospects on this team, maybe more…Detmer surely showed that he was more than a name. ( watched the Bret Farve story on the NFL channel this week and the “nickel story” was there in all it’s glory) Detmer is a genius football mind. Lamb from SSU will be hard to keep here…everyone knows he is the real deal.

BYU will be lead by elite QB Tanner Mangum. He has three years of experience (used his redshirt before the mission). I would hate to face this team this year with Tanner running the show.

BYU finally has real talent in the backfield on defense. BYU has never had this kind of talent, speed on defense…then it is hard to score through the air, and with BYU’s record at stopping the run, could be a special year.

Our lines on both sides of the ball sound like they are two bodies deep…we gonna need it when elite teams come to town.

LBs may be the best in the nation…but I am hearing that there is something up with Bernard???

Everyone talks about our lack of names at Running Back and Receiver… Canada and Burt may be the first names you hear but Hall really impressed me last year, Dye seems to be a deceptive flanker/Jurgen type guy to me, Fonua is a special player and my darkhorse…and Tolutau just has my full attention.

So yeah, in past years we were fed a lot of blue koolade but this year I am “feeling” like we have a chance to be special (sorry, Lavelle, I know I stole your favorite saying)

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Speaking of Williams, he was a 3 star player? I don’t think so. And Hill? What about Jake Heaps? Bronco brought in 4 and 5 star players.

Williams was recruited by Bronco but you won’t hear anyone giving him credit for that. He was a very good coach who did a lot of good things by turning around a program that was swirling down the toilet.

Yet 10 years later all you hear about is how he didn’t measure up or have any success, etc.

I love ya fish, but I don’t understand the hate…

Bronco was a good, but not great coach. He will struggle at Virgina. IMO he has a great defensive mind. But his selection of talent is flawed. He takes hard working, underwhelming talent and puts them as starters. Truly talented, younger players sit the bench. Both Williams and Ezek got into the game by accident. If injuries hadnt occurred ahead of them they wouldn’t have been in the NFL or big stars at the Y. I still scratch my head at what Bronco saw in Alisha and didn’t see in Williams. That inability to judge talent correctly will keep Bronco from big success at Virginia. We don’t have this problem anymore at BYU in football… Basketball is another issue…

Sitake’s first recruiting class was loaded with 2-3 star players and wasn’t even ranked in the top 50. That seems like a Bronco class to me. I don’t see a whole lot of difference so far. Maybe he will get more out of his players and play the best talent and not get infatuated with the hard working walkons. I just don’t see any evidence yet that his recruits are all that vastly different than Bronco’s. That isn’t a criticism of Sitake it is just how I see it. I think he has the personality to draw better talent but I don’t that a lot of evidence yet that his recruits are significantly better than Mendenhall’s so far. I also think he may get more out the players. Bronco seemed to be bit too even keeled to be a great motivator.

Jamaal was a relatively unknown prospect. Perhaps because of his age (he was only 16 when he arrived on the BYU campus, and played as a 17 year old freshman). I believe he was recruited by San Diego State as well, but BYU was his only major offer.

So I wouldn’t consider Jamaal a high caliber recruit that Bronco seized out of the competition, but I would give Bronco and his staff a great deal of credit for finding such a kid who went under the radar, and giving him the opportunity to develop. He turned nobodies into NFL products (Jamaal, Ziggy, Pitta, Sorensen)

People forget that. Although, most will say those players excelled in spite of Bronco. Just like they won’t give Trump any credit for improvements because of his mess ups.

Agree with thawk but also strongly agree with Ben Clarke.

It may be true that players like WIlliams and Ansah got into the game because of injuries but who really knows the underlying issues and results? The fact of the matter is they are both NFL players, like Van Noy who was given numerous second chances by Bronco, and how they got there isn’t as critical as the fact that they are there.

As for turning the corner? The first half of the Portland State game doesn’t depict a team that has turned any corners yet, that’s for sure. The word inauspicious best describes what we have seen so far.

Predictions of scoring 70 pts, not allowing a touchdown…made me cringe. The offenses are struggling. Tanner and the receivers just haven’t shown up yet. NFL for Mangum after one year will never happen.

Based on this game, I would predict a 7 and 6 season record. Hopefully, BYU can improve but against LSU going to be very difficult indeed.

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If you can’t run it then the passing game is going to suffer

grasshopper,

Been Olson and Jake Heaps come to mind.

Also coming to mind was a coach announcing to the foot ball world that stars after a players name means nothing to him.
The player had to prove his worth to the coach, and until that time comes, all players, 0 stars, 1 or 2 stars were all the same.

Also coming to mind from that coach was that the 4-5 star player had to be grateful to be accepted by BYU and not the other way around.

Also what comes to mind is that the coach set out to prove his predictions, (stars meaning nothing), that by the time that the 5 star player transferred out of our school, (each of them), the player had already been so destroyed, that he was not worth a single star where ever he went after leaving BYU. In the meantime, he was so discouraged that he could not be himself, he could not get along with other players, he was not a happy camper, his enthusiasm had been crushed and put in it’s place. He was a misfit on the team.

We will see how that coach does at Virginia. I am amazed how we remain so loyal to a coach that not only left us to triple his pay going to Virginia, but taking all but one of our assistant coaches with him, leaving us to start from scratch. As it turns out, in my opinion, we should be grateful to him and to Virginia that hired him, as I feel that we now have a superior coaching staff that I am grateful for. (I do not blame him for leaving us for triple pay. That is acceptable. But taking all of the assistant coaches with him was a bit much). Also, now as it turns out, I am grateful that he did take them all with him as I believe that those we have now are superior to what we had.

fish, (If you can’t run it then the passing game is going to suffer)

From what we saw in the Portland State game, (on the surface), I totally agree with you.

Our passing game was terrible. We could not get our receivers open. Portland state played us man to man coverage and we could not do anything through the air with few exceptions.

If a team, not ranked in the top 130, could virtually shut down our passing game, what will a #12 in the nation team like LSU do to our passing game.

After watching the films of our game, all that #12 LSU will need to do to kill us will be to copy what the FCS team ranked well below 130, Portland State did to us.

On the other hand, there is some hope.

#1. Perhaps after seeing the films on our game vs. Portland State, LSU will be as over confident looking forward to playing us, as we were over confident looking forward to playing a FCS team, ranked below 130, and if so, we may surprise LSU
as much as Portland State surprised us.

#2.) Perhaps the fact that both Sataki and Detmer announced to us before the game, that they would not open up the play book in this Portland State game. They would not let LSU have a chance to see film and prepare for our biggest plays.
Perhaps, our athletes were frustrated knowing what big ammunition we had in the play books but were not aloud to use it because it had a top secret clearance and the time and place to use it was not at hand.

#3 We play at a much higher level when we play teams like LSU, Utah, Boise State, Mississippi State than we do when we play teams like Portland State, Idaho State, Weber State etc.

Conclusion: I am looking for a hard fought game vs LSU which we may or may not win, and/or may or may not lose, but we will play a game that we will be proud of, unlike the game vs Portland State in which we made FCS Portland State, look great playing against us. Our coaches are great, and our athletes are much better than in many seasons from the past. Our playcalling is very good, even if it means holding back big plays in a meaningless game in order to use those big plays successfully in the important game just ahead of us. That is not poor play calling. Instead, that is brilliant experienced play calling.

thawk, (Bronco was a good, but not great coach. He will struggle at Virgina)

imHawks Yet 10 years later all you hear about is how he (Bronco), didn’t measure up or have any success, etc.

grasshopper Funny comparison ! (Just like they won’t give Trump any credit for improvements because of his mess ups.)

aro (Sitake’s first recruiting class was loaded with 2-3 star players and wasn’t even ranked in the top 50. That seems like a Bronco class to me.

fish (BYU has the “feel” of a team that has turned the corner)

I agree. It does indeed feel like the BYU Cougar Football team as turned a corner, and it feels good.
It is refreshing and I am grateful.

Disclaimer:

I am a fan of Bronco Mendenhall, in as much as, I respect him for wanting to be the best kind of a person that he can possibly be; For wanting to be a shinning example on how each of us should be, and for being 100% loyal to the teachings of the Church. (All of this is very good. I like that.)

I truly believe that he would be a great bishop, a very good mission President or maybe someday, even a GA.

Now———
Turning to football, I think he is a decent, if not very good Defensive Coordinator.

I would rather see him in any of those positions above than to see him as our HC.

As a HC he seems far too immature and arrogant when he tells seasoned coaches like Nick Saben, Urban Myers, Peterson, (Whittingham), and all the other coaches in our nation, through the media, (fake news), how they should coach.

One time he explains to all the coaches of the nation that these are just kids. We should never run up the score. The following week, we beat UCLA in our own stadium 59-0. (Proud P5 team from a proud Pac 12 P5 Conference). He did not seem too concerned about these kids from UCLA or their coaches.

Another time, he was lecturing to the coaches where he did his foreign mission, on how to coach with more morality.

He seemed more bent on spending time with cute slogans than game plans.

He built himself a great resume to get hired for 3X his BYU pay by programing enough teams ranked around 100 to assure a winning season and a bowl game for each season.

He said too many times, and then set out to prove himself right, that football was not all that important to him.

He ranked it, football, somewhere around 5-6 in importance in the theme of things, as though he was the only one that knew, and it was his responsibility to teach each of us, that

#1 was God, #2 the Church, #3 family, #4 Education, #5 Fireside Chats, and finally #6 maybe football was important in the theme of things.
We could not figure that out on our own without him teaching us that.

He never understood the importance of diversion in life, like sports as a fantasy to get away a bit from the reality of pressures that real life puts on us like jobs, lay off’s, taxes, bills, not enough income to make life as pleasant as we would like it to be, home responsibilities,church responsibilities etc.

I would love to be his friend if football had nothing to do with our friendship. I would rather have someone else as a friend when it comes to that important diversion from reality, which we refer to as football.

Well, his football was his job. The proper position of priorities is 1. God (includes Church Work) 2. Family 3. Job 4. Health and then whatever. College isn’t for everyone and isn’t for most for that matter.

I think that most of us understand the true positions of 1 God, 2. Church 3. family 4. Education 5 Fireside chats (maybe)
and finally, 6. football.

He didn’t realize that we understood this. Only he was smart enough to understand this. Because he was so wise and good, he felt that it was his responsibility to teach all of us lesser persons that lesson.

On the issue of having football being his job. We have a difference of opinion of what his responsibilites on the job should be.

I fell asleep reading one of RU’s posts…

Does that make me a bad fan?

It’s just well… wow, just wow. How many years will it be before we don’t have to read a post about Bronco Mendenhall and all of the bad things he did at BYU?

Honestly, it’s ridiculous.

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Oh Jim, you’ve messed up now. All hell is gonna come down on you now.

Jim,

I would have to agree with you. Furthermore we won’t know for a few years whether Sitake is superior to Mendenhall. Bronco did plenty of good things for BYU and he rescued the program when it was in a very bad place. I like Sitake a lot but a few too many people have their hopes way too hyped up. They assume he is a superior coach compared to Mendenhall. I hope he is, but at this point I have no idea. He is certainly a guy who is easier to root for, and like, for many fans. If we go 7-6 this year, as Roy predicts, I predict a bunch of people will be ready to throw him under the bus. I am not making any judgments until he has at least 3 years under his belt unless we win 11 or more games this year (very unlikely) and lose 7 or 8 (not likely but possibe)… It seems the expectation was 10 wins before Saturday. I think 10 would be very good and 8 acceptable and seven disappointing but no reason to ask for the coach’s hide yet.

Assuming we go to a bowl game I am predicting a record of somewhere in the range of 7-7 to 10-4. Those are very Bronco like numbers. Bronco’s worst season was 6-6 in 2005 and his best record was 11-2 in 2006, 2007 & 2009. His average season was 9 wins. He had 99 in 11 years.

There is also an assumption that Ty Detmer is a superior offensive coordinator as opposed to Robert Anae. I know Ty a little bit and he is a great guy. I taught one of his girls in primary. There isn’t a better man in all of coaching as far as I am concerned, but right now it isn’t clear that he is a great coach. He has never coached on this level before but I think if he is given a fair chance he will be a great coach. Sitake and Detmer have just one season of experience in their roles. It is good to have hope and love your coaches but there has to be a dose of reality otherwise a fan will destroy the very people they pinned their hopes and grandiose delusions on. A fan’s love is very conditional and doesn’t go very deep.

Agree with you.