Californication.....why we lost and will continue

Football
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1 Tanner is not the guy. He does a million things right but he can’t make a throw down field. Enough bolongna about how recievers dropped balls and all the other excuses. Tanner makes BYU one dimentional and that alone make BYU a 6-6 team at best.

2 Arizona is bad, smelly putrid bad and that makes BYU bad. Whoever wrote that BYU’s win in the desert is one of the best in over a decade is buying his medical mary jame in Colo. I look at our schedule and all of the sudden USU and N Ill. look like loses to me.

3 Why can’t we just use Simon or one of our other worthless wideouts (no fault of their own) and just cut block Weaver on every single play? I mean come on…Weaver was everywhere the entire game. He would just sit back and wait for the play to start then boom, in the backfield hurrying Tanner, knocking passes down, UNTOUCHED. We could’nt run the ball, Weaver was going to cut the jet sweaps before we could even get to the line of scrimmage. Or at least throw the ball to the spot where Weaver just left or have a Tight End hit Weaver on a slant. The dude was untouched all night and that ain’t right.

4 I was very confident that BYU would handle Cal by just blowing them off the line and I felt that in the 1st half BYU was in the drivers seat even if they could not score, that we would adjust and come out in the 2nd, like in the AZ game…It was Cal that adjusted and stopped BYU cold stone dead in the 2nd. We had no answer. Credit goes to the coaches, they are good.

5- 3 turnovers and we all we got as one TD. Sad.
http://www.espn.com/college-football/boxscore?gameId=401012735

6- Kudos to Isaiah Kaufusi for that sweet interception…and all the 3 of the Kaufusi’s, man, I love Kaufusis.

7 Dayan Ghanwoloku is a stud out there. two fumbles recoveries and a TD. Anderson is as good as advertised. 12 tackles, wow.

8 The single biggest stat of the night. Pututau leads the recievers in receptions (6) and in the longest reception (24). He is a tightend. That is a problem… Cal’s longest was 56 yards.

9- Wisconsin is gonna whack us hard. it is going to be ugly. I would not change the QB right now unless it was to use Critchlow. No way would I throw Wilson or Hall in there and get them messed up.

10- to lighten up our frustrations here, I am going to throw in a story about the Elijah Behunin family of Capital Reef History. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Cutler_Behunin_Cabin
If you ever travel to Capital Reef, My favorite nat park by far, you will see the Behunin Cabin down along the Fremont River, A place I have guided fishermen for many years. Behunin did a lot of things right, they lived in a temporate area that you could grow a wide variety of crops, fruit trees and raise cattle but they did one thing wrong…The Fremont gets terrible floods from monsoon rains in July.
https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/care/adhi/adhi4.htm
(read the history of Fruita)

Moral of the story; You can do a lot of things right but have a critical flaw and that will be your downfall. BYU went with the wrong QB and coaches get fired over stuff like this.

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OK, maybe I was a little too harsh on Tanner, there were dropped balls (Collie) but the Defense kept BYU in the game with 3 turnovers and BYU piddled the game away.

What was with the 3 straight calls for Hoge as the running back when we just needed a couple of yards? El-Bakri and Canada will get it done. da

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I thought I really blew it in my accessment of Tanner Mangum before the season. His game at Arizona was not that great but was far better in execution than any game last season. Floyd says Tanners issues were really issues that came with Detmers offense. I was willing to concede that there may have been truth to that. Now it is painfully obvious that Tanner is not capable of leading this team. He has poor mechanics and even throws side armed when he doesn’t have to. He doesn’t see the field well, he misses wide open receivers and has no natural instinct on when to release the ball in the pocket. We have to change QBs and do it now. I don’t care about Wisconsin and the beating they will administer. The team doesn’t have faith in Tanner. Fans don’t have faith in Tanner. The announcers don’t have faith in Tanner. He simply doesn’t have the talent on game day to produce. BYU will under perform all year with him behind center. Floyd was correct about Tanner last week … won the battle but we will quickly lose the war with Tanner.

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It’s getting really tiresome being. BYU fan. This year reminds me of about the last 10. They win one game, everyone gets excited and then it becomes apparent that they beat a bad team and simply don’t have the talent to hang with top 25 opponents. Isn’t it about time for a change of direction? Either get rid of all your self imposed hurdles, which it’s apparent the majority of fans, for some reason I can’t fathom, find as anathema, or get back in a conference that suits them. I doubt they could even get back in the Mt West Conference, and if they could they would probably be the 4th, or at least 3rd best team, but maybe they could find a home somewhere where they could compete. Next week’s game is going to be a complete disaster, and is there any doubt this is going to be the 8th year of consecutive losses to The Utes? We’re losing an entire generation of fans who simply have never seen a great BYU team. This is what happens when you give yourself an intentional disadvantage and then believe, against all evidence, that you can somehow rise above it. Secularize the dang place already, or continue to be a church league and find a church league to play in. This is just too painful to watch over and over and over again.

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My prediction of a 10-2 regular season record has bitten the dust. 8-4 is in jeopardy unless a qb change is made.

On an unrelated note, I decided this week that I need to become at least a lukewarm Boise State fan. I’m getting my real estate license and figure that I’ll need to be somewhat conversant in local sports when making small talk with potential clients.

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After the first game I thought BSU might have a shot at a one loss season. After seeing a complete dismantling of Connecticut I wouldn’t be shocked to see them beat Oklahoma State

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Simply put-BYU will win the easy games with Mangum and lose all the difficult ones. Sad but unfortunately probably accurate and BYU will become apathetic to the fans and that’s is sadder yet. Suffer the beat down at Wisconsin with Mangum, the go with your future

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Jut put me down for ten “dittos” to your post. Magnum looks terrible. Some say you can’t blame it all not the QB, but sadly, in college football you can blame most of it on the QB. Normally, if 84 guys add up to about average talent, teams with a great QB win almost all their games, teams with a good QB win most, and teams with a bad QB win 0-6 games. Cal’s first QB was terrible, because he was one dimensional–he can’t throw. So they brought in the dual threat guy and just made us look stupid. Our QB is not even 1 dimentional–I give him 1/2 dimentional–he can’t run, and he can only throw short passes. Ohmyeverything, a DC’s dream!!! Load up the box and salivate. I don’t even blame the OL for a lukewarm game running the ball, because we abandoned the run early when Cal realized Magnum can’t throw downfield, so they adjusted and flooded the box.

Final note: until just days before Zona, the coaches were telling us that Magnum and the freshman were neck and neck. If they were that closely matched in the coaches’ opinion, shame on the coaches for not making the switch in the second quarter, or, at the VERY least at half. I was texting friends during the second half stuff like “this is the worst QB play I have ever seen at BYU…EVER.” That culminated with the pick that Magnum threw on the 15 or whatever when we were down 11, which was simply one of the dumbest plays I have ever seen in my life. He panicked and forgot that the only thing he could NOT do was to get us out of FG range or throw a pick. Easy for me to say from my couch, but every one of you guys said the same thing at the same time, and this board is full of guys who know the game. Putting him back to throw YET ANOTHER pick on the next series (deep ball, about TEN YARDS under thrown) told me that the coaches have zero confidence in the frosh. Things could get pretty ugly next Saturday.

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One more thing: “It felt like they took our game plan and beat us with it.”
BYU coach Salani Sitake

This is Coach Kalani admitting to the DN that we were outplayed AND out coached. Tuiaki made no adjustments when Cal went almost exclusively zone read with the second QB. How many times can I see Pauu get blown up by a pulling guard, while we sit back hoping to just contain things? Takitaki and Kaufusi were almost completely taken out of the game by Cal’s adjustment to keep everything between the tackles. I kept waiting for us to go big on the DL and stand those two guys up with Pauu to shut down that zone read, but no, we did nothing. I kept waiting for us to put in our own dual threat QB to force Cal to bring a safety up to the box, but no, we did nothing. Our TE seam routes were shut down because we couldn’t force a safety to the box, and that took our best player (Bushman) totally out of the game. Hey, credit to Kalani for being able to admit to the media that he and his staff were not ready and willing to make in game adjustments like Cal did. Tuiaki’s “do nothing and sit back and hope they screw up” plan may hold Wisconsin to under 40, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that.

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I don’t think so. Once naming Mangum the starter, they were at great pains to emphasize that he would have all the time in the world, and wouldn’t be yanked around. That he would have games and games and wouldn’t hear footsteps or look over his shoulder. I think it’s as simple as a) they don’t want to renege on their word, and b) human pride. I don’t think we can read into this that they have no confidence in Wilson.

Sitake may have no choice. If we are as offensively futile against good teams this year as we were last year, he could conceivably be fired at the end of this season, as hard to believe as that sounds. I’ve already mentioned one gold level Cougar Club member who flew my dad up to games in his plane who wants us to go 0-12 this year to hasten Sitake’s firing. Being absolutely offensively futile spreads that extremism further than the extremists.

This is a bit of a vindication for Detmer, isn’t it? Many here had been saying how Grimes was going to transform the culture and execution to an LSU level, but we were exposed by a bad Cal team at home. Wow.

Another thought: they may be facing the dilemma of “what if Wilson proves beyond doubt that he was clearly the best choice out of the gates?” That presents the uncomfortable thought that they knowingly sacrificed competitiveness for politics. Ditto for the preemptive removal of Beau Hoge from the quarterback race, which looks really bad with the hindsight of Saturday’s need for a dual threat option to shake up Cal’s effective strategy. If they are this bad at evaluating talent and doing what needs to happen even if hurts a senior, we don’t have much hope that they will make the right choices in the future.

Doesn’t it look more and more like they are moving heaven and earth not to make Tanner Mangum feel bad?

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you make a valid argument. Some of us have surmised that after Mangum got this tough stretch of 4 top 25 teams, the coaches would be inclined to work Wilson in. I am on board with that. I just think it would be more disaster right now to feed Wilson to the wolves. I had thought about Hoge but he just can’t throw a ball and it would be more disaster. I do like Critchlow…

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This is a bad situation all around for BYU. Sitake and Grimes will cost themselves credibility and maybe their jobs if the offense looks even half as futile as last year. We have to be able to throw the deep ball to keep defenses honest. We actually only need to throw it 25 yards down field but Tanner can not do that with accuracy. He routinely throws poor passes 1 out of 3 attempts. The Arizona game was a better than average game for a QB. But it wasn’t a good or great quarterbacking game. It just seemed like it based on Tanners and the offenses performances during 2017. We were bracing ourselves for a repeat performance of 2017 and when we actually saw a number of changes and progress from 2017 we were all relived. Arizona is a really bad team. It was a BYU mirage!

Floyd appeared to make a valid argument against Detmer and certainly I buy some of what he was saying… we went the entire season in 2017 without making adjustments to see if we could find answers … that is bad coaching. But, I have been saying it for years … Tanner Mangum isn’t the answer to a D-1 football program at QB. He is slow and can’t move the team with his legs. That fact isn’t a killer, but if you aren’t a dual threat QB you have to have great pocket presence and know when to get rid of the ball. A pocket only passer HAS to be a very accurate passer. That is not the definition of Tanner Mangum. Tanner has an arm that is accurate and on time, about 2 times in 5 throws. Additionally, his balls aren’t particularly easy to catch. They wobble! He is not a Steve young or a Ty Detmer. He can’t throw an accurate pass more than 30 yards like a Jimmy Mac. He isn’t accurate like a Max Hall or Gifford Nelson.

He also has a panic mode that kills BYU. Nice guy, super young man, but simply not even an average D-1 QB. I have been saying this since the middle of his freshman year and taken heat for it. I want him to be successful but he just doesn’t have the makeup for the position. Put the freshman or Hoge or Critch in for Tanner against Wisconsin. It will be a beating anyway you look at it. Tanner will lose the game and the team and the fan base. Refusing to put another QB into the game will cost BYU football a lot of fans and probably coaches their jobs. The team will be rudderless and the season will be gone.

Quit treating Tanner like a Bishop who is called for 5 years and isn’t doing the job while the ward falls apart but releasing him early would cause too much fallout. BYU football isn’t a church calling. Put Wilson in the game or Critch or Hoge if you can’t stomach a true freshman behind center… even though many top 20 programs start freshman … except BYU … and how is that turning out​:grinning::grinning:

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I know I am in the minority here, and many of you have already given the boot to the team…

No offense guys, but you guys are so willing to go off the reservation so easily. Want to sink Sitake because he gave the boot to a BYU legend… Answer me this one question: Where is Ty now? Did you get that QB coaching position in the NFL or another D1 college team? NO! that should open you eyes a bit.

The problem with some of you is that you are not willing to give Grimes a chance to establish his offense at BYU. Time to help the players learn the system.

Second, How many people on this board thought BYU would be 1-1 at the beginning? Most of you thought Arizona was going to beat BYU and BYU would beat Cal… Well it didn’t happen that way, but the record is still the same as most people thought.

Third, As I was driving home from the Temple on Saturday, Greg Wrubell mentioned four times that Tanner threw the ball right at the numbers of the receivers and the they had their hands on the ball… How the heck can anyone blame Tanner? In the words of Glen Kozloski “If I can touch it, I can catch it”.

Fourth, I said at the beginning of the season that the defense was suspect, I have never really liked Tuiaki as a DC. But then I am biased. I think they did a pretty good job, but then they have a mental fart, and things break down.

Fifth, I believe the difference that will happen this year over last year’s Ty offense, is that Grimes is very much into accountability. He will make those who “dropped passes” pay for it. Some may lose their starting positions.

In everything I read about the environment last year, no one was held accountable for their failures.That is not the case today…

As for the neck and neck competition Tom Larimer, That is what the “media” reported, not what was actually happening.

I think if Tanner does not perform to what Grimes thinks he should, then there will be a change at QB. I have faith in Grimes.

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It isn’t as simple as saying, “We thought we would be 1-1, so what’s the difference? We just switched which 1 was which.” It is much more the “eye test.” How we performed in both games gives great cause for concern going forward.

Mangum’s “awesome” game was 209 yards with a poor completion percentage. We almost choked the Arizona game away, too. I was stunned when they kicked off instead of onside kicking it. They had the momentum, and I think we would have lost if they had recovered it. We shouldn’t have been in a nail-biter position with Arizona at that point in the game like we were.

And then, we’re back to 2017 against Cal. Teams watch film and scout. Mangum is going to have to beat teams downfield with his arm, and our run game is going to be stifled. Who anywhere feels good about Mangum lighting up anybody for 400+ yards and a 60%+ completion percentage? Even McNeese St. is going to be like Portland St.: complete defensive lockdown, but struggle to put points on the board.

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I think there have been several articles written this week on how BYU fans will be disappointed if they are expecting high scores and 400 yds/passing games. That is the past. Grimes is a control guy more disposed to long grind it out possessions.

I like our D. We should have killed Cal with those 3 turnovers. Our 11 yds in the 3rd accompanied with 4 three and outs murdered us.

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Floyd, I don’t think most fans are mad about the Detmer issue. I also think most knowledgeable football people think that the DC should have been fired also. But, our defense played well enough to win the game against Cal. Tanner cost us the game because he isn’t accurate. Tanner will cost every coach their job if they keep him as their game manager. He can’t do it! Detmer isn’t the issue, he is gone. Tanner hasn’t been a good QB under 3
different OC’s now. All 3 offenses look bad under Tanners guidance.

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We punt too much and have too many three and outs for that kind of LSU offense. If we can do it, great. I don’t think we can. We have to move the ball and score. Especially with our suspect secondary.

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Grimes might be a control guy but Tanner is not. His interception to TD ratio is Terrible over the last 2
Years … and even before these last 2 years it wasn’t good. He has 2 Hail Marys that were amazing … but everyone must admit … they were extremely lucky to have been caught. If Tanner didn’t have those 2 passes … how would
People look at him now?

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I think you outlined our one dimensional team under Mangum hits the nail on the head. If you don’t have legs, you better be a wizard with the passing game. Wilson and Hall are great athletes but now is not the time. Just get to the softer side of the schedule before we try that experiment.

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As with the BYU football team, there’s no offense here.

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