Realistically season is over and has left us with very little hope (long)

I know I have had my negative posts on the State of BYU football of late but want all of you to know as a fan of well over 40 years, including many early on sitting at a stake center with other die hardship because that’s all there was, I have been very positive over much of this span. But slowly and surely, what has happened to this team in the last 15 or more years, with some exceptions, is heartbreaking to me.

We have morphed from a respected, if hated team, to a complete joke and irrelevant football team. A string of nice guy but inexperienced coaches at virtually all positions has decimated our quality of play and made recruiting of top talent almost impossible. Edwards found a way to take mediocre players and turn them into winners and that success fed better recruiting and better teams for years. The reality is that all that momentum has been lost and may never be regained. That genie can’t be put back in the bottle, and I fear that competitive football at the highest level may be permanently over for our team

Can anyone honestly tell me why a quality recruit, LDS or not, would come to BYU if he has any aspiration at all to go pro or play in games of any national importance. Maybe I’m not a faithful BYU man, but if I where faced with this choice, I could not see me coming here because it’s becoming a dark hole of poor coaching, poor play and irrelevance. For example, name me one player in the past 5 years who vastly proved his position play because of good coaching? And don’t say Ziggy because the coaches were so poor in evaluating talent that if it had not been for injuries, he may never have played much at all. Van Noi and Nacala are exceptions but they were gifted from the beginning for the most part. Generally speaking, our teams over that stretch played no better the last game of the season (in some cases worse) than they did in the first or second game. That is a clear sign of ineffective coaching and it’s been going on for a long while.

I don’t blame it all on coaching as I believe failure of players to commit to becoming better and the time and effort this requires is no longer a part of being a BYU football player deep inside. Yes, some very few have it, but most do not. I am always astonished at how few players have any muscle definition showing in arms. Williams and Van Noy and ziggy where exceptions as was Hill. I see other teams players and see powerful arms and then see ours that have less definition than my 65 year old arms. I’m not saying that this necessarily makes better players but it does indicate a willingness to physically pay a price in the weight room to become stronger, which clearly is not visible with many, many of our players. If not in the weight room, why should I believe it happens in the rest of their seasonal preparation. Just an example of what I believe to be a very big problem for BYU coaches.

Enough said. I just don’t see a turnaround with the current state of affairs. I actually fear we are now only seeing the tip of the iceberg and that our play will yet become worse barring some major change in leadership in coaching and in players that come in. I don’t believe that football is important enough to the powers that be to make that happen nor do I see coaching at BYU now as a desirable job or a place for good players to come.

I feel for those who missed most if not all of the great football that was played from the mid 70s through the 90s, with some exceptions but many more successes. It was great and brought many happy moments and I would have loved to have all enjoy those kind of games. That time is gone, I miss it, and just don’t see it ever returning.

Rudi,

I share your frustration !!! I truly have empathy for your heart felt frustration.

Some of my questions are as follows:

Why does the defense wait until a receiver catch a ball and gain 20 yards or more and than tackle him.
Why doesn’t he first try desperately, and with passion, try to intercept it, or if not possible, block it from being caught, or if that fails, put total effort into taking the ball away from him, or at least knock it down, out of the receivers arms for an incompletion. Play after play, game after game, I watch our defense wait for the receiver to catch the ball and than tackle him on the spot.

Why can’t our Wide Receivers dive for balls, or jump for balls, or run faster or slow down for balls instead of waiting for the announcer to report that the ball was out of reach? Some of this talent of yesteryears was great athletes playing the game, while much was what was taught to them.

I remember a wide receiver at BYU, I believe his name was Ben Cahoon, when the announcers went wild on the mike, proclaiming that if a ball is thrown in any vicinity of where Ben Cahoon was, Ben would catch the ball. Now, we hear that the ball was too high, too low, too much to the right or the left, or too hard and incomplete.

I remember great tight ends that made big plays every game.

I have no complaints with Jaamal Williams, Harvey Unga, Luke Staley, but who is putting forth that effort today?

We need to stop expecting every play to go perfectly and not go for it if it is not perfect. We need total effort to go for the kill in each play and make a would be bad start into a great fantastic finish.

More film time showing the best in history players in BYU history, and give the challenge and expectation, that each member of the team be as good as or better than those on film.

I think that our coaches are good. I think that they need to teach more. I think that they must expect more. Perhaps at some point, we need to hire as consultants the likes of Nick Saben, Urban Myers, Pete Carroll, or even Peterson for inspiration to the coaches as to how they can do better.

We need to make changes where changes are needed. Like LaVel Edwards changed football with the passing game, we need to find a way to stop doing the things that no longer work for us and start doing those things that do.

I fear that if we don’t turn things around soon, our stadium will be far to big for the attendance, the practice center will become a waste of money and many of our fans will turn to P5 team viewing or the NFL instead of watching us.

Don’t forget, Edwards didn’t start off winning. He went through the same things. We keep saying Sataki is a great recruiter. Give him another couple of years.

grasshopper,

I total agree with you. I totally love Sataki, Detmer, Cahoon, et. al.

The difference is that Edwards brought something new to football that threw college football off guard, Other coaches didn’t know what happened. They were not prepared for it. It was called the passing game. Indeed, for the time, it was different and teams did not know how to defend against it. Edwards dared to change things.

Today, more than 40 years later, nothing has changed at BYU Everyone knows what to expect from us. They can see the film and know that we will not change. We will only try to execute better. It is easy to coach what needs to be done to defeat us now. Nobody is willing to make any needed changes.

We have not gotten worse. All the other teams have made necessary changes and got better. We have not kept up.

We don’t want to change. We want to blame the honor code. We want to blame the membership requirement for head coach. We want to blame our purity vs members of other faiths or of no organized faith. We want to make excuses instead of needed changes. If BYU is going down, it is our fault because of our attitudes towards those that may be a slight bit different than us.

The main difference between than and now could be summed up with one name. Jim MacMann. I hunger for our yesteryears when we had more tolerance.

You keep saying we have the same passing game. I don’t see any resemblance. We have no crossing routs and little tight end usage. We don’t ever hardly throw screens to our backs. Christianson was a great receiver and we used him in the passing scheme. Not our present backs.