BYU football and a change of identity

[Hot Lunch]

It would help if Reed knew how to run his routes.

What is wrong with Reed's routes? I thought he was the wide out making 90% of the plays from that group.

[Indy Coug]

Or limiting their recruiting to a population of about 35-40 recruits. And wanting them to recruit the school vs. vice versa? You take LDS football players and they go off on a mission and return home and get married. They are not obsessed with winning football games. Other national programs are.

I think it comes down to who you recruit and then their 'softening' while on missions and becoming husbands and fathers. But what do I know?

http://byu.scout.com/a.z?s=338&p=9&c=14&yr=2010

[U-Ute]

TCU and Utah defenses have been built specifically to take down and take apart BYU. Their very personnel have been constructed to counter and take away our strongest assets and their efforts are proving fruitful.

That is quite the stretch there. This is hardly a "beat BYU" thing. I think you're way off base here.

Question: In your theory, when do you pinpoint the time when Utah started to build to beat BYU?

I'm curious because college football has been moving more towards speed since the early 90's when Miami took the world by storm. Urban Meyer changed Utah's recruiting philosophy when he brought the "recruit speed and athletecism" mantra to Utah.

They have constructed defenses to beat BYU at their own game. Stop the pass, and you stop BYU. They have reduced their defensive 'bulk' and have gone to smaller, faster and quicker defensive lineman....converting running back to blazing fast linebackers or defensive ends, offsetting BYU's girth and size.

I'd hardly say that Utah's defensive lines have gotten smaller. We've always had a big defensive line. Just count the vowels on the jerseys back in the McBride days. He's the one that opened up the Polynesian pipeline for Utah. Utah did have to start recruiting to match the athletecism of not only BYU, but the rest of college football.

If anything, our offensive line has gotten smaller. Meyer recruited offensive linemen who could move over the road graders McBride preferred. I'm not sure where Kyle stands on that because I'm not sure he knows what kind of offense he wants to run. He sits somewhere between McBride's smashmouth football, and Meyer's wide open spread option attack.

We've always had an athletic secondary as well. Andre Dyson spent many years in the NFL, as well as Erroll Tucker.

Now, I will grant that in order to be at the top of the league, you have to beat BYU. No bones about it. But the big difference between the days of Erroll Tucker and Andre Dyson has to do more with Chris Hill and his ability to bring money into the program rather than our focus on schemes and recruiting solely to beat BYU.

Yeah, I'm not buying any of this. Sorry.

U-Ute

[U-Ute]

Where have I claimed Utah didn't win the games in question?

I say you were lucky to beat TCU last year (a fact I still can't believe Utefans can't accept)

I agree with you completely: The Utes were lucky against TCU last year. So what? Last I checked, it still counts.

You know, you keep claiming that the majority of Utah fans thing the Utes are going win in Ft Worth, but I'm just not seeing it. There are a few outliers (Zoots?), and a few who love to poke some Cougar fans (*ahem* SU) to watch them seizure. Most of the Utah people I know think that while our defense will give us a chance, most likely we won't win.

I'm just pointing out why I think you're going to lose a game against a team that you were lucky to beat at home, a win that required a comeback drive by an all-conference QB (who's now gone) and two short FG misses, that you're now playing on the road, where said team is much better and you're worse, and that I really don't expect it to be that close.

We'll see, I guess.

Just because we got lucky against them last year, and we don't have the same players while TCU does, we're going to lose this year, fer shur?

What if we get lucky again this year?

It is interesting that you see the beatdown TCU put on BYU, couple that with our close victory last year, and expect them to do roughly the same to Utah, again with Utah's D keeping it closer than BYU did. Fair enough. The problem is that you are falling into the trap of comparative scores. Especially between seasons. You just can't do that. You have to look at individual matchups.

What did TCU do to BYU defensively that kept BYU from moving the ball? Who were the players they had shut down? Who did they have shutting them down?

For example, Hughes against anyone on BYU's offensive line is a mismatch. Hughes has left your right tackles curled up in a fetal position crying for their mom for the last two years. Last year, Utah's offensive line was, for the most part, playing Hughes straight up with Hensel. That changes the complexion of the game completely between the BYU and Utah games. That gave Brian Johnson the time to find the receivers in the zone TCU was playing.

Do I expect the same this year? Absolutely not. Hensel isn't there anymore, and neither is Johnson, but I still think the example is valid. Will TCU have receivers running free (Hick's 75 yard TD) in the Utah game? Probably not with the speed Utah has in the secondary.

While TCU's offense has surprised me in the last couple of weeks, I think it had to do with them exploiting their speed on the outside against defenses that didn't have any speed in the back end. Air Force has a fantastic secondary, and TCU was only able to put up 20 against them and only beat them by 3 points. How does that fit into your comparative analysis?

Do I think Utah will win? Not likely, but in my defense, as a fan I'm given the opportunity to have an open mind and be positive. I didn't think it was likely we were going to beat Alabama last year either, but I knew we had enough playmakers that if we could get up on them, we could win (I didn't see JP Wilson and that team as a team that could score a lot of points in a hurry).

Do I think Utah has a chance? Yes. The defense really seems to be putting it together. The problem is on the offensive side of the ball. If they play like they have the last 2 weeks, I don't see them putting up more than 6 points on TCU. The thing is, the Utes do have a lot of talent on the offensive side of the ball. They just have to find a way to get them the damned ball. If they can do that, and the Utes can get 1 or 2 big plays (a la Reed against Air Force or a RoJo pick-6), the Utes will be in the game.

How likely is that to happen? I have no idea. I have a better chance of figuring out women than I do predicting our QB play.

U-Ute