Oklahoma State's mascot might be a cowboy, but he didn't pack the right kind of ammo when his team made the trip to Provo. Didn't he know that only silver bullets can kill vampires?
The Vampire Cougs, of course, didn't make things easy on themselves. Despite enjoying the typical advantage provided by a night game at LaVell Edwards Stadium, Jay Hill's defense played far and away its worst game of the season, failing to stop Oklahoma State's rush attack and short passing game—basically, the Cowboys' entire offensive scheme. But for the first time all season, the BYU offense wasn't just a passenger riding the defense to victory—Jake Retzlaff, LJ Martin, and Darius Lassiter took the wheel and kept the Cougars in the game over and over in the second half, before sealing the deal with a dramatic last-second touchdown. It was an unforgettable ending—we'll remember Retzlaff to Lassiter in the same breath as Beck to Harline and Mangum to Matthews. And while this game laid bare some of this BYU team's persistent (and potentially new) deficiencies, it also gave the Cougars a chance to prove themselves as a gritty, never-say-die group of believers—and the Vampire Cougs did just that, coming back from the dead to win dramatically as they seem to do so often in these Provo night games. At this point, a silver bullet might be the only chance BYU's opponents have of getting a win over the Cougars. This feels like a team that's decided it just...doesn't want to lose—no matter what. Here are some thoughts from a riveting, miraculous 38-35 BYU victory:
The Good:
Last week, I wrote that Aaron Roderick had his best day ever as a playcaller against Arizona. He managed to one-up himself pretty spectacularly against Oklahoma State. I would argue that this was the best the BYU offense has looked since 2021. The passing game was a bit weird at times in the first half, but the run game was strong from the beginning and Roderick balanced pass and run playcalling very well for the second straight week. In the second half, the Cougars had the ball four times and scored three touchdowns and a field goal—and every one of those scores was absolutely essential. Though that final scoring drive has already passed into BYU football lore, the offensive highlight of the game for me was actually the first of those four second-half possessions, when Roderick didn't call a single pass play for an entire drive. Following a missed field goal by Oklahoma State to start the half, the Cougars ran seven straight rushing plays, culminating in an 8-yard LJ Martin touchdown. It was a remarkable display of offensive prowess—a message to the Cowboys that "we know you can't stop the run, and we're going to score without throwing a pass just to prove it." I genuinely believed going into this game that BYU would not be able to survive an offensive shootout—I didn't think the Cougars had the firepower. Turns out, they absolutely do. In all fairness, Oklahoma State's defense makes a lot of offensive coordinators look good. But the Cougars don't face another really elite defense for the rest of the regular season, and if the offense can keep this kind of production up, we could be looking at a very special season, indeed. Given the dumpster fire that was the 2023 BYU offense, Roderick had to know coming into this season that he was coaching for his job. And while he hasn't been perfect and I still have my questions about his game management, it's hard to argue with the results we've seen from his unit over the past two games.
Jake Retzlaff and the BYU offense took over possession at their own 25 with 1:06 to play, trailing by 4. After three plays, they faced 4th-and-7. If you told me that was the situation on BYU's last drive, I would have been prepared to bet good money the Cougars would lose the game. Last year's BYU team wouldn't have a prayer in that situation. Heck, the BYU offense that showed up against SMU and Wyoming this year wouldn't have a prayer. But Jake Retzlaff has grown and developed as a quarterback every week since he took over the starting job from Kedon Slovis last season, and this game marked his best performance yet as a Cougar. I'll talk about his two interceptions later, but aside from those mistakes, Jake played a great game of football. He looked controlled, unhurried, and comfortable, commanding the offense with total confidence. Basically, he was everything in this game that I criticized him for not being against SMU. In five games, he's gone from being barely playable to being arguably the best quarterback in the conference. If he keeps up that rate of improvement, he'll be a Heisman contender by the end of the season! But in all seriousness, his work ethic really shines through in the steady growth we've seen in his game. He's a hard player not to like.
It's amazing what a difference having your two best running backs healthy can make for your rushing attack. LJ Martin had the best game of his BYU career to this point against the Cowboys' porous defense, rushing for 120 yards and 2 touchdowns on 6 yards per carry. When Martin took a breather, Hinckley Ropati stepped in without hesitation—he rushed for 47 yards on an eye-popping 7.8 yards per carry. And things got even better when Jake Retzlaff ran the ball himself—he finished with 81 rushing yards and a touchdown on 9 yards per carry! The ability to run the ball essentially at will—something the Cougars missed early in the season—will allow them to control possession better and make them even harder to gameplan for. This BYU team made it to 5-0 without a healthy RB room—with one, the Cougars are downright scary.
The BYU offense was successful in large part because of another fantastic day from the offensive line, highlighted by outstanding performances from right tackle Brayden Keim and center Bruce Mitchell. Mitchell continues to be one of the best stories on this team—and he also keeps playing like a grizzled veteran despite his inexperience. The most satisfying moment from the offensive line, though, came on that last, miraculous Jake Retzlaff touchdown pass, when left tackle Caleb Etienne stepped up and manhandled a pass rusher to give Retzlaff the clean pocket he needed. I've mentioned Etienne's transformation before—he had nearly dropped out of the rotation by the end of the 2023 season, and now he's playing like he wants to be the fourth straight BYU left tackle to get drafted. But there's more to the story—Etienne is only at BYU because he lost his starting job at...you guessed it...Oklahoma State, where head coach Mike Gundy publicly ridiculed him for entering the transfer portal. It had to feel good for Etienne to make that play—to really stick it to his former team and the coach who didn't want him and told the world so.
One other blocking shoutout needs to go to TE Mata'ava Ta'ase—ironically, the only one of the Cougars' top 3 tight ends not to catch a pass in this game—who posted the third-highest PFF grade of any BYU player (an impressive 77.1) thanks to his near-perfect blocking all game long. Ta'ase is a big, bruising, old-fashioned kind of tight end—he can make the occasional nice catch, as he showed against both SIU and SMU, but he really shines as a road grader, using his massive frame and great technique to clear the way for ball carriers. It's not the most glamorous job, but it has a huge impact.
BYU's wide receivers had a bit of an off game against Arizona, but they more than made up for it against Oklahoma State. Darius Lassiter had the game of his life, catching 6 passes for 129 yards and the game-winning touchdown. Chase Roberts got in on the fun, too, catching the 4th down pass that kept the Cougars alive on their final drive. Keelan Marion also had a nice performance, with a couple of big catches highlighted by a 34-yard touchdown that saw him tiptoe deftly down the sideline, staying in bounds by a few blades of grass at most.
You'll notice that, contrary to precedent, I've spent this entire section talking about the offense. What a difference a week makes. But while the defense as a unit had a frankly terrible game against Oklahoma State, there were a couple of individual performances that deserved recognition. Tanner Wall is having a breakout season at safety for the Cougars, and he recorded his second interception in as many weeks—coming up about an inch short of a pick-six, I might add (LJ Martin cashed it in for a touchdown one play later). Tommy Prassas also had an interception, becoming the first true freshman at BYU with an interception and a fumble recovery in the 21st century. And while BYU's front seven left a lot to be desired in the run game, they still defended the pass well enough, holding Oklahoma State's two quarterbacks to a combined total of just 152 passing yards.
At the end of the day, the only stat from this game that truly matters is the final score. BYU is 7-0 and has moved up to #11 in the AP poll. Going 7-0 is really hard—only four other BYU football teams (2020, 2001, 1984, and 1979) have done it, and none of those four finished worse than 12-2. It takes a great team to go 7-0, but it also takes a certain amount of luck. And this year's BYU football team, for whatever reason, has had luck in spades. BYU had no business winning this game. The Cougars laid an egg of spectacular proportions on defense, and when they reached that pivotal 4th-and-7 on their own 28 with 52 seconds to play, ESPN's FPI metric gave them a <2% chance of winning. But then Retzlaff hit Roberts for a first down, took off for a 27-yard scamper to get the team into scoring position, and found Darius Lassiter for the instantly legendary game-winning touchdown. It was an almost impossible turn of events, and it was the kind of thing that nearly every undefeated team eventually has to pull off to stay that way. No, the Cougars weren't perfect against a mediocre opponent, but it's the Big 12—there are no gimmes. BYU won, and more importantly, they after won coming from behind and facing serious adversity—if you can believe it, this game marked the first time all season that BYU has trailed at any point in the 4th quarter. The Cougars were never going to put together a truly great season if they were unable to win like that, and now, we know that they can.
The Bad:
Jay Hill is not, apparently, infallible. That might come as a bit of a shock to BYU fans who have watched his defense wreak havoc over and over this season, but it's true—even a Jay Hill defense has off games once in a while. The BYU defense was awful in this game. There's no way to sugarcoat it. Yes, Oklahoma State had Ollie Gordon fully back from injury, and he was as good as advertised. And yes, the Cowboys also have three—three—Biletnikoff Award watchlisters in their WR room. But in spite of all the talent on its roster, Oklahoma State has been less than impressive on offense in conference play. The Cowboys had not, until this game, scored more than 20 points against a Big 12 opponent. In their last game, against a questionable West Virginia team, they managed just 11 first downs in a 38-14 loss. Yet the BYU defense made this Oklahoma State team look like an offensive juggernaut. The Cowboys rushed for 269 yards as a team and made it look disturbingly easy. They also found success with an array of screen passes and short throws once Garret Rangel went down injured and Alan Bowman had to come into the game. Particularly with Bowman at QB, the Cowboys are incredibly limited as far as offensive options, and it was alarming to watch BYU consistently fail to stop what was pretty obviously coming.
The clearest manifestation of these issues was on third down, where the BYU defense surrendered a truly appalling 9/13 conversions. The Cowboys also converted both of their fourth down attempts, meaning that of the 13 times the Cowboys faced a third down, they eventually extended their possession eleven times. That's disgusting no matter what offense you're up against. This is now the third consecutive recap I've written where the defense's issues with getting off the field on third down have come up. Once is an aberration. Twice is mildly concerning. Three times is a full-blown crisis, especially since this time, it probably should have cost the Cougars their undefeated record. Oklahoma State's 4th quarter go-ahead touchdown drive was a 17-play monstrosity that took 8:26 off the clock and saw the Cowboys convert two fourth down attempts and two other third downs, one of which was a 3rd-and-13 from the BYU 35. Allowing that conversion in particular is just flat-out unacceptable. You cannot allow a 3rd-and-13 conversion on your own 35 with the game on the line. It's unconscionable. The BYU defense garnered praise early in this season because every player was "doing his one-eleventh"—that is, doing his job and trusting his teammates to do theirs. The most serious issue that plagued the BYU defense in previous seasons was a tendency by the star players to play hero ball—to gamble on making a big play instead of focusing on their assignment. It works every now and then (see: Jakob Robinson's pick-six against Cincinnati last year), but it also tends to leave gaps in the defense that a savvy quarterback can exploit. Jay Hill turned this defense around in large part by convincing guys to stop playing hero ball and trust each other. Now, it seems they need a reminder.
The BYU offense played great overall but wasn't perfect in this game. Jake Retzlaff threw two interceptions, and while the second was on a relatively meaningless end-of-half possession, the first was an absolutely brutal drive-killer at the Oklahoma State 25. But in a strange twist of fate, the worst of the Cougars' three turnovers, though also an interception, had nothing at all to do with Jake Retzlaff. On a trick play at the end of the 1st quarter, Hinckley Ropati tried throwing a pass off his back foot and it was intercepted at the goal line, extinguishing a promising scoring drive. This game marked the first time all season where the Cougars have lost the turnover battle, and while the only turnover of the second half for either team was an Oklahoma State interception that set up a crucial BYU touchdown, the Cougars missed out on at least two very strong scoring opportunities because of turnovers in the first half. In other words, this game shouldn't have been as close as it was, and turnovers were the reason Oklahoma State stayed in it.
Of the four other BYU teams that have made it to 7-0, only the 1979 squad didn't have a clunker of a game in the process—the only one of the Cougars' first seven opponents that they didn't blow out that year was #14 Texas A&M. The other three teams all had to find ways to win bad games against bad teams to get to 7-0. In 1984, the national champion Cougars barely survived late scares against three mediocre opponents—Hawaii in game 4, Wyoming in game 6, and Air Force in game 7. In 2001, BYU needed late-game heroics to beat a horrible UNLV team in game 4 and struggled with mediocre New Mexico in game 6. And who could forget 2020, when the Cougars eked out a one-score win over an iffy UTSA team in game 4 and trailed 26-14 in the 3rd quarter before going on to beat a bad Houston squad a week later? The thing that separates each of those now-legendary teams from lesser seasons is that the Cougars won their worst games. It's one thing to beat a great Kansas State team at home with your entire team firing on all cylinders. But can you beat 3-3 Oklahoma State when you lose the turnover battle and your defense plays easily its worst game of the season? No BYU team has ever made it through a season without struggling against a weaker opponent. But while the forgettable teams lose those games, the truly great teams win regardless. I'm starting to think this team falls into that latter category.
On that note, it's time to look ahead to the rest of BYU's schedule. Next week's opponent, UCF, finally found its offense this week—the Knights shocked everyone by putting up 35 against unbeaten Iowa State. Unfortunately for the Knights, they left their defense in Florida, losing 38-35 at the last second in a game that was, bizarrely, almost identical to BYU-Oklahoma State in many respects. UCF's rushing attack is for real—they're a top 5 rushing team in the nation, in fact. Looking at the numbers that Ollie Gordon and the Oklahoma State offense were able to put up against this BYU defense, it's tempting to wonder whether the Cougars will struggle with UCF's run game in the same way. The difference, I think, is that UCF is completely one-dimensional. Against Oklahoma State, the BYU defense had to at least make a show of respecting the pass attack simply because of how insanely talented the Cowboys' WR room is. Against UCF, Jay Hill should have no such inhibitions. The Knights do not have a quarterback with an FBS-caliber arm on their roster. Their starter for the Iowa State game, Jacurri Brown, completed a gag-inducing 8/20 passes for 62 yards with 2 interceptions and no touchdowns. Brown's backup, KJ Jefferson, is a familiar face for BYU fans—he quarterbacked the Arkansas teams that beat BYU in 2022 and lost to the Cougars in 2023. Jefferson was the Knights' starter for their first five games before being benched for his appalling performance against Florida. And despite Brown's total ineffectiveness against Iowa State, he is apparently in line to start against BYU as well. That's good news for BYU—Brown's arm is not a threat in any way, shape, or form, meaning that the Cougars can pretty well sell out to stop the run. One-dimensional teams are a heck of a lot easier to gameplan for.
Assuming the Cougars beat UCF, and I think they will, what then? Well, they have a bye week next, and then comes the all-important Utah game. The Utes are down bad right now, having dropped three straight Big 12 games—the most recent being a miserable 13-7 loss to TCU that cost Andy Ludwig his job as the Utes' offensive coordinator. It's worth contextualizing just how dysfunctional an offense has to be to only score 7 points against TCU's defense. In five games against FBS opponents not named Utah, the Horned Frogs are allowing an average of 37 points per game. Thirty-seven. That number is, by the way, inflated significantly by the 66 points that TCU surrendered to SMU—that's right, the same SMU team that BYU held without a touchdown in their own stadium. In summary, Utah should have scored pretty much at will against this TCU team, and instead, the Utes were held to a single touchdown. This Utah offense isn't scaring anyone, and BYU's defense should have about its easiest assignment of the season against the Utes. In my opinion, the only way BYU loses to Utah this year is by turning the ball over—a lot. It's happened before (cough 2015...cough 2011), but I don't think it happens this time around. The Utah game should be a win for BYU.
From there, the Cougars' schedule goes Kansas, Arizona State, and then Houston. Kansas and Houston are easily the two worst teams in the Big 12 and BYU should win both of those games comfortably, but Arizona State is a bit of a wildcard. The Sun Devils boast the Big 12's best running back in Cam Skattebo and have a legit quarterback in Sam Leavitt—the only question will be whether Leavitt is healthy enough to play, as he injured his ribs against Utah two weeks ago and missed the Sun Devils' most recent game, an ugly 24-14 loss to Cincinnati. Without Leavitt, even Skattebo isn't enough to make ASU's offense anything more than a liability. If Leavitt can go, that will make the game more interesting—but even with Leavitt healthy, ASU was only just OK, squeaking past Texas State by a field goal and narrowly surviving an awful Kansas team.
The bottom line is that the Cougars don't have an especially intimidating opponent left on their schedule. Every game the rest of the way is eminently winnable. The defense will certainly need to execute better than it did in this game, especially against UCF, but it's completely realistic to imagine this BYU team rolling into the Big 12 championship game undefeated. If that happens, the results of that game may not matter—a one-loss BYU team whose only loss was in the conference title game will likely make the college football playoff as an at-large selection. Imagine that, BYU fans. What a life, huh?