What in the world is wrong with the BYU football team?
Hello everyone. I'm back. I apologize for failing to thoroughly recap the last two BYU football games, but frankly, there isn't much to say. Magnified to an extent, most of my criticisms from the Notre Dame game still apply. I want to take this time to break down what exactly has gone wrong with the BYU football program as the team is now in a three-game slide and was just humiliated by a mediocre Liberty team, 41-14, in what might go down as the worst loss of Kalani Sitake's tenure (it's in a stiff competition with the 2017 UMass game) and one of the worst in program history. I'm going to look at four areas where I think the team has come up short:
Coaching and player development
Scheme and game management
Recruiting
Psychology
I'm also going to propose potential solutions, though it's anyone's guess whether they would work. This season certainly hasn't gone the way I anticipated and I don't feel especially prophetic at the moment.
Area #1: Coaching and player development
One of my consistent complaints across the last six games has been BYU's obvious lack of pregame preparation. I assume the players and coaches are doing something to prep for games, but what it is, I can't fathom. The defense starts each game looking totally baffled by the opposing offense. The offense seems disjointed and out-of-rhythm, like there's no cohesive plan implemented ahead of time to attack the deficiencies of a given defense. In the Cougars' most recent debacle against Liberty, the plan seemed at least initially to be "get the ball to Puka Nacua in every conceivable way". That's not a bad idea, but when Nacua left the game with some discomfort in the second quarter, the offense seemed to short-circuit. There wasn't a backup plan. After Nacua exited, the Cougars never scored again. Meanwhile, the Cougars' energy level to start games, which I praised after the USF game what seems like eons ago, has become a serious problem. The team has looked flat and unmotivated at the start of every game since Oregon.
Pregame prep is only part of the issue. Virtually all of BYU's position groups seem to be woefully underdeveloped and young players don't seem to be getting better. The exceptions are the quarterbacks (no complaints there), the receivers, coached by the ever-excellent Fesi Sitake, and the linebackers, a veteran and star-studded group that didn't need a ton of work. Every other position group has struggled. The defensive line looks straight-up lost, and while the Cougars' pattern of substitutions (more on that later) requires young D-linemen to play a significant number of snaps, those young players don't seem to be benefiting from the experience. Tyler Batty is an established presence having a good, though not great, season. John "Nightmare" Nelson started the season white hot and looked to be the Cougars' next big defensive star, but frankly, he's regressed over the last few weeks. He's made none of the plays for which he earned so much of my praise earlier in the season and he's been losing one-on-one battles which he used to win. Nobody else beyond those two has distinguished himself enough to even merit mention by name. In other words, not only are players not developing quickly enough to suit their usage rates, they're actually getting worse as the season goes on.
The story is the same in the secondary, where promising young players like Jakob Robinson, D'Angelo Mandell, and Talan Alfrey and even more experienced guys like Gabe Jeudy-Lally have looked helpless over the last couple of games. Liberty's receivers--not exactly a formidable group by reputation--were open all over the field in this week's game. An especially concerning trend has been the secondary's inability to stop the pass when playing a drop-8 scheme. Drop-8's entire purpose is to ensure that every potential target is covered, yet Arkansas' passing attack shredded the Cougars in drop-8 coverage. The secondary is a young group, but as with the D-line, expected improvement and development over the course of the season haven't been there. In fact, it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that at this point, the secondary is much worse than it was five or six games ago.
So what can be done about this problem? One answer may be that it's time for Kalani Sitake to reevaluate the coaching of certain position groups. For example, the defensive line is coached by Preston Hadley, a former BYU safety with no significant prior D-line experience of any kind as a coach or player who also has a reputation as the coaching staff's most lackluster and unambitious recruiter (more on that later). What in the world is he doing in charge of such a vital unit? For that matter, why does Ed Lamb have the responsibilities he has? Some of Coach Sitake's staffing decisions, unorthodox but unconcerning when first made, have now become blatant red flags. Sitake himself could probably help the situation by becoming more personally involved in and aware of this developmental process, holding players and coaches accountable for stagnant progress.
Area #2: Scheme and game management
Perhaps this area more than any other has drawn the attention--and the ire--of the average BYU fan, particularly on the defensive side of the ball. Under the leadership of Ilaisa Tuiaki and Ed Lamb, BYU's defenses have become known for passivity and a willingness to pretty well ignore what happens between the 20-yard lines so long as the opposition doesn't score a touchdown as a result. This strategy has worked sometimes and failed sometimes. I sang Tuiaki's praises following the Cougars' 42-14 road win over Utah State in 2019, a game in which the Aggies generated a total of 244 yards of offense on drives that ended in turnovers. However, in other games--such as the infamous 2019 Hawaii and 2021 Independence Bowls--this approach has allowed inferior teams to build momentum and confidence and control time of possession, resulting in the Cougars losing what should have been relatively easy games. This season, the Cougars' defensive scheme looks especially disjointed--at times, it feels like the linebackers in particular are caught in a weird sort of limbo, neither truly dropping into coverage nor aggressively pressuring the backfield, but just playing in a sort of prevent position about 7 yards downfield. This leaves them out of position for both run defense and pass coverage, allowing both styles of offense to work easily against the defense. This particular schematic issue is especially maddening because the Cougars' linebackers are by far their most talented defensive position group--Max Tooley, Keenan Pili, Payton Wilgar, and Ben Bywater are four of the Cougars' best defensive players. To effectively remove their impact from the game is borderline criminal.
The offense, meanwhile, was dynamic last year in Aaron Roderick's first season as offensive coordinator, but cracks are now becoming apparent. Roderick was famously the mastermind behind the Zach Wilson-led passing attack which took college football by storm in 2020, but he didn't actually call the plays that year--Jeff Grimes did, providing the practical implementation for Roderick's on-paper wizardry. It was a match made in football heaven and catapulted Wilson to the #2 overall pick in the subsequent NFL draft. Roderick is now the full-time playcaller, and the role has not suited him nearly as well. He seems to struggle with basic situational awareness during games, opting for plays which the analytics might say are ideal but which fail to account for momentum swings and his own players' performance (hence all of those frustratingly short play designs on long 3rd downs). Roderick's football acumen is unquestionable and both Wilson and Jaren Hall have flourished under his tutelage, but his down-by-down playcalling leaves much to be desired. The result this year has been a distinctly lackluster offense--the Cougars are ranked 66th in the nation in total offense this year despite having an NFL-caliber quarterback, the deepest top-to-bottom WR room in recent school history, and a talent-laden and experienced line.
It's not hard to say who's more to blame for the Cougars' recent struggles--outside of the Baylor game, the defense has been historically porous all season. However, Coach Sitake may already be working on solutions for that particular issue. After the Liberty game, Sitake announced that Ilaisa Tuiaki had been relegated to coaching the defensive line going forward, while Sitake himself called plays for the defense in that game, will continue to do so, and will work more closely on schematic development going forward. Sitake has taken over personal control of the defense briefly on a couple of occasions throughout his BYU tenure, always with positive results. Hopefully, this time will be no different. Interestingly, reports have also now surfaced that Tuiaki actually offered to resign immediately following the Liberty game. While Sitake refused to accept his resignation at the time, it's hard to see much of a path forward for Tuiaki at BYU. He and Sitake are extremely close, but his performance has been so inexcusably bad this year that change is probably unavoidable.
Finding solutions for the offense is trickier. I am not in favor of firing Roderick, but nor am I in favor of him continuing to call plays when he is clearly out of his depth. The best solution in my opinion is to return him to some form of offensive scheme development position, similar to his role under Grimes, and hire a new dedicated offensive playcaller. This course of action seems manifestly unlikely--while Sitake has openly acknowledged issues with the defensive scheme and coaching personnel, he has not given any indication of similar dissatisfaction with the offense. It may be that, for the moment, the offense is stuck where it is.
Area #3: Recruiting
This is one area where the defensive staff is decisively more at fault than the offensive staff. Aaron Roderick, his assistants, and their predecessors have built a truly impressive offensive roster headlined by elite talents like 5-star offensive tackle Kingsley Suamataia. The defense has...well...not had similar success, to put it mildly. Listen to this absolutely stunning quote from (former?) defensive line coach Preston Hadley during this past offseason:
To be clear, the Cougars have hovered around the 70-80 range as far as defensive recruiting class rankings go for several years now. Yet still, year after year, this coaching staff pursues and signs players who don't have a single competing FBS offer. While the Cougars do have built-in recruiting challenges stemming from the Honor Code, those issues aren't severe enough that BYU can't out-compete virtually any G5 team for a recruit, especially with Big XII membership approaching. The defensive staff's approach to recruiting has been totally misguided. It's no accident that the two coaches with the reputation for being the weakest recruiters on the entire staff are Ilaisa Tuiaki and Preston Hadley. The offense has lapped the defense in terms of incoming talent, and that disparity doesn't look to be improving much over the next couple of recruiting classes. While individual standouts like dynamic DL prospect Aisea Moa are joining the team in the coming seasons, the defense's overall talent pool looks pathetically shallow. And, as I already pointed out, the coaching staff which recruited these players has failed to adequately develop them. Projects seem more and more often to be staying projects rather than turning into rotational talents. Until the defense begins patterning its recruiting and developmental approaches after the offense, this team will not compete in the Big XII.
Area #4: Psychology
More than anything, this team looks broken. Players look checked out--the level of effort put forward by the team has declined sharply over the last three games. These are guys who don't believe they can win and who play like it. It shows in the way they execute. Though in many cases the scheme does set the defense up for problems, the line still gets overwhelmed virtually every play and easy tackles are often missed. The offensive line, despite being more talent-heavy than virtually any defensive line it's faced this season, has failed consistently to win the battle for the trenches, leading to an anemic rush attack and far too many hits on Jaren Hall. One aspect of the team's mental issues is rhythm--the Cougars have a bizarre pattern of extremely liberal and frequent substitutions on defense which was instituted by Ed Lamb, who handles personnel and time management decisions during games. This means that while players are usually physically fresh, it's easy for them to get out of sync mentally. It also means that underdeveloped young "project" players who are objectively unready for serious minutes end up taking away snaps from the players ahead of them. This damages the hierarchical leadership structure which should naturally exist on the team and also probably leaves the starters somewhat frustrated.
So what can you do to pull a team out of such a massive rut? Well, Coach Sitake is already making some moves. As mentioned, he has now taken charge of the defense personally and focused Ilaisa Tuiaki's efforts on the struggling defensive line. This is a doubly smart move, addressing schematic issues while also focusing Tuiaki's coaching on his greatest area of strength, the D-line, and lessening the influence of the clearly less-than-competent Preston Hadley.
Beyond that, though, players have to eventually execute. East Carolina is coming to town this week. The Pirates have a decent team which, on paper, is certainly inferior to BYU's. If nothing changes, I think we can expect the Cougars to lose lopsidedly yet again. In fact, even with major changes, this team is so broken that the season might still be difficult to salvage. Still, we have to start somewhere. Let's hope it's this week.
Beyond that, this team desperately needs some changes near, if not at, the top. I still believe that Kalani Sitake is the right man to lead the BYU football program. I believed that during the dark days of his early tenure and I believe it now. There's not a person alive today who loves BYU football more than Kalani Sitake and I am grateful to have him at the helm. His assistants, on the other hand, have impressed much less. I could do without Ilaisa Tuiaki and Preston Hadley entirely going forward. I also wouldn't mind seeing Ed Lamb's role reduced if not eliminated entirely--his hockey line change substitution scheme is weird and doesn't work and his time management is a comedy of errors. Aaron Roderick has done a ton to make the offense effective on paper and develop the Cougars' stars, but he's not a good playcaller. I'd love to see him transitioned back to the role of an offensive consultant while someone else is brought in to call plays. None of these changes will happen until at least the end of the season--frankly, there's a possibility none of them happen at all. Tuiaki and Hadley are by far the two most likely to lose their jobs, but the changes made to this team will have to go much further if it's going to be competitive in the Big XII. As hard as it is to say, we may not see another really successful team at BYU until Kalani Sitake's hand is forced and he makes the sweeping changes that will allow this program to become a legitimate Power-5 contender.