BYU's Offense

[Cougarbib]

I think it's easier to find one guy than five. I think the OL has been more than sufficient this year to allow a QB to have a good enough running game and to be accurate and efficient with the football - and our QBs haven't with consistency.

I just don't think we haven't had a good enough QB the last five years.

You need to focus more on what happens before the throw, and not after. Our quarterbacks rarely have even the bare minimum of time to set and throw. There is almost always someone in the backfield almost immediately. Then watch the other teams qb. No matter how bad their qb is, they can almost always beat their season per, because we have almost zero pass rush.

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Blue is right. Almost Every Team BYU has played in 2014 has a much better pass defense than BYU has. Much better. Sad, what shape our DEFENSE and Special Teams are in this year. Our offense is better than either of them and usually plays better than opponents opponent averages, but it is far from being great in its current banged up state. It could get worse if CStew bites the dust. The cupboard is bare. Even the BYU rushing defense has been exposed a couple of times this season. The entire team was exposed by BSU.

JW not starting. Leslie barely present. Bills not 100%. Did Fua even play? Takitaki? Meanwhile, MTSU had a bye week to get healthy.

I watched the Utah game. Neither the USC guy nor Wilson had any more time to throw than Stewart has had. Stewart needs to quit getting wide eyed and overthrowing wide open receivers behind the secondary, and he will take pressure off the pass protection. He needs to hang on to the ball. Then he will be a reasonably competent game manager. Those QBs win when they are supported by a decent defense and solid special teams play.
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[Cougarfan87]

In watching what other power schools do well, it comes down to offensive and defensive lines. If you can hold of a rush, even a somewhat okay QB can make completions. If you have a great defensive rush on the QB, the CBs look much better, even if they aren't great. The sad thing is that BYU used to excel at both offensive and defensive line. Look at the players sent to the NFL. OL is where our weakness has been. DL is a weakness this year. That is where recruiting needs to improve the most, because we aren't going to get the fancy speed guys.

I know basketball is different, but when I was evaluating my basketball players last year, I recognized we didn't have much of natural offense at all. So we focused on defense and rebounding. In the end we took second place in the regular season and second place in the tournament--even though we didn't have a fancy offense.

If BYU can get back to controlling the line of scrimmage on offense and defense, we will win many games no matter how many stars are lined up on the other side of the ball. The hogs in the trenches matter.

[snoscythe]

I think Bronco's defense and Anae's offense are both predicated on the offense getting up early, and the defense holding that lead. I don't think either are constructed to come from behind.

It's like the Peyton Manning Colts. The team was built on the assumption Peyton would come out and you would be up by two or more scores at halftime, which means your defense knows the other team has to drop back and pass it to get back in it, so run D becomes less of a factor--that's why Dwight Freeney was so good in the second half--with a lead and Peyton waiting to take the field, you can get after the quarterback. Unfortunately, when Peyton's Colts had to play from behind in the second half, they rarely got back into it because the other team could gash that defense running the ball and eat up the clock to negate what Peyton could do.

I think it's been the same at BYU--the offense and defense are built to be co-dependent. Anae's offense is meant to get up early, and the defense is meant to bend-don't-break to preserve that lead and put the onus on the other offense to create big plays, which Bronco's D is meant to prevent. But when the offense can't get up, or when the defense has early let downs, the wheels fall off--they just aren't built to force the three-and-outs on defense or make the big plays on offense you need to get back into a game that's getting away from you. They're built to get up, and then grind you down on offense, and frustrate you with the clock on defense. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened the past few weeks, and the "phenomenal" scheme hasn't had the benefit of having its underlying assumption or premise in place.

[stuckinbig10country]

Spiff,

Take out last year for Taysom. How efficient was he this year? Just in the pass game. He was a top 15 QB in efficiency before the injury. Sure, he wasn't putting up huge yardage numbers, but we were a 65% run team.

[Brayden Green]

I think Bronco's defense and Anae's offense are both predicated on the offense getting up early, and the defense holding that lead. I don't think either are constructed to come from behind.

It's like the Peyton Manning Colts. The team was built on the assumption Peyton would come out and you would be up by two or more scores at halftime, which means your defense knows the other team has to drop back and pass it to get back in it, so run D becomes less of a factor--that's why Dwight Freeney was so good in the second half--with a lead and Peyton waiting to take the field, you can get after the quarterback. Unfortunately, when Peyton's Colts had to play from behind in the second half, they rarely got back into it because the other team could gash that defense running the ball and eat up the clock to negate what Peyton could do.

I think it's been the same at BYU--the offense and defense are built to be co-dependent. Anae's offense is meant to get up early, and the defense is meant to bend-don't-break to preserve that lead and put the onus on the other offense to create big plays, which Bronco's D is meant to prevent. But when the offense can't get up, or when the defense has early let downs, the wheels fall off--they just aren't built to force the three-and-outs on defense or make the big plays on offense you need to get back into a game that's getting away from you. They're built to get up, and then grind you down on offense, and frustrate you with the clock on defense. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened the past few weeks, and the "phenomenal" scheme hasn't had the benefit of having its underlying assumption or premise in place.

Exactly. BYU fans too often make the mistake of thinking the problem is one or the other, but they influence and feed off each other. For every 3 and out stop our D gets that's one more tired defense coming out going against a self-sustaining drive. We have to play with the personel we have and put them in the right positions to suceed. The coaching staff isn't. We are playing the wrong players, and the right players at the wrong positions.

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[Mingjai]

I think it's been the same at BYU--the offense and defense are built to be co-dependent. Anae's offense is meant to get up early, and the defense is meant to bend-don't-break to preserve that lead and put the onus on the other offense to create big plays, which Bronco's D is meant to prevent. But when the offense can't get up, or when the defense has early let downs, the wheels fall off--they just aren't built to force the three-and-outs on defense or make the big plays on offense you need to get back into a game that's getting away from you. They're built to get up, and then grind you down on offense, and frustrate you with the clock on defense. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened the past few weeks, and the "phenomenal" scheme hasn't had the benefit of having its underlying assumption or premise in place.

I'm not convinced on the current offensive scheme. The Anae II offense seems to lack flow or consistency, even when Taysom Hill was running it. The offense was either 3 and out or went on long sustained drives ending up in the red zone--nothing in between. The 3 and outs use 30 seconds of game clock and not much more real time, putting a lot of pressure on the defense. Every game we seemed to go a quarter or more of offensive stagnation, often coinciding with the opponent gaining the momentum. While on one hand, running such a fast paced offense allows your offense gets a lot more opportunities to run plays, the downside is that your defense has to defend a lot more plays for game.

One of my least favorite examples of flow killing is the diamond backfield, with the QB in the pistol with a tailback behind him and two running backs flanking either side. BYU's offensive pace means that to avoid allowing defensive substitutions, BYU will keep a personnel package for a whole series of downs or more. Every time the diamond backfield comes in for a series of downs, the whole down/distance schedule seems disrupted, and the offense has to play behind the chains.

Part of the problem is Anae playcalling and part of it is the QB making the wrong post-snap reads (the current offense is not as focused on pre-snap reads like the traditional West Coast offense)--either way, effective coaching could go a long way in solving the issue.

We saw it under Crowton and we see it now with Anae II. The seemingly random set of plays the offense is running doesn't keep the defense off the field long enough to catch their breath and more importantly make adjustments. With the amount of NFL talent Crowton had on the defensive side of the ball--e.g., Kiesel, Hoke, Ryan & John Denny, Francisco, Brady Poppinga, Bockwoldt, Ena--BYU should have played defense like the 84-85 Cougars instead of the Detmer era Cougars. BYU Crowton's offenses were inconsistent offenses relying on the big play instead of ball control.

If BYU wants to be innovative, rather than running the flavor-of-the-month fast-paced, read-option/packaged play offense, they should perfect running some of pro-style, ball-control offense. That offense will be so rare in a few years, that defense will again struggle to defend it. Plus, it will fit better with Bronco's current defensive scheme.

[Cougarbib]

If you watch a little football, you will see games where an offense only puts up 7 or 10 points and wins. Somehow there defense keeps making stops.

Blaming the offense for the inability of this defense to stop opponents is silly. They cannot even stop them on the opening drive.

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