Provo
Darn near everyone here was surprised/shocked/freaked out by what happened at LaVell Edwards Stadium on Saturday. And some, while wishing complete safety for the people of Texas, wondered if it would be possible for Hurricane Harvey to do BYU a solid and get next week’s game in Houston against LSU canceled.
That’s what a clumsy, uninspired performance against an FCS opponent does to folks.
It scares them.
Bruce Barnum, Portland State’s wonderfully colorful and wickedly unvarnished coach, the man who last year before a game against Southern Utah called Cedar City “Whoville,” said in describing the dire prospects for his team against BYU that he did not want to use the word “bloodbath,” but … well, he went ahead and used it anyway.
His usage was hardly accurate. There was no blood in this bath. Just a whole lot of murky water.
Like the masses — including Vegas, which had BYU as a 33-point favorite — Barnum saw an outcome as lopsided as a Mo Langi combo-jump — a 450-pound flying salchow and double-Lutz — barreling toward him. But the only unbalanced thing about this game was that grand expectation for BYU to roll.
Instead, the Cougars lurched and sputtered, ultimately taking an unsatisfying 20-6 victory over a team from the Big Sky.
“This was definitely not our best performance,” Tanner Mangum said. “We shot ourselves in the foot, especially on big plays.”
One of the more positive things the quarterback could muster was: “There were flashes.”
Flashes in a hot pan.
“We need some work,” Kalani Sitake said. “The guys obviously weren’t happy. … There’s a lot of room for improvement.”
While giving PSU $525,000 for an automatic win, BYU got more than it paid for. It got a headache and a whole lot of worry for its future this season. If the Vikings can make the Cougars sweat, there’s no telling what every opponent on a schedule that is heavy for the next month-and-a-half and lighter thereafter, can do.
Think about it … LSU, Utah, Wisconsin, Boise State, Mississippi State hover in a different stratosphere than Portland State. So, it was thought, did BYU.
As Barnum said it: “On paper, they should be able to do whatever they want to us.”
On the football field, it was a different matter.
There, the Cougars could do very little of what they wanted, particularly on offense, where they played like a helmeted and padded-up Honor Code violation, starting slow and ending … disjointed, discombobulated and, yeah, they looked a bit … drunk.
If the players weren’t inebriated, they certainly were Ineffective.
Some 29 minutes in, when the Cougar defense allowed a 17-play drive that was punctuated by a Portland State touchdown, after which a PAT attempt failed, the count on the board was an utterly flat 14-6.
That remained the drooping score at the half and — I swear — you could hear Frank the Tank’s voice booming through the stands and probably in the locker room, too: “Eevvveerrryyybbbooodddyyyy paaaannniiiiiicccc!”
There was reason to do so.
When the Cougars went for it on fourth-and-5 from the Portland State 40-yard line early in the third quarter, and failed, when they failed to pick up a first down on a subsequent third and short near their own 30, and were forced to punt, there was no relief in sight. End of third quarter … uh-huh, 14-6. Two fourth-quarter field goals were all BYU could add to that total, one set up by an interception.
BYU’s problems centered on four issues, the lack of playmakers, its receivers’ inability to get open, the offensive line’s difficulty in creating space for running backs, none of whom will make anyone forget Jamaal Williams, and a collective hardship in effectively mixing the pass with the run to keep an inferior opponent guessing on defense.
Sitake blamed another deficiency: dumb mistakes, penalties, blown assignments, mental breakdowns. He was particularly disappointed by his offensive line, saying: “I was expecting a lot more.”
All the Cougars were.
Let’s say it this way: In the aftermath, BYU is hoping the worn cliche about a team’s biggest leap in improvement coming between games 1 and 2 of a season will be their course.
“We look forward to that being true,” Sitake said.
If not, well …
“We definitely want to get better and look forward to doing that,” he added. “… We didn’t do enough for me to feel comfortable as a coach.”
Still, Sitake insisted, as mentioned, that the Cougars’ difficulties were not talent-based, they were stupid-based. OK, he didn’t exactly say it that way, but he found optimism in the fact that he believed the shortcomings could be corrected with better focus, better thinking, better execution. That’s what most coaches say when they hope for better results in future games. What are they supposed to proclaim … “We just suck? Pack it in? Give up?”
Even Barnum found it within himself to say of his own guys: “I have a pretty good football team.”
How good are the Cougars? How good will they be? How good can they be?
Man, at this point, nobody is sure. There are more questions now than there were before Saturday.
But real answers are hurtling toward them in the weeks ahead.
GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.