Provo • Long before LSU tormented BYU’s offense, Penn State’s defense stymied a Cougars quarterback who completed only 8 of 26 passes in a September game that BYU lost by four touchdowns.
Owning a Heisman Trophy was not especially consoling to Ty Detmer in the early stages of his senior season. Same story now, in his job as BYU’s offensive coordinator. The Cougars are regrouping after registering 97 total yards against LSU and never crossing midfield.
Detmer second-guessed himself about the ending of the BYU-Utah game last September. He let Taysom Hill talk him into a quarterback draw play that got stuffed on a win-or-lose, 2-point conversion attempt. Yet as Detmer stood on the BYU practice field this week fielding questions about his search for production after Saturday’s 27-0 loss in New Orleans, it became clear that his offense’s current issues cloud anything that happened 52 weeks ago.
Detmer faces an offensive crisis 15 games into his college coaching career, especially with Power Five opponents Utah, Wisconsin and Mississippi State to come by mid-October. The 1991 Cougars were reeling from an 0-3 start after losing to Florida State and UCLA and posting 158 total yards against Penn State. But they had some things going for them: Detmer, a confident quarterback; Norm Chow, a veteran offensive coordinator; and a favorable schedule, with only Western Athletic Conference teams and Utah State ahead of them. BYU went unbeaten (with two ties) the rest of the way.
As for quarterback Tanner Mangum and the 2017 Cougars, the worst is not necessarily behind them.
Asked how he processed the misadventures in New Orleans, Detmer said, “There’s part of you that just wants to put it away and forget it, and the other part of you says we need to learn from it and we need to fix it and figure out what we can do differently. You go through all of those things.”
He managed to joke about grading the offensive film, saying, “There wasn’t a lot to watch. That’s the good thing, only 38 plays.”
That’s also the problem, of course. The Cougars didn’t do anything to keep themselves on the field.
Detmer’s game-planning and play-calling couldn’t match LSU’s defensive talent and good coaching of its own. That offensive showing revived all of the questions about Detmer’s lack of experience in college football, the shortcoming that everyone thought he would overcome by being, you know, Ty Detmer.
Maybe we should have studied the local history of fan-favorite quarterbacks who became play-callers. BYU’s Brandon Doman and Utah’s Brian Johnson lasted a combined three years in those jobs at their old schools.
I’m not the only one who believed Detmer would do well, thanks to his life of being immersed in offensive football as a high school coach’s son, a savvy college player and an NFL quarterback for 14 years, spent mostly in what amounted to a coaching role. BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe, who knows football, hired Detmer with the endorsements of Steve Young and others.
Detmer succeeded last year in maximizing the abilities of Hill and running back Jamaal Williams. And this season, he’s operating the scheme everyone expected to see from him, the traditional BYU passing offense that seemingly would be effective with Mangum playing the role of Detmer himself.
We may have had it all backward, though. The questions keep coming: What if Hill and Williams, who made NFL rosters, were the ones making Detmer look good last season? Can the Cougars blame LSU for the debacle in New Orleans, knowing they won’t face another defense like that, maybe ever? Or is there more embarrassment to come?
The issue may go even deeper than the current problems. In the 1970s, ’80s and early ‘90s, the Cougars picked apart unsophisticated defenses that were not accustomed to dealing with the passing game. Everybody throws the ball now, and defenses are both sound and creative. The BYU offenses of old successfully countered athletic disadvantages with planning and precision. That may not be true anymore.
Some observers suggested Detmer the coordinator could do to LSU what Detmer the quarterback did to Miami in 1990, when he shredded a proud defense and upset the No. 1-ranked team. Nothing like that happened in New Orleans, and now comes Utah in Provo.
The comforting thing for BYU is the Utes’ defense won’t be as overwhelming as LSU’s. It’s a guarantee that the Cougars will cross the 50-yard line Saturday. But what happens beyond that point, who knows?