Bronco's long and short term defensive issues

In transcribing notes from this week’s press conference, I broke out the series of quotes from AD Tom Holmoe on BYU’s recruiting philosophy for football.

There was one aspect of Holmoe’s interview that piqued my interest. He said there are players on the team who are quicker than those playing.

Here is that part of the interview and then I’ll break down some observations.

Holmoe addressed the issue when asked by a reporter if losses this year to TCU and Utah exposed a weakness in the Cougars that should be addressed if BYU is to contend for conference titles. Can BYU win titles with the current philosophy?

“Yeah, I believe so,” said Holmoe. “One of the things Bronco and I see eye to eye on is that. There is always room for improvement where you need to go out and find that exceptional player who still fits in but isn’t your typical BYU recruit.

“We’ve been doing this a long, long time. We’ve won a lot of championships with the same type of athlete and sometimes you complement that athlete with someone else.
A good example is Michael Reed. He is not typical. We got him out of Texas. He is a great kid and [what you do] is get people around him and he’s a complement to the rest of team. We’ve had other players such as Michael, maybe some who have been higher profile players. We need to find those kids.

“We aren’t going to close our eyes to recruiting players who aren’t your typical BYU recruit. We can look at the JC ranks. Make no mistake about it, we aren’t desperate to find some one who can run 4.2 (forty yard dash).

“We have guys in the program who are faster than those who are playing. They just aren’t playing right now. You need to find players who can play in your system and they need to have the qualities you are looking for and speed is definitely one of them. But it is not the only one. There is many times when the fastest player on your team doesn’t play. I’m not going to say speed is overrated because it’s pretty important but it’s not the only thing.

So, whom was Holmoe talking about?

I think I know one of the players, and if there was one player who could really have helped the Cougar defense this year, it would be this guy, if he had been ready back in August: DE Bernard Afutiti.

Think about it. Jan Jorgensen is getting double and triple teamed. BYU doesn’t have the speed on the edges to blitz as effective as they did a year ago and the dominoes fall from there and the secondary is exposed more than a year ago. If BYU had a little more flexibility with its front seven, it could pressure QBs more productively. Even just getting a hand or rushing a QB would make a difference.

Afutiti is faster than guys playing. But a decision to hold him out this year came early by D-line coach Steve Kaufusi, who wanted him to get acclimated to the level he’d need to play at in terms of energy, effort and practice.

Now, there should be no debate the Cougars could be helped with some quicker, more physical defensive backs. They need to find some choices and create some competition this spring now that G Pittman left.

It is debatable, however, whether BYU’s defense has steadily declined since TCU exposed some weaknesses, or if it has found some improvement.

I’d argue that with the exception of a soft first quarter and a half at Utah, there has been solid improvement in the defense, especially the secondary since UNLV had a field day in Cougar stadium. On that day, the game plan called for Cougar coverage to be as soft as possible, literally giving UNLV’s pass catchers whatever they wanted for 10 or 15 yards.

It looked bad and functioned even worse.

But I think there have been strides since.

Basically working with the same players, there has been defensive improvement. Is it good enough to stop Arizona? Maybe. We’ll find out a lot more today at the first practice since the Utah loss. We’ll see how much these guys have left in the tank.

With the change of Andrew Rich to corner and Jaime Hill rolling the defense towards him to make physical plays, I think the defense has made late season strides. There still isn’t enough up front pressure, which would help immensely. But plays in the secondary have improved, so has coverage.

Consider, for the sake of argument, the glut of points put up by CSU were mostly the fault of the offense with turnovers, starting with Max Hall’s fumble for a TD. I’d say 21 of CSU’s points should be placed on the offense. We did see an improvement in tackling and spacing against pesky Air Force, although passing isn’t the Falcon forte. Still, AFA tied Utah at 23 with a minute left in the game. The Falcons are extremely tough for a D to prepare for. A bad or terrible defense is incapable of stopping Air Force. That wasn’t the case.

Against SDSU, the defense was serviceable against some speed receivers. At Utah, after that first half, Hill made some adjustments and the defense had three consecutive stops in the third quarter of a three-point game. Utah’s point parade basically came on BYU’s six turnovers, most of them after those stops. No defenses at any level can handle that kind of flood. BYU’s defense was not why BYU lost to the Utes. I’d put about four Ute TDs on BYU’s offense.

Is BYU’s defense great? No. But it may not be as bad as some make it out to be if Scott Johnson can return and give the Cougars some flexibility in coverage of Arizona’s spread offense, improving execution in open space.

The problem of pressure up front may be the greatest issue, equal to or more so than secondary coverage and so-called speed issues. If a defense gets it done up front, it changes everything for the back end.

Next year, a guy like Afutiti, just one player now on the sidelines, could significantly change that dynamic because he’d make Jan Jorgensen the weapon he was in 2007.