BYU Cougars

BYU football: Cougars may have found their offensive identity

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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The BYU football team seems to have found itself offensively after three losses by a combined seven points.

Imagine yourself a football team. The QB is a savvy game manager, a clutch man when the yards to gain are short and the need dire. But mostly, he’s not breaking the 300 yards passing plateau.

The offense is focused around a featured running back, a heavy-hitter who loves contact and gets most of his yards after it. They line up in heavy sets, double-tight, with a 250 lb. fullback lead blocking, plowing the way down the middle.

Normally, you’d be picturing Stanford, or a Big 10 school. Maybe even Alabama.

But Cougar fans, this is your football team. And that’s okay.

BYU football 2016 is a power-run, smash mouth offense. A huddling possession hog. A methodical battleship that crashes opposing lines, focused on wearing them down and breaking their will. It is run-first, and much of the time, run-second, too. Then they throw in some play action, a bullet on a crossing route, and the occasional shot down field. In all, the actual passing calls and running calls are close to even in number.

But most of the yards come when they get the ball to Jamaal Williams, and let him J Swag Daddy right down the field to the tune of 140+ yards per game.

Mike Carter-USA TODAY Sports

It took some work to get there. There are a lot of difficulties in changing offensive styles. The previous style recruited and trained bodies and taught minds with certain objectives in mind—objectives you could call the opposite of those of a pro-set.

But now at .500 through six games, offensive coordinator, Heisman trophy winner, Macarena dancer Ty Detmer appears to have found the sweet spot between his offensive scheme and the athletes at his command. He’s now no longer afraid to let the team grind, lean on the run, maybe get stopped for short yardage in the first quarter or two.

It takes its toll. 45 percent of BYU football’s points have come in the fourth quarter. By then, the possession and pounding wears down opponents, even the likes of Michigan State. And if in the last two minutes or so you need a drive for the go-ahead score, well, the Cougars can do that, too.

Just don’t ask for a two-point conversion.

Now, this isn’t to say this “run to set up the pass” style will be Detmer’s offense for his entire tenure. With another year in his system, with athletes recruited specifically for it, and a gunslinger in Tanner Mangum waiting in the wings, maybe next year there will be passes whizzing around everywhere.

To Cougar fans, next year may look just like old times. Going through progressions, picking apart a defense by taking what they give—this is what Ty Detmer knows, what his West Coast/pro style is built to do.

Just not this year. This year, the Cougars come hammering away with face breaking frontal assaults. And honestly, who cares as long as they put points on the board, and W’s in the ledger?  

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And who knows? Any game now, Taysom Hill may just loosen up his arm, whip out a few more 75-yard bombs from scrimmage. As teams sell out to stop the J Swag Daddy, it’s not as unlikely as some think.

Until then, personally, I intend to enjoy some big-boy, mountain man football. And it’s a pretty fun way to win.

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