BYU Cougars

Tackling a top priority for Cougars after poor performance

Published Sep. 22, 2015 9:47 a.m. ET

foxsports

All this glitz and glamour is great, but at the end of the day, tackling is one of the most fundamentally important aspects of football.

Against UCLA, BYU seemed to forget that.

Paul Perkins carved up the Cougar defense at will, and though the secondary covered well and the pass rushers pressured freshman QB Josh Rosen often, their run defense was suspect. Bronco Mendenhall wants his troops to rectify that, and in a big way. So do his players.

"That was terrible," defensive lineman Graham Rowley said. "I think we’re a better team than that. To come off only giving up around 60 yards against Boise State and then let UCLA run that much, it wasn’t good. But, it was a teaching moment for us that we need to learn how to tackle and wrap up and finish. It’s kind of a blessing that it happened to us, even though it’s disguised as a failure. We're not giving up. This is just a minor speed bump and we're going to get over it."

BYU will travel to Ann Arbor and take on Michigan this weekend.

(h/t Daily Herald)