What do you do if you’re BYU and you’re playing on the road, a place you haven’t won in just short of a year, and you have no consistent run game, you have an offensive line that only occasionally gets any kind of decent push forward, and you can’t trust your quarterback because he handles the ball like a cache of heated nitroglycerin and throws it like he’s taped up and wearing boxing gloves, setting ball security in particular and offensive football as a whole back a century or so?
You celebrate, that’s what.
You congratulate yourselves and call the victory what Jake Retzlaff called it: “Gritty.”
He could have used a word that rhymes with that one.
Shhh. Shut your mouth.
You count on a strong showing by your defense and then, in a key late moment, you pitch the ball to a backup running back who possesses one of the coolest names in all of college football — Miles Davis — for a big gain with that tight, messy game on the line, and follow it with a field goal to seal an 18-15 triumph over an opponent, SMU, that was favored by double-digits.
And then, afterward, your coach lies about the essence of what he had just watched.
“It was a great game,” Kalani Sitake said.
That was a half-truth, anyway.
“We need more production from our team,” he said.
That was the full truth.
And so is this: BYU’s offensive players owe their defensive teammates not just a heap of praise, but a good chunk of their NIL money after what took place in Texas on this occasion. Five times the Mustangs found their way into the red zone and not once did they make it into the end zone, coming away with just six points, and, in total, just five field goals.
That rocksteady Cougar resistance forced three turnovers, got three sacks, garnered eight tackles for loss, and racked up a crucial non-conference win for a team that doesn’t yet quite know what it has, what it is, what it can be, what it will be. If it had lost this game, it would have thrown additional doubt on top of a preexisting abundance of uncertainty in the run-up to a Big 12 schedule bound to push BYU to its limits in the weeks and months ahead.
Now, there seems to be more hope, compliments of guys like Harrison Taggart, Blake Mangelson, Isaiah Glasker, Crew Wakley, Jack Kelly, and the rest. Shout out to defensive coordinator Jay Hill, who was on hand, leading his dogged dudes, despite suffering that heart attack that hit him a bit over a week ago. If that isn’t showing toughness to your underlings to the Nth degree, who knows what would be.
If what BYU displayed against SMU is, in fact, factual, past concerns about certain shortcomings, such as bouncing back from adversity and stoning opposing high-octane offenses and, more specifically, an inability to put pressure on the quarterback can rest quietly. Throughout this game, that defense forced SMU into uncomfortable situations, and the longer the thing went on, the more evident it became that victory for BYU would require a kind of one-handed masterpiece from that side of the ball.
As for the other side, good lord, the Cougars’ attack was belching and burping for most of the night. There were a few highlights, including a TD pass, but Retzlaff gagged up one fumble and chucked a brace of picks, interceptions that looked as though they were straight out of a bad comic’s slapstick comedy routine.
“Mistakes happen in football,” Sitake said, noting that reality a little easier with a win in the bag.
As pleased as the coach was with the “disruptive” nature of his defense, he’s completely aware that on attack, the Cougars must improve or they’ll get shredded in league play. There are football basics to get cleaned up — fundamentals such as … you know, blocking and avoiding three-and-outs, sustaining drives and determining not to serve up mindless turnovers.
The aforementioned run game was unreliable, at best, excused only by the fact that starter LJ Martin dinged an ankle early on, after just five carries, and could not return. Others tried to meet the need to establish the run, but Davis was the one that gave BYU the boost required, grabbing a pitch and bolting upfield for 37 yards on a late drive that set up the winning field goal.
“It was a tough game,” Sitake said. “… I like the way we found a way to win. We definitely need to play better, we know that, but we have to celebrate the wins, too.”
There will be fewer of the latter if the former is business left unattended and undone.
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