2006 Season Take

[jay santos]

First here’s my take from last year.

http://www.cougarboard.com/noframes/...tml?id=1396825

Wasn’t too far off. The offense performed about like I said, although I was a little too high on Beck’s efficiency rating. Funny that I got ripped on for bagging on Beck with that prediction. The D disappointed severely.

2006

Offense

QB

I dare say our situation at QB looks as good as the U’s. Beck is a four year starting senior. Without checking the stats, I’m sure he has the most passes thrown under his belt than any other NCAA QB right now. He has failed to meet expectations thus far. He’s been given the most and accomplished the least of any BYU QB in history. This is where it has to change. I have faith in him, to some degree. I have faith that he’ll be an awesome senior QB and will lead our offense to possible a top 10 offense but he’ll fail to have the kind of senior season that would cement him as a top 5 BYU QB and probably settle in somewhere around #8 in my book, behind Doman and Nielsen ahead of Wilson and Hancock and about even with Walsh. My projection for his pass efficiency is 146 (which means 9 BYU QB’s would have had better seasons and many of those would have two better seasons).

I’m also not in the camp that believes if Beck goes down it’s the end of our season. Jason Beck has looked great in fall camp and I believe he’d step in and have a Hancock-like season if needed.

RB

Curtis Brown is a stud. He doesn’t have moves like Reno Mahe or speed like Staley or strength like Tahi but he has just enough a combination of all three plus a lot of brains and a lot of heart. He’ll go down in my book as the third best RB in 30 years at BYU behind Staley and Willis. I expect a special senior season from him.

Vakapuna is quite an enigma. He appears to have the potential to be better than Curtis and may even be good enough to steal some carries away from him already.

Tonga is a perfect FB for BYU’s system, being able to catch the ball, block, and plow through the line for two yards when it’s needed.

WR

I felt great about this group coming into fall camp, but now I’m not so sure. Mahuika’s hurt again. Reed never materialized in fall camp as the go to guy. I expected Reed to be Beck’s #1 WR coming into the season but in fall camp Reed was nowhere. That really concerns me. You think Reed’s a speed guy because he’s the only black receiver, but he’s actually probably the slowest one of the bunch. But Wilkerson/Hale (and Jerry Rice on the opposite spectrum) showed us 40 speed doesn’t equate to a great deep threat. I still hold out hope for Reed but I’m very concerned he didn’t show anything in fall camp.

Miekle will be solid but that’s all he’ll be. He needs guys like Watkins and Harline to draw the heat away. Harline is back but who will fill Watkins’ role?? I’m not sold on Jacobsen yet, let’s wait and see. I like Jacobsen and Hague in there but Collie as a frosh standout at WR is an anomaly.

Allen and Collie Sr are underrated and will do an OK job. They run routes and catch the ball.

I’m worried about who the deep threat is going to be.

Overall I rate this WR group has an average BYU group with the potential to exceed that if Jacobsen steps up.

TE

Absolutely stacked. Harline ranks right up there with the best TE’s ever. And only 1996 rivals this year as far as the entire position. I put Harline/Coats over Jolley/Nead and barely below Lewis/Mili. Then you add So’oto. Looks great, let’s see them on the field a lot with double/triple TE.

OL

Stacked again. Four returning starters from a quality group last year. Keele and Kuresa are four year starters. Aulai should be ready to jump in as the new starter. Bright is ready to start but he’s still waiting for his chance. This is the kind of line that comes around once every five years. Should open up a lot of holes for the RB’s and give Beck some time to pick apart D’s.


Overall


Much of this offense has been together for three years now: Beck, Brown, Coats, Kuresa, Keele. Nearly everyone is good and experienced. All in all this offense should rival any of our best offenses of the past 20 years. We should range between top 5 and top 20, depending how far Beck can take us, and whether a deep threat emerges.

Defense

DL

Not impressed at all with this bunch. I’d like to see us get to a 4-3, maybe that’s the long term plan once we get more quality DL’s in the program. Paongo will be serviceable NT, nothing more. We don’t have any ends that will knock your socks off like we’ve had in the past: Poppinga, Denney, Frisch, Brock, Hall, etc. The depth is misleading because you think we have depth due to the fact that Kaufusi was rotating three sets of DL’s, however since your first set sucks it means your second set sucks at least as much and probably more. So what good is depth? I’m impressed with the youngsters Dulan and to lesser degree Tonga, but Fuga just looks short and fat and slow right now.

LB

Love this group. Jensen’s too short and slow to play in the NFL but he’s very experienced and a great leader. I love Nixon. Guy has an NFL body and great work ethic. Staffieri’s a bit of an unkown to me. Wagner had potential but needed to lose 15 lbs and gain some speed. Linebackers with beer guts don’t cut it. Kehl’s a stud. I love his speed and aggressiveness. Same with Poppinga and even Bolden. This group is deep and talented. This is where Bronco’s aggressive attitude can score points. Let your secondary play smart and play the percentages and let your LB play like maniacs.

S

Worst group of safeties, comparatively, than any group in the past 20 years. I’m not sure how our talent level got so bad. Nothing in the program to make me think it will improve any time soon. Safety needs to be a priority in recruiting. We can’t let the safeties be the leftovers in every recruiting period. The only silver lining is that with the move to 3-4, we’re only forced to see two at a time in stead of three. If we had a better group of CB’s, I’d have moved Buchanan to safety.

CB

Also bad, but compared to BYU typical D’s, the CB’s aren’t as bad, comparatively as the safeties or DL. Robinson is a shrimp. He may be listed at 5’9” but I’d put him more at 5’7” and that’s wearing my wife’s heels. He’d dominate my son’s pee wee league team, but he’s not a D1 football player. I’m impressed with Criddle’s move up the depth chart, especially since I always felt Buchanan was almost adequate as a BYU CB. I’m very disappointed that Pringle and Saulsberry have not broken into a starting lineup over two sorry corners. Leads me to believe they’re more like the Wilson/Phillips variety of JC CB’s and not the Gray/Morgan variety.


Overall Defense

I believe this D will be equally bad against the pass but a little better against the run. I’m also banking on opposing QB’s not being as lucky as they were against our D last year. I believe Bronco learned something last year and the tweaks he made to his philosophy will pay off. I expect to see less blitz with abandonment and more Schmidt/KW style bend-but-don’t-break D. That suits our D talent and offensive philosophy better. With an easier schedule and modest improvement, I expect the D to move up from #83 D to about #65 D.


Overall

Offense and defense both improve modestly. Coaching is more experienced. Schedule is a little easier. The senior leadership of Beck/Brown/Miekle/Kuresa steals at least one game. Last year we were 6-6 with #65 schedule and #55 in nation. My outlook this year:

9-3 overall with #75 schedule and #25 in nation

[Colly Wolly]

Nice post and great analysis. I hope you are right about everything but the D.

Do you think we beat Utah this year? How do we finish in conference play?

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by Stick It In Him

Nice post and great analysis. I hope you are right about everything but the D.

Do you think we beat Utah this year? How do we finish in conference play?

I think we beat Utah every year. But to be honest I'm concerned with the long term direction of both programs. Utah football has never been able to recruit LDS against BYU and now they are.

I really think we win the conference, but I guess it's probably a three way coin toss between TCU, Utah, BYU.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by jay santos

9-3 overall with #75 schedule and #25 in nation

I would be quite happy with that, but I just don't see our defense being good enough for that kind of record.

[Goatnapper'96]

and I think I agree with you conclusions just about word for word.

I argued with Joey Evans about the change to 4-3. He does not believe for a second Bronco would entertain such a defense, but as I read the recruiting tea leaves I think he is building towards a 4-3.

The only reason I think he would hesitate is that I think the dude likes putting a minimum of players on the line. I believe he thinks it is easier to disguise coverages when fewer players are on the LOS. Hence, while the 3-3-5 was not optimally suited to BYU's recruiting base, he still has his glorious confusion element with 8 players not on the LOS.

I am confident that Reed will develop nicely into a go to receiver, but I never understood the hope that he would suddenly turn into a deep threat. It is not his forte, and if BYU wants to be successful long term they have to develop the consistency of execution that makes a deep threat negligible.

[OhioBlue]

Agreed, Goat re: Reed. I don't understand where people are getting the idea that he's going to be catching all the long bombs now.

On the other hand, I think Reed has the most potential of any of our WRs right now to be a Keyshawn type. The guy that catches everything thrown his way, is big/tall enough to use his physicality in battles for the ball, and who runs good routes. And continue his great downfield blocking.

I wouldn't be surprised to see him end up kinda like Curtis Brown has at RB--not the speediest, jukiest, flashiest player but a nice combo of abilities and a complete package.

That's my hope anyway, we'll see what turns out.