Bills had a spectacular interception at Notre Dame... it was a fantastic play. He deserves every praise for that ONE play. Yes, Bills and the rest of our secondary made a few plays last season. But even the most dyed-in-the-wool BYU fan would have to admit that even compared to any average BYU traditionally iffy secondary, last years' secondary was awful.

Forget the woes on offense. Strictly speaking about our defense the secondary was definitely the weak link. We were forced to play soft and help defense in order to stop medium to long plays, and even then were were only moderately successful. We gave teams short passes. Anytime they wanted them, they were there for the taking. Our safeties were ahead of the corners last year, yes, but honestly, that's not saying much.

Under Bronco it's been really nice to see a secondary that hits hard, tackles well, and generally stops the run very effectively. Actually our secondary under Bronco has been exceptional with regard to tackling and playing the run. (*Efxcept for a few bad-habit players who didn't often break down, lowered their head, and essentially turned themselves into human missiles when they tackled (that's a mild complaint, the guys that usually have done this usually brought their guy down)

But I would argue that a pathological lack of speed, quickness, and flawed technique have typically doomed our secondary against the pass. Yes we make up for a lot of deficiencies with scheme. Yes, our guys make plays once in a while. Yes, we get a pick or a knocked down pass once in a while; but I believe we are near the bottom of D1 football teams in both of these categories.

Tell me, how many more passes did our secondary pick off last year than our front 7? Yeah, closer than you thought, huh? How often do we jump a pass or even make a play on the ball? (It's not often.) How often do receivers have their guys beat? (Most of the time.) How often do our corners play press coverage? (Almost never.) How often does our run defense stuff runs on first and second down, and then our secondary lets us down on third and long? A lot.

Tell me you haven't wished that 3rd downs were 3rd and 2 instead of 3rd and 7 because you thought the other team would more likely try to run the ball and you knew we had a better chance of stopping the run than the pass with our corners playing ridiculously far of their guys, practically giving receivers the first down marker. As silly as this sounds, if you haven't at least thought this, you're in an extremely small minority.

Yes, we often benefit from our front 7 forcing a bad pass, or we often benefit from the fact that a QB is inaccurate and misses a wide open receiver, but our exceptional run-stop secondary
struggles mightily to stop the pass. Yes, we are all optimistic, even extremely confident that our secondary will be better than last year. But honestly, could it be worse? The very fact that we're talking about the fact that the top of the depth charts on our secondary right now are a lot of the same guys we had on the field last year simply cannot instill any kind of confidence in anyone.

If the Coach Howell feels confident about his secondary, he's myopic. Tons of work to be done still, and we still don't have the personnel to have a top flight secondary. Yes we have some talent and depth at the safety spot, and I recognize that's a good thing.

But check back with me on the day that our secondary consistently jumps passes, knocks down passes and generally makes a play on the ball if it's in their vicinity. Check back with me when we stop giving away the short pass. Check back with me when even though we are playing soft, conservative, help defense in the secondary, the other team's receivers don't regularly get past us down-field. Check back with me when members of our secondary can stay with their man one-v-one, mano-a-mano... I mean smother him and make a play-on-the ball kind of stay with their guy, not just be in the vicinity to make a tackle after the catch. Check back with me when we consistently play man-press. I will so love it when that day comes. But if anyone thinks that this is going to happen this year, they are crazy.