you brought up some interesting points. In BYU's 3 losses he avgd 4.6 catches for 36 yds and a 7.7 ypc. It was after his worst effort that he had to be called out by his coach. If you look below you see it was a string of subpar games by Mitch, where he was struggling to get open downfield and was letting himself be dominated physically by much smaller DBs. I can't recall a time when Taysom had to have his leadership (or a lack thereof) had to be called into question by coaches. The reason Holliday had to call Mitch out was because he was letting his lack of leadership/subpar play go on for several games (2 of which we lost). BYU QBs were throwing a ton of balls his way and he was not catching them. For the season BYU QB's threw nearly 25% of all passes to him, that's 1 out of every 4 thrown to him. He caught only 53% of them (worst of any receiver on the team). Even Devon Blackmon had a better catch rate.
He was great to have on the team as a big red zone target but it's an easy argument to make that he wasn't always clutch this season and struggled with carrying the weight of being a leader to the point that his coach had to call him out
by name. Leaders find a way to overcome in big games and in key moments and not just wait for the easy games against lesser opponents to shine.
Tanner will be just fine next year with a great cast of WR's to throw to. His 2 least efficient WRs will be gone (Mathews and Blackmon) and will be replaced some really talented players like Kurtz, MLP, Jonah Trinnaman, Juergens, Weeks and maybe a young kid like Trey Dye or an Akile Davis.
2015 GAME LOG RECEIVING
DATE OPP RESULT REC YDS AVG LNG TD
9/5 @Nebraska W 33-28 3 69 23.0 42 2
9/12 Boise State W 35-24 5 32 6.4 9 0
9/19 @UCLA L 24-23 9 84 9.3 14 1
9/26 @Michigan L 31-0 1 4 4.0 4 0
10/2 Connecticut W 30-13 8 78 9.8 21 2
10/10East Carolina W 45-38 4 72 18.0 45 1
10/16 Cincinnati W 38-24 3 54 18.0 38 0
10/24 Wagner W 70-6 3 44 14.7 20 2
11/6 @San José St W 17-16 4 62 15.5 34 1
11/14 @Missouri L 20-16 4 20 5.0 11 0
11/21 Fresno St W 52-10 2 52 26.0 45 0
11/28 @Utah St W 51-28 6 158 26.3 72 2