....been very even in that dept with BYU running for 506 yds vs Utah's defensive front and Utah running for 473 vs BYU's front and that's with BYU often trailing early in the game and having to throw a lot to catch up. This is also with Utah having a large number of future NFL'ers on their OL and DL too. Every year is different but the comments aren't. I think sometimes ute fans tend to get a little carried away with how tough their defense really is most years. They've been really opportunistic with takeaways and that's been the one thing that has saved their bacon in a lot of games the past few years and makes the overall defense look better than it's really been.

Koroma is a 4th year starter and graded out as the 2nd best center returning this year. Paired up with Kanuch and Norman they will hold their own in the middle against who ever Utah has. At Tackle BYU returns a very athletic guy (freshman All-American last year just after returning home from a 2 yr mission) who has had a full year of experience and time in the weight room to recover from his mission. He's been timed running the 40 in 4.7 and likely will be shifted over to LT to protect Mangum's blind side. Fitts is a nice player at DE but not a game changer and Anae is inexperienced and unproven. Utah has taken a step backwards from past seasons with their current group of DE's. BYU's OL matches up really well vs this year's DL.

As for your LB's, they're a bunch of unknowns and with Hansen slowed up trying to recover from Groin surgery your best run stopper from the back 7 will be slowed up. A major difference with this year's offense for BYU is we'll be throwing to the RB's and TE's a lot more (like we did when Beck was the QB) and forcing defenses to back off of our WR's. This will extend drives by converting a lot more 3rd and medium distance and force defenses to start cheating up to help cover mismatches from LB's trying to cover faster RB's and TE's.

I respect how good you guys have been during this streak and how hard it is to break a streak. Bronco is gone and with that goes a degree of motivation that Kyle used to his advantage. We're due, nothing stays the same forever. We have as many question marks as you guys do so like I said for last years game, I think this one comes down to the wire. If (big IF) we have 1 or fewer turnovers we win comfortably (especially if we have zero). If we have 2 it moves to the 50-50 category. Any more than 2 and you guys win comfortably.