After two dramatic overtime victories over Power Five teams, the Cougars and their fans are riding high. But do we know how good this team really is? Cougar Insiders Jay Drew, Jeff Call and Brandon Gurney examine the topic, and others too — like how big the two wins are to coach Kalani Sitake’s future and who (or what) has been most surprising about this year’s team. That and more on this week’s episode.
Jeff Call: Coming up on this episode of Cougar Insiders podcast, we break down last week’s big win over USC in overtime, we look ahead to the Washington game this Saturday and we also look at some of the surprising developments from the season, surprising players. That and more on this edition of Cougar Insiders podcast.
Welcome to this edition of Cougar Insiders podcast. I’m Jeff Call, along with Jay Drew and Brandon Gurney. We’re all at the Deseret News. We all cover BYU and welcome you into this podcast. And first of all, Jay, a pretty eventful last couple of weeks. What did both wins, the win at Tennessee in double overtime and last week’s win against USC in overtime, what do you think that meant to the program? And to Kalani (Sitake) specifically?
Jay Drew: I think they’re absolutely huge. I mean, if you would have told any BYU fan they’d be 2-1 right now, everybody would have been ecstatic. So you just can’t discount how important these wins were, not only for the fan base and for the team, but just for Kalani and his future. He can point to these games when it comes in a couple months, if he sits down with BYU administrators and talks about a contract extension. Obviously two wins over Power Five teams is pretty impressive, especially over a ranked team — USC. He kind of got the monkey off his back with winning at home, getting a Power Five win at home. So now he’s 2-5 against Power Five teams. So just all in all, really well done for Kalani. It’s really going to be impactful for the rest of the season, I think.
JC: Yeah. And Brandon how would you say perception of this team has changed in the last couple weeks?
Brandon Gurney: BYU football is fun again. And I’m being serious about that. I’ve talked to a lot of fans over the years, and since they became became independent, it’s kind of like a chore watching BYU football to be honest with you. This was expressed to me by a lot of people, you know, you feel it’s your duty, right? It’s almost like a church calling to watch BYU football and to follow the team. I mean, maybe that’s too dramatic, maybe it depends on the church calling. But anyway, what it is is fun. You have kids involved. I was able to watch the Tennessee game with my family, a bunch of nieces and nephews and they were into it. They loved it. Usually these guys go down and they play dress-up or whatever. They’re watching BYU football. There are fans rushing the field. That’s what sports is supposed to be. Over big name opponents. It’s fun.
And I think there’s a lot to be said about it just being fun, where you’re enjoying the product, where you like what you’re seeing, where you want to watch this game because BYU’s doing some amazing things, winning in dramatic fashion. That goes a long way. And I think we saw that to a large degree with the win over Tennessee and implemented even that much more with a win at home over over USC where fans were just going nuts. They’re absolutely going crazy. I got knocked over a couple times. Phone knocked out of my hands. Fans didn’t care. They loved it. It was a great scene. And it’s a very positive thing for BYU football.
JC: Yeah. So Jay, like you mentioned, I don’t think there’s many people that would have predicted BYU to be 2-1 at this point. But you look at Tennessee, they’ve been a mess this year. Got a lot of turmoil and things. I don’t know if we really know how good USC is. What about BYU? How good is this team, do you think, moving forward? Where do you see them going from here?
JD: I think it’s a solid team. I’m not ready to say it’s a top 25 worthy team yet. You’re right. Tennessee is down. Obviously, USC, it’s kind of the jury’s still out. They are using a true freshman quarterback. But BYU is making the plays down the stretch, making the plays in overtime. And if you go back to a couple years ago, where they were 8-4, they won a lot of close games, but they also lost a couple close games. They lost four of those games by a total of eight points. So maybe the difference is this year’s team knows how to make the plays in crunch time. And that’s a positive sign. So if I take anything from it, it’s that these guys know how to win. And there will be a lot more close games this season. I think we’re in for, I think Jeff, you wrote it in your article on the game, is it looks like we’re in for a topsy-turvy, twisting, suspenseful, you name it, nail-biters every game. Which is fun for the fans. But it can take years off a coach’s life. But definitely I think BYU is improved from last year.
BG: I wish you would ask me this question a week from today. I mean, Utah plays USC so we’re going to learn a lot about USC. And Tennessee plays Florida. So I don’t think there’s going to be any doubt after this week, maybe some doubt, but it’s going to be largely revealed just what BYU beat and how you can regard that. Not to mention BYU going up against Washington, which I think has proven its mettle early in the year, Washington’s a quality team. So I think this next week is going to reveal a lot to where BYU really is, because we get fooled every year. After that Wisconsin win, oh my goodness they beat Wisconsin, Wisconsin wasn’t that good. You know. So we’ll see how that plays out. But the most important thing BYU is doing, and you strip away everything, all the nuances, everything. They’re just taking care of the football. They’re just winning the turnover battle. It is such a big thing. You could argue it really is that simple. That’s the difference. And maybe really the only difference we’re focusing on is just winning that turnover battle. They forced three turnovers and turned it over once. They won the game.
JC: Yeah, going back to what Jay, you were saying, in that 2016 season they had all these close games. That was also the year where they forced turnovers all the time. Remember that, they had the incredible turnover margin. It seems like it’s now starting to get maybe that way, we’ll see. But let’s talk now about surprises for this season. And I think for me, this is probably an easy one to point out, but you got Kavika Fonua, a guy that was a running back, injured, we haven’t seen him much at all. And now he’s made such a big impact on this defense. He had that huge interception at Tennessee, had the deflected pass on the game-winning interception last week. Jay and Brandon, who are some of the surprises for you so far this season that stood out?
BG: I think Micah Simon is a surprise. I’ll be honest, when that depth chart came out and I saw that Micah Simon was named a starter along with Gunnar Romney, I didn’t think that was a good thing. I think that said more about Gunnar Romney maybe not living up to his hype. But I had it completely wrong. It was about Micah Simon. It was about Micah Simon really performing well and raising the bar of his production. And we’ve seen that on the early year. We’ve seen a different Micah Simon, a guy who’s really focused. I mean, Micah has always been that guy with potential but not the guy that could, I mean, dropped passes, a guy that just didn’t step in. We’re seeing a completely different guy in that regard. And it’s like, yeah, that’s why he’s starting, because he’s a really good playmaker. And I think that he’s kind of the poster boy for what’s working for the BYU offense. You saw Zach Wilson complete passes to 12 different receivers last game. That’s extraordinary. He trusts these guys and you need guys other than Matt Bushman. I mean, Bushman is not even being looked at anymore. He doesn’t need to be and because he doesn’t need to be, and with Moroni Laulu-Pututau coming back, I think that’s going to be an enormous thing for this team and this offense going forward is that it just opens everything up. Everything is going to be opened up and you’re going to see teams go away from bracketing Matt Bushman more and more and it’s going to be generally a very good thing for this BYU offense.
JD: Yeah, since you picked a defensive player, Kavika Fonua, Jeff, and since Brandon went with the receivers and the offense, I’ll say one of my biggest surprises is this coaching staff’s willingness to take a lot of risks. They’ve put in these gadget plays, these scrums. We saw the throwback to Zach Wilson. They have been really, really creative. And also Kalani has taken a lot of risks. The fourth-and-2, going for it. Even from the Utah game, where they went and it backfired, and then they went for it three times the other day against USC. So I’m going to say maybe my biggest surprise is just how these guys are probably coaching for their lives right now. Going into the second to last year of Kalani’s contract. Obviously if a coach is released then all his assistants have to go out and look for jobs, and to me this coaching staff deserves brownie points. They’ve really upped their game as well, if you ask me.
JC: Let’s look ahead to this Saturday. We’ve got Washington, a nationally ranked team, again coming into LaVell Edwards Stadium. We saw what Washington did to BYU last year, completely controlled the game from start to finish. It was never close. What do you guys think? What are you expecting to see this Saturday?
JD: I think it’ll be much closer than it was in Seattle last year. And I’ll say the big reason why is BYU has a better quarterback. They went into that game with Tanner Mangum. He was shell-shocked from the beginning. They just looked like they didn’t belong on the same field as Washington. And I’ll say BYU might not pull off this win Saturday, but I think they’ll be really competitive. And they were competitive, obviously, against USC. And I think this team has a confidence, a swagger about it. I think the home-field magic might be back. So I think it’ll be a totally different game than we saw last year.
BG: Yeah, you need to keep up this momentum. And I think you can still harness some momentum by being competitive in this game. I don’t think it necessarily has to come down to win or a loss, but you want to prove competitive. If they just get ran off the field like last year, it’s not going to be a good thing. And no way do I see that. I just don’t think this BYU team is that team anymore, where a team like Washington, who is a very solid team, comes in and just blows the door off of them. I’d be very surprised if that happened. I think BYU’s learned some important lessons. I think both the offense and defense, especially the offense, has made some progressions to make sure that does not happen again. And Washington lost a lot of guys on defense. They lost some very significant contributors that I think BYU could take some advantage of. Will they win the game? I believe Washington’s better than USC. I think the coaching staff’s better. I think it’s going to be much tougher to defend than USC proved to be. So I’d be a little surprised if BYU managed to win. But I do expect them to be competitive. Absolutely.
JC: All right. Let’s get some predictions. I can’t believe I’m saying this, because up until Saturday I probably wouldn’t have said this, because I kind of penciled this in as a loss for BYU this week. But I think I’m going to actually pick BYU to win on Saturday. I think it’s going to be close but I think BYU is going to keep the points down a little bit, they’ll manage to make some plays. I’m guessing will be like 27-24 is my pick. What do you guys think? Your picks?
JD: Yeah, I got to pat myself on the back because I did pick BYU over USC last week.
BG: Dick and I were both just like what?
JD: However, I think Washington just has, like Brandon said, too good of a coaching staff. They’ve got the talent edge. Combine that with the coaching. And I think BYU might be due, after pulling out two overtime wins. I think that probably the odds will catch up to them. So I’m going to go Washington 31, BYU 27.
BG: It’s hard for me to believe that BYU can maintain its clean play on offense and not turn the ball over. I think turnovers are coming. I hate to say it, but I think there might be an incident there. And you’re looking at the last two games where the margin of error was definitely in BYU’s favor, but they still had to go to overtime to win these games. I mean, I hate to throw water on all the good momentum, but that’s kind of the fact. And I think Washington’s a far more disciplined team than USC and definitely more disciplined than Tennessee. And yeah, I think Washington takes this game, probably 27-21.
JC: So final thoughts. One thing that I wanted to address is since independence, I’ve heard so many complaints about you know, teams, big name teams coming into Provo, not enough big name teams coming to Provo. And I’ve also heard so many complaints about the late kickoffs. Well, last Saturday we had a nationally ranked Pac-12 team coming to Provo. It was a 1:30 kickoff, a beautiful day, you couldn’t have scripted a better day for a game like that. And yet there were so many empty seats. And so I’m just wondering, where are these people? Here’s a perfect opportunity to come out and come to the stadium and enjoy college football. And a lot of people apparently stayed home. They’ve got another opportunity this week, another 1:30 game, another nationally ranked team in Washington. What do you guys think? I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s gonna be more fans or not. But it’d be nice to see a more full stadium on Saturday.
BG: Well, I think they’ll come because the fans that were there had the time of their life. They were storming the field, they loved it. I don’t think a fan went away thinking man, I just wasted four hours of my day. That gets around. It’s all about momentum. I mean, it’s been so long since BYU was able to beat much of anyone at home. I mean, it just doesn’t happen. I mean, it goes back to what I said, it feels like a church calling going to watch BYU football way too much at the time. That’s largely over, it’s over now. At least that’s going to be the expectation going against Washington. You know, you’re going to a meet and greet with good treats, you know. I don’t know, that’s probably a bad comparison. But you’re going to something fun, you’re going to something where you’re going to get a lot of enjoyment. So I think that’s really changed. I think it’s changing a lot of fans minds.
JD: My two cents is I think it’s the students. I think the empty seats were in that section they have cordoned off for the ROC. And then when the ROC fills in, then they let other people go up and sit above them or whatever. But that’s where a lot of the empty seats were, in those two sections. And I don’t know if that is problematic or if that says more about the nature of the typical BYU student right now. Or if when they stopped allowing UVU students to come, maybe that still has a lingering effect. Also, attendance is down all across college football, not just at BYU, but everywhere. It’s so easy to watch games on TV, high-def TV, you’re out of the sun, you can have your own snacks. There’s a lot of reasons to stay home. So there’s so many factors, but yeah, if they’re going to show up, this is the game to do it.
JC: We’d like to thank Mr. Mac for sponsoring Cougar Insiders podcast. Jay, do you need a suit by chance?
JD: I just bought two a few weeks ago.
JC: Well if anyone needs a suit, the big sale is going on right now. Buy one suit at $299 and get the second suit for just $1. So head on out to Mr. Mac if you’re looking for a suit. We appreciate you listening to this edition of Cougar Insiders podcast. We work hard to bring you the best coverage of BYU athletics. You can read all our stuff at Deseret.com and we’ll look forward to meeting with you next week.
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