This past year was one of if not the worst BYU football season in the past 50 years. Changes were needed.

Looking back on it, this is why I believe Detmer was a scapegoat for bigger problems:

Reason #1 is that I could at least see what Detmer was trying to do. His system when run correctly works and puts his guys in a position to outmaneuver his opponents. Now could he get his players to execute in that system? No. He couldn't, but at least I had hope going into next year that a new QB could "get it" and we would be very good.

Defensively, our scheme does not put us in positions to win. Instead it relies on our guys just being better than the other team. There were very little week to week adjustments. Very little scheme variations. Very little trickery in terms of what an opposing OC or QB is looking at pre-play. There was very little coaching to be perfectly honest.

Now last year we were blessed with more talent on the defensive side of the ball. Going into the year we really were only replacing Nacua and Tuiloma (yes I know we lost Mike Davis who is in the NFL right now, but he was a role player at best towards the end of last year). This should have been an elite defense, especially after adding playmaker Takitaki and super freshman Khyris Tonga. It wasn't, but instead was really average. Why?
Well losing Bernard hurt big time. The decision to move Matt Hadley to LB in hindsight was a poor one. The safety play from this team was not good. Pau'u went from a stud to mediocre and unhappy. Oh did I mention injuries? It seemed that almost every good player on offense and defense missed games due to injury. Unfortunately I don't believe this was just bad luck.
Still, when you are down so many of your "studs" then you need to compensate with scheme. Instead we sat back and ran a less complicated scheme than you will see on most Friday nights at your local High School Stadium. Look know further than Dan Mullen and his explanation on how to destroy our defense. It was simple.

As we alluded to our defense hurting without Bernard, the team also hurt to lose Ula Tolutau, Hanneman for a game and others. This team had more off field issues than any I can remember in Bronco's tenure. This team was not well conditioned. Captains of the team were upset and had family members going online to voice opinions on the school. All of this together shows a lack of accountability and leadership in the program. This is on Kalani Sitake. That is why he is the coach, to get these things taken care of. Do we expect a cultural change with the same guy leading the program? I don't. Kalani is who he is and although he can try and change, I don't believe that is who he is or we would have seen it already.

So we fired a coach whose unit was the worst performing on the field. That makes sense. But I had hope they could improve because they were at least attempting to outscheme you. Is that a good reason to leave a guy as coach? Maybe not, but when he is a Heisman winning QB for your program the least you can do is let the guy go out right. We did not do that.

Now we are stuck with a HC who doesn't seem to be able to run a program. One who doesn't instill a work ethic or discipline into his players. One who is losing recruits left and right for a lack of structure within the organization. One who consistently threw his OC under the bus to save himself in press conferences.

We are stuck with a DC that seems clueless how to actually call a defense and put our guys in the best position to succeed. Anyone can call a base 4-3 defense every down.

Did Detmer deserve to be fired? Probably. But to me he was the least of my worries on the staff. Now we are stuck with a HC who appears to have lost his team and whose greatest strength (recruiting) is now mitigated by the fact that no one wants to come here because of losing and a lack of discipline from the team.