The team ended last season ranked #45 (or something like that) in the nation in total defense last year - which is not great, but isn't horrible, either.

Whereas the offense was ranked like #118 and at times wasn't capable of even getting a single first down in an entire half of football. And a lot of the points given up by the defense were due to the fact that the offense couldn't maintain possession or even advance field position before punting.

Look back at last season. As awful as the team was overall, they never gave up more than 40 points in any game. The two times that an opponent did score exactly 40 points: once against #7 Wisconsin, and then against Utah State - a game in which BYU's defense only gave up 288 yards, but the offense committed 7 turnovers and had 2 interceptions returned for touchdowns by Utah State.

BYU lost to *UMass* last year, and the score was 16-10. Hard to fault the defense for that.