His defense helped give Boise State their only loss (now 9-1), shut out USU in the second half in Logan and held them to 14 total points, and just held Idaho State to 10 points.

Bronco, who’s gone on to P5 (kudos to him), always talked about “managing points.”

Objective is to win games, right? We’ve beaten Tennessee (5-5), USC (7-4), Boise State (9-1), Utah State (6-4), Liberty (6-4), and Idaho State (3-8) - all but one of those teams has a winning record, and two were ranked when we played them.

We’ve lost to #7 Utah (9-1), Washington (6-4, and #22 when we played them), Toledo (6-4), and USF (4-6) - all but one of those teams has a winning record, and two were ranked when we played them.

(In contrast, Utah (9-1) has beaten exactly 2 teams with a winning record: Washington (6-4) and - BYU (6-4)).

We started the year without starters Troy Warner and Chris Wilcox in the secondary, lost Trevion Greene to the transfer portal, and lost our fastest linebacker Zane Anderson to injury after a couple games. So we were thin in the secondary to start. And you have to play the guys you have, not the scheme the fans want. We haven’t been able to play man press with our DBs, so we’ve dropped 8. It’s precisely why we confused the USC and USU QBs, won those games, and had a total of 8 takeaways.

Some CBers want style points apparently, or apparently feel like their manliness is challenged if we don’t get sacks. Pitt is #1 in the nation in sacks with 45 in 10 games. And they’re exactly one game better than us in wins/losses (7-3 v. 6-4). Objective is to win, and all things considered (strength of schedule, injuries, etc.), I think Tuiaki is doing just fine.