Watched their game against MTSU, as well as a few of their games last season, so I thought I'd give some thoughts on their strengths and weaknesses that are currently visible.

So, most BYU fans already know that their OC is our former OL coach, Ryan Pugh. In reality, that's more of an "in name only" kind of situation. Head Coach Chip Lindsey is the one calling the shots on offense, and he's very good at it. Lindsey's bread and butter is a high-powered passing attack, but he doesn't neglect the run at all. Rather, he keeps wearing at defenses with the pass until they commit to it completely, then has a running back by committee (not because the offense doesn't have a big-time RB, but because they have multiple of them who have had close to 1,000 yard seasons before) approach that takes advantage of the now-open running lanes. He'll still call some running plays early in the game, but he does look to primarily get the passing game established first and then bring in the running game more frequently to keep defenses on their toes and out of sync for the rest of the game. If we can slow down Troy's passing game early on, it goes a long way towards limiting the game plan for an offense that can be quite prolific.

When it comes to Pugh, he was brought on primarily to shape up Troy's OL so that Lindsey's offense can fire on all cylinders. Pugh has made significant improvements with their OL already, and it shows. Before he joined the program, their OL performed at about the level ours did earlier in the decade, during the dark ages for our OL. Since he joined, their OL is performing significantly better. They're not as good as our OL, but they do a pretty good job. It's also important to remember that their OL has a different role in Lindsey's offense than ours does in Grimes' offense. Whereas the OL is the core of our offense, with our OL making all sorts of highlight reel plays to open things up, the role of Troy's OL is to just give their playmakers at the skill positions time to do their jobs. Essentially, our OL's job is to go out there and makes plays, and the job of Troy's offensive line is to not screw things up. They have been pretty good at that job under Pugh. So putting pressure on their OL and keeping them on their toes is the best way to interrupt Troy's offensive game plan. If we can either force their OL into making mistakes or just put enough pressure on their skill players to prevent them from having the necessary time to let the plays develop, our chances of limiting their offense go up dramatically. Rushing 3 and dropping 8 is not a good idea against them, as putting pressure on their offense and not giving them time to develop their plays is the key to stopping their offense.

In the passing game, they have a sophomore QB, Gunnar Watson. This is his first year as the starter. He can scramble around to keep plays alive, but he's not exactly a rushing QB. They'll call a couple running plays for him, but he's not a Taysom-type QB whose rushing yards are super important to the offense. The threat with Watson's running is him keeping plays alive with them and giving his playmakers at wide receiver time to get open. We've gotta get him down on the ground when we have the chance, or force him into throwing earlier than he wants to. He can be pressured into bad decisions, but if you give him all day, he makes excellent reads and great throws. He has three different receivers to throw to this year who each had over 500 yards receiving last season: Khalil McClain, Kaylon Geiger, and Reggie Todd. McClain and Todd are 6'4 and 6'5, respectively, and Geiger is 5'10. If you give any of them time to get themselves open, they will. Touchdowns are distributed fairly similarly across the three, so it's not that just one of them is a threat that has to be locked down. If we overcommit to covering one of them and give Watson time to progress reads, he'll find one of the others open. You don't contain all three of them as much as you force their QB to throw it to them before they've had time to really open things up on the play. So, disciplined coverage at the start of the play and pressure on the QB before the play has time to fully developed is the key to stopping their passing attack. They do have multiple receiving options who are faster than most of our secondary, which is what gives me the most concern about facing their offense.

On defense, they've got playmakers on every level. I wouldn't call their defense dominant, but it does show the potential to be on any given play. It's essentially that their defense shows flashes of brilliance and then otherwise average play throughout most games. Those flashes of brilliance tend to come when they've been able to force opposing offenses out of their gameplans. So, if we can get our offense going early on, we can keep their defense in reactive rather than proactive mode. Once you let their defense start dictating play, they're like a pack of hungry wolves who can smell a wounded kill. If our offense can dictate play, their defense will look pedestrian. If their defense is dictating play, they will look like world-beaters. It's not one player on their defense, it's more that any player on defense can be a star if they have the offense on its heels. Defensive ends, cornerbacks, linebackers all kick their games up several notches for Troy when they smell blood. If Zach has to start lofting up desperation throws, there's an extremely high likelihood that they'll be intercepted. So if we can have our OL absolutely dominate the way they did against Navy, we can definitely overpower their defense. If things are more sluggish for our offense, their defense has a chance to shine.

Overall, I definitely agree that we should be favored in this matchup based on what we've seen so far. But I do want to caution that Troy is a pretty good G5 team. This is not a case of us outclassing them so much that we can have an average game and still win. If we have an overall B or B- game, chances are high that we'll lose. If both teams play their best, we should win. But this isn't a gimme game at all, this is a game that we're gonna have to perform at a fairly solid level to win. Troy has knocked off bigger giants than us before, and looking at their media and social media, they're hungry to add us to that list. This game isn't a colossal mismatch by any means, so we need to make sure we bring our A game.