Play-by-play analysis of BYU's defensive alignments vs Wyoming (hint: very conservative)

Sep 27, 2022
12:24:22am

cscougar Contributor

After a lot of the back and forth on CougarBoard regarding BYU's first-half defensive struggles against Wyoming, I decided to chart the defensive alignments, run vs pass play calls against those alignments, success rates, etc, for the first 6 drives by each team. I charted BYU's 5 first-half drives and their first 2nd-half drive. I also charted Wyoming's 4 first-half drives and their first two 2nd-half drives.

DEFINITIONS / METHODOLOGY

Stacked Box - I considered it a stacked box if the number of defensive players NOT in the box was equal to or less than the number of WRs + 1. In other words, the box was stacked if there were 8 defenders in the box vs a 2-WR set, 7 vs a 3-WR set, and so on.

Successful Play (for the offense) - A first or second down play that produced at least 3 yards or a TD, or a third down play that produced a first down or a TD.

A Play into the Strength of the Defense - A run into a stacked box, or a pass play when the box wasn't stacked.

A Play Under Durress - A 2nd-down play with more than 10 yards to go, a 3rd-down play with more than 5 yards to go, a red-zone play, or a play during the final 2 minutes of a half.

RESULTS

First, the data:

	BYU	WYO	Notes
# of plays	42	44
# of plays not under durress	22	32	BYU's number is lower in part due to having the ball during the entirety of the final 2 minutes of the half.
% plays stacking the box	13%	72%	Wyoming played a much more aggressive D than BYU. Their approach perhaps helped to keep them in the game against a superior opponent.
% plays stacking the box not under durress	9%	82%	BYU's 9% all came on Wyoming's first drive of the 2nd half. BYU stacked the box 0 times outside of the red zone in the first half.
Offensive success rate	68%	56%
Offensive success rate into the strength of the D not under durress	44%	40%	Both teams stuggled a bit on early downs when playing into the strength of the D.
Offensive success rate into the weakness of the D not under durress	75%	62%	Both teams frequenty succeeded when playing against a favorable defensive alignment.
Offensive success rate into the strength of the D (all)	73%	43%	BYU made plays regardless of Wyomings defensive alignment during high-leverage situations. Wyoming still struggled anytime they played into the strength of BYU's D.
Offensive success rate into the weakness of the D (all)	65%	61%	Again both teams frequenty succeeded when playing against a favorable defensive alignment in high-leverage situations.
% plays into strength of defense not under durress	45%	31%	On normal 1st and 2nd downs, ARod matched wits with the Wyoming D coordinator pretty evenly. Meanwhile, Tuiaki consistently put our defense in an unfavorable position.
% plays into strength of defense	59%	33%	Wyoming made things tougher when they knew what was coming. Tuiaki, on the otherhand, didn't help the D out much even in situations where Wyoming's offensive plays were more predictable.

MY THOUGHTS

The above data likely has some flaws, and some of the numbers are dealing with small sample sizes. With that said, the above data is not surprising. It isn't surprising that BYU played very soft defensive alignments. It isn't surprising that running when the box is stacked is harder, and vice versa. The opposite with passing. It isn't surprising that Wyoming was able to frequently put themselves in favorable positions since BYU was so predictable and didn't stack the box outside of the red zone a single time the entire first half.

I agree with those that say BYU doesn't have top 25 raw talent. However, to the extent that the Wyoming game is somewhat representative of the defensive play-calling during much of the last few years, then our defensive coaching appears to me to be putting our players at a disadvantage with our playcalling strategies. It is kindof ironic that we deliberately revert to a pattern that hamstrings our depleted defense when we lose a couple of starters (assuming that is the reason for the vanilla D) rather than doing everything in our power to make life harder on the opposing offenses with our schemes to make up for the injuries.

IMHO, it is critically important for the opposing team to be kept off balance by our play-calling on both sides of the ball. Anything less is putting our guys at a disadvantage before we even take the field.