Outside of the TCU game, where the defense and basically the entire team crapped the bed and I blame everyone coaches and all for that game... the defense did just about as well as it could. We weren't going to erase years of poor coaching and recruiting in a 9 month time frame. But if we are being truthful about the situation... recruiting for the defense, for several years now, has been at FCS level or worse. Last years defense, I believe there were a total of 2 starters with offers from G5 teams and 1 starter with P5 offers out of High School. The rest were FCS or none at all.
Now we can make the excuses of why someone was or wasn't recruited... but recruiting under Tuiaki, Lamb and Kalani was been ridiculously bad. BYU was absolutely robbed by the coaches and the abysmal effort and work they put into recruiting.
What Hill and his staff did this last year in recruiting was amazing... and I do believe we'll see the defense improve stat wise over the next couple of years. Jay Hill and his staff are doing things right... they weren't going to make that unit a P5 quality unit in 1 year... I believe we'll see improvements this year... a little... next year is when we really start to see the fruit of the coaches efforts and when our defense starts to crack the top 50 or significantly better.