The "bend but don't break defense" will never get BYU to the BCS, or even win another MWC championship. In my mind, it is a weak defense. It relies on your opponent making mistakes, not being aggressive, thus taking the game out your own hands. If I were a coach, I would prefer trying to win the game instead of trying to not lose the game. This is the main reason we are something like 1-9 against ranked teams the last 4 years. We have no problem against weak offensive teams, but whenever we play somebody good, we get smoked. I'm not sure if its Bronco or Jaime Hill who likes this defensive philosophy but it needs to go. Take a page out of Utah's defensive playbook and mix it up a bit. Disguise your blitzes. Don't be vanilla. Be creative. Make it hard for an opposing offense!
One of the reasons that I hear everybody say the reason they believe we can't blitz is because we don't have the cover guys in the secondary. This really gets me fired up because we do have the talent. His name was G Pittman but we managed to screw that one up somehow. Not to mention Brandon Bradley. That kid is a stud if the coaches would let him get physical and not play 10 yards off the football. Have you ever tried to guard someone when you give them 10 yards of cushion? Its nearly impossible because they can run any route they want. Are you telling me that Brandon Howard isn't fast enough? He's probably the fastest one on the team.
Another thing that bothers me is that if the coaches make the excuse that they don't have the athletes to be successful, why aren't they recruiting the necessary people? Bronco himself said that it doesn't matter what "star" a person is on scout.com or rivals.com. But then he makes the excuse that it DOES matter? Something is contradictory here. Bronco told us as fans that we should not worry about recruiting, but this is exactly why we as fans get upset about not recruiting the talent necessary.
Which gets me to another point about Bronco. He is not good with the media. He doesn't like the media. He seems annoyed with the fans. Anytime he gets a chance to go to Cougar Club meetings or talk about the team on the Bronco Mendenhall show, he seems like he is too good to be there and shouldn't have to worry about such pointless things. News flast to Bronco! Those people are the ones who pay your salary. The boosters are the ones who allow BYU football to exist. Unlike other programs who get money from their universities, BYU athletics raises its own money through donations and funds raised through advertising, etc. Not a penny comes from tithing.
If you look at other top coaches from around the country, you will notice they are very good with the media. Coaches like Urban Meyer, Bob Stoops, Mack Brown, Jim Tressel, Nick Saban, and of course Pete Carroll build up their programs by positive publicity. They know how to attrack kids to their schools. I'm not saying that Bronco can't recruit. Because I think he is a good recruiter. But getting the top LDS kids in the nation, (like Manti Te'o) , requires you to be able to convince kids that we have a good system and defensive philosophy. And if kids like Manit see how our defense plays, i.e soft and passive, then why would he choose us over USC? We should be getting the top LDS kids in the nation. And probably a few good non-LDS kids like G Pittman to stay and enjoy BYU. We are a top 20 program that should be able to recruit the athletes necessary.
Well I just rambled along and vented some frustrations but hopefully in the next couple days I'll think of some positives that the program is doing. I promise I'm not a pessimist so I'll look at the positives also.
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