In the span of two games, BYU has gone from main-event dreams to an undercard reality. Saturday against Michigan the Cougars were beaten from pillar to post for the full 60 minutes. Time seems to finally have caught up to Bronco Mendehall and Co.
After pulling out nearly impossible wins over Nebraska and Boise State, the Cougars regressed to a razor-thin loss to UCLA, but what happened in week four was something quite different. There was no last-minute drama, no photo finish. This pummeling in Ann Arbor has recast the trajectory of the Cougars’ season.
Holy cow was it bad on Saturday afternoon. Brigham Young was outgained 448-105; converted 27 percent of its third-down attempts; and generated only eight first downs. This team simply didn’t recover from last weekend. Michigan obliterated the Cougars with impunity from the jump. Nothing symbolized Michigan’s dominance like De’Veon Smith’s long touchdown run in the second quarter when he stiff-armed, cut by, and spun past a BYU defender all in the final 20 yards, and that was after squirting through an impossibly small hole in the line to get past the Cougars’ front seven.
The Cougars never ran a play inside Michigan’s 30-yard line. Tanner Mangum, who threw for a total of 553 yards in the last two games, was held to just 55 yards, and 14 of those yards came on one of his 12 completed passes.
Losing is rough enough, but to lose a national showcase game, in the fashion BYU did, can mentally destroy a team. BYU is a major program, but it doesn’t play many showcase games. You could make a case that the UCLA game had the most pregame hype since BYU, ranked in the top 15, played at TCU and Utah in 2008. The Cougars lost both of those games too. (A point within a point: BYU doesn’t shy away from playing high-profile teams, but in terms of a game being considerably hyped at the time it began, the Cougars don’t wind up in many of those contests — not over the past seven years, at least.)
BYU is in need of a serious recalibration. All the good work of the opening two weeks can be salvaged if the team buckles down and recommits itself to playing good football, because this team is still incredibly talented. Luckily for the Cougars, their next four games are all at home, and they’ve lost only six times in Provo since 2010. All four games are winnable, but three (Connecticut, Cincinnati, and ECU) will all provide much-needed tests for the Cougars.
However, if BYU gets in its own head, and Mendenhall doesn’t properly coach his team in terms of re-establishing a healthy mindset, it could be a free fall for the Cougars. The magic of those wins over Nebraska and Boise State will be simple footnotes in the haze of history.
