PROVO — Taysom Hill and his merry cast of oversized receivers did not combine for half a dozen touchdowns Saturday in BYU’s first contact scrimmage of fall camp.
And that’s a good thing.
In fact, it’s probably the best thing for Bronco Mendenhall’s football team in mid-August as the Cougars prepare to open at Nebraska in two weeks.
If one thing stood out in this open session in LaVell Edwards Stadium, it was the defense.
Good football teams have their defense playing decent out of the chute during fall drills.
If this group had shown in this first scrimmage the propensity for breakdowns we saw last year against Nevada, Utah State, Central Florida and Memphis? Well, imagine their confidence on the plane ride to Big Ten country.
Hill got pressured, albeit with some precautionary quick whistles. I counted four legitimate touch sacks and three other sacks we could file in the phantom protective category. There were deflected passes at the line of scrimmage and at the target point.
Michael Shelton got an interception and freshman linebacker Butch Pau’u, just off an LDS church mission, got a pick six he tipped to himself off a pass from freshman Tanner Mangum.
Middle linebacker Harvey Langi made plays early and late and dogged Hill and his running backs. Pressure worked. Corners Jordan Preator and Michael Davis had their moments as did linebackers Manoa Pikula, Fred Warner, Sae Tautu and lineman Logan Taele.
If Hill had come out slinging 70-yarders for scores with the obvious talent available, it would have robbed offensive coordinator Robert Anae and his staff of the effectiveness of an attention-grabbing, head-knocking film session that will surely come Monday morning.
“We’ve got a long way to go, specifically my group,” said running backs coach Mark Atuaia. “We did some good things, but we have a lot of work to get where we need to be.”
Hill and Company must polish things up, execute far better and make some adjustments. It is far better to do it during the campus' upcoming Education Week (Aug. 17-21) in Provo than after the second or third series than in Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium with 87,000 red-clad fans screaming at you.
Atuaia said BYU’s offense needed to be pushed and tested. “They did a great job today, they were sound and did a great job. The offense needs to stand up and match that in that regard. From an offensive standpoint, that is what we strive for all the time and it was good to run into a buzzsaw today and get back and regroup. We’ve just got to know where we are now.”
Before Saturday, Mendenhall had not been able to create anything like Saturday’s full-fledged contact scrimmage which ran just short of 80 plays.
“This gives us a reference point on how to design our next practices,” said Mendenhall, who took over the defense this fall. Specifically, he pointed out his team had not worked very much on the run game and run defense in the first week.
Now it will.
“It would have been great if the offense had scored 50 today,” said Langi. “Because they are a great offense.”
But, he admitted, it was satisfying to see BYU’s defense rise up and make a lot of plays. “No, question, that felt good. It was just great to be out there to break up the boredom of practice.”
On Hill’s initial series, he threw a perfect sideline bomb to Nick Kurtz who got his hand on the ball in full stride before losing the handle.
The 6-foot-5 Kurtz, whose height was a huge factor, later hauled in a nice 47-yard touchdown pass from Hill. Colby Pearson caught the most impressive throw of the day, a looping well-timed rocket from Mangum for a score. That effort was nullified by a holding penalty.
On Saturday, If you compared BYU football to a round of golf, you could say the course (Mendenhall’s boys) defended itself very well from players (Anae’s boys) who showed power off the tee but rust with the short game.
Dick Harmon, Deseret News sports columnist, can be found on Twitter as Harmonwrites and can be contacted at dharmon@desnews.com.