So, Kalani Sitake is looking for a new defensive coordinator for the first time in seven years.
It comes at a very interesting time.
His BYU team is preparing for a bowl game and like most teams across the country, his squad is limping into the postseason with injuries. The coaching musical chair game is in full swing and it’s also the first hours when Heisman Trophy voters can send in their ballots.
Sitake is making this move because he has to. His defense needs help and a new direction. If he let BYU icon Ty Detmer go a few years ago when the offense struggled, it is only fair that changes on the other side of the line, where his defense ranked among the worst in the country in several key categories, should also happen.
His new guy will need to prepare BYU’s defenses for TCU, Oklahoma State, Baylor and the likes of Oklahoma and Texas, albeit temporarily for those latter two. It’s a league that features speed and decent QBs, RBs and receivers. It is also a league that requires defensive disguises, changeups, stunts, twists, unpredictability, athletic linebackers, skilled safeties, downhill-capable defensive ends and lockdown corners, as well as blitzes that confuse QBs and tacklers that hit hard and bring people to the turf.
That takes personnel that leads to higher execution of schemes, plus depth. On staff, he has Ed Lamb and Kevin Clune, who are qualified to step in, but will he go that avenue or hunt for a DC from outside?
In other words, in this NIL and transfer portal era, he will need to hire a defensive coordinator that knows how to tap into all that and more because of BYU’s admission policies.
Can he do it?
Let’s put it this way: He has to.
His defense ranked 93rd in total defense, 120th in third-down defense, 97th in rushing defense, and 130th of 131 schools in sacks.
With future Big 12 money coming to the BYU football budget, Sitake will be more able to hire a talented coordinator than any BYU head football coach in the history of the program.
So, what does he have to sell?
He can campaign that his players are hardworking overachievers who, for the most part, are not troublemakers off the field and are teachable and coachable.
He can point to the fact his team went 0 for 4 in October for a myriad of reasons, injuries a big part of it, and yet finished on a three-game win streak with victories over MWC big dog Boise State, Stanford and, OK, Utah Tech. But a 3-0 finish is a 3-0 finish.
It’s that sliver of positivity in an average season that can get him some traction.
After all …
November was a month of disappointment for many programs, not the least of which Ohio State, who fell hard to Michigan; a Buckeyes team that’s enjoyed half a dozen first-round draft picks the past few years, yet didn’t sniff a CFP title with all those advantages.
Oregon, the high-flying, Nike-fueled program, had boosters buying $11,000 box seats in Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas at halftime against Oregon State last Saturday only to see their Ducks shot down by rival Oregon State in a remarkable comeback.
Folks in Eugene are calling it the biggest faceplant in the history of the program. They’d brought in the greatest recruiter in the country in former Georgia defensive coordinator Dan Lanning, and the former SEC coordinator lost a 21-point lead in a Pac-12 championship preparation tilt against OSU, a team with a fraction of the resources.
Texas A&M, boasting the No. 1-ranked recruiting class in the country for 2022 (247Sports) won just five games and won’t qualify for a bowl game. This is either coaching malpractice by Jimbo Fisher and his $9 million a year salary, or he bought inflated stock.
Liberty, a team Hugh Freeze worked into the top-25 rankings and an 8-1 record, earned praise from coast to coast before he left for a return to the SEC and Auburn. His Liberty team finished the season clunk, clunk, clunk with losses to UConn (36-33), Virginia Tech (23-22) and New Mexico State (49-14).
You can probably chalk up a lot of these disappointing finishes to injuries of key players, letdowns and loss of focus. Oregon should be in Las Vegas this week plain and simple.
BYU’s season is disappointing from the standpoint that nine wins would have been fantastic. Winning eight would have been a slip-up or two along the way. But seven wins meant this team had to really stumble, and October is where it lost its footing.
An injured Jaren Hall against Utah State brought the Cougars to Las Vegas against Notre Dame with their star playmakers not taking a snap all week — something coordinator Aaron Roderick had never encountered in his career. The loss to East Carolina was a mess-up, so was the Arkansas loss. Losing to Oregon was a loss to a Ducks team that was at its best, but today is a shadow of itself with Bo Nix limping around.
So, finishing 3-0, with all that’s going on around the country, is something Sitake can build on. And the last move he will make in the last month of independence is an investment in his defense.
And that gets him back to recruiting.
It’s kind of murky, shifty and slippery, and Sitake will need his superiors in suits to help, but it is what college football is all about right now. It is ugly stuff for those of us used to the dream of the innocence and simplicity of the past.
A year ago, BYU beat USC in Los Angeles 35-31. In just one short season Lincoln Riley used the NIL and transfer portal to field a top-four team this Friday against Utah in Las Vegas.
One year.
BYU cannot recruit like USC, not in any way, shape or form. But it can use the tools within its realm of reality to get better. A big part of that is hiring a defensive coordinator that’s motivated, hungry, anxious and capable of hunting down defenders as fast as possible who fit university requirements.
Sitake has been told by far more knowledgeable consiglieres that other changes are sorely needed immediately if he wants to chase the programs in the Big 12 and not be embarrassed. He has plenty of his athletes going off campus to train, both current and former players. He needs to fix that, too.
The fixes and transformation to Big 12 football should begin with this DC hire and other preparations.
