Analysis: Opportunistic BYU wins another game it had no business winning, downs mistake-prone Texas Tech in Provo
When you force five turnovers, turn the opposing team over on downs twice and jump out to a 20-point lead late in the third quarter, you should probably waltz your way to an easy Big 12 victory in the fourth quarter, right?
Well, not exactly.
These are the wildly inconsistent and offensively challenged BYU Cougars, after all, and absolutely nothing comes easy in their first season in a Power Five conference.
“Still a lot of room for improvement in all three phases. But we will take the win, we will build on it, and look forward to playing our best next week when we get to Austin, Texas.” — BYU football coach Kalani Sitake
Sure, the scoreboard will show that the Cougars fought past the Texas Tech Red Raiders 27-14 to pick up their first win over a Big 12 legacy member and improve to 2-2 in league play, 5-2 overall. That’s what matters the most.
As head coach Kalani Sitake put it, “we will take it.”
In front of a raucous LaVell Edwards Stadium crowd of 63,523, which virtually willed the sluggish Cougars to within a win of bowl eligibility, Sitake’s guys deserve a ton of credit — especially the defenders.
Give them the game ball, because the offense simply would not have been able to pull this one out themselves.
“I think we did enough to win the game,” Sitake said. “We made it too dramatic at the end.”
Clearly, the Cougars aren’t the best 5-2 team in the country. They almost certainly are the most fortunate. Three of their wins have come when they were out-gained by more than 110 yards, as was the case on a picture-perfect, mid-fall night in Provo.
According to Cougarstats.com, a team hasn’t won more than three such games in a season since 2001.
Texas Tech (2-3, 3-5) put up 389 yards and gave up just 277. The Red Raiders had 19 first downs to BYU’s 12. The visitors got off 23 more plays than BYU, 80-57.
But the Red Raiders, playing with a third-string quarterback, Jake Strong, will be kicking themselves all the way back to Lubbock for their inability to make it easy on the first-time starter.
He threw three interceptions and was part of a fumbled exchange with Tahj Brooks that enabled BYU to pounce on the loose pigskin in the end zone for a gift-wrapped touchdown. He and Brooks (31 carries, 105 yards) also botched an exchange on a fourth-and-inches situation from BYU’s 3 yard line.
“Whenever you force five turnovers and (are) able to get out of a couple fourth downs, that’s a good sign,” Sitake said. He also mentioned that Texas Tech was 9 of 18 on third down and 3 of 5 on fourth down, which was really about the only thing BYU’s defense did wrong.
That, and it gave up a 72-yard touchdown pass from Brooks to a wide-open Xavier White when a defensive back “missed an assignment,” Sitake said.
Suffice it to say that if opening-game starter Tyler Slough, or his backup, Behren Morton, had played Saturday in the 5 p.m. kickoff, the results likely would have been significantly different.
“It is unfortunate that they had to deal with a lot of injuries,” Sitake said. “I think a lot of teams are dealing with that. Especially with the quarterback position. We have been there before.”
The Cougars are nicked up on defense, but the absence of gunner Marcus McKenzie was especially felt Saturday as punter extraordinaire Ryan Rehkow continually out-kicked his coverage Tech’s Myles picked up 83 punt return yards, with a long of 35.
“Still a lot of room for improvement in all three phases,” Sitake said. “But we will take the win, we will build on it, and look forward to playing our best next week when we get to Austin, Texas.”
Trouble is, that’s a day game (2:30 p.m. local kickoff) and BYU simply does not play as well under the sun as it does after 6 p.m. But that’s a worry for another day.
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The biggest concern for the Cougars right now is their offense, which gained only 78 yards in the second half and scored just three points, which came after Price fumbled a punt return and Rehkow recovered it.
BYU’s Tyler Batty, playing angry, caused the fumble. After Texas Tech’s first touchdown, Jayden York spit in Batty’s face and was ejected from the game. Batty said late in the game that Texas Tech offensive lineman Caleb Rogers “did the same thing” and got away with it.
Maybe BYU’s stagnant offense needs something similar to get it going.
However, the first half was BYU’s best half of the season, even if the Cougars were out-gained 233-199. Forcing three turnovers and getting a fourth-down stop will do that for a team.
It started early, as BYU scored a touchdown on its opening drive for the first time this season. After LJ Martin’s 55-yard run on the second play from scrimmage, Kedon Slovis threw a 3-yard touchdown pass to Chase Roberts just three and a half minutes into the game.
It didn’t get much better than that for the Cougars, although they did finish with a season-high 150 rushing yards and a respectable 5.0 yards per carry.
Also, BYU welcomed back running back Aidan Robbins, who has been out since the win over Southern Utah with what Sitake called “an issue with his ribs” and got 49 hard-earned yards from the UNLV transfer, on 16 carries.
BYU went exclusively with Robbins in the fourth quarter, but Sitake said the freshman Martin is fine and that they wanted to go with the veteran.
Fired up after the spitting incident, BYU’s offense put together one of its best drives of the season, as Slovis threw a 12-yard pass to Kody Epps and then Darius Lassiter made a spectacular one-handed grab for 31 yards. A reverse pass to Isaac Rex picked up 27, and then Slovis found Lassiter in the back of the end zone for a 4-yard touchdown pass on third-and-goal.
“It was really empowering, man, it was great,” Robbins said of his return. “It is a blessing any time you have the ability to step on that field. So I am truly grateful.”
Slovis was 11 of 17 for 112 yards and two TDs in the first half, for a passer rating of 158.9. He was just 4 of 10 in the second half, for 15 yards.
Sitake chalked up some of the offense’s woes in the second half to “Texas Tech making plays,” but also acknowledged the Cougars got a bit conservative and tried to milk the clock.
“Considering the matchup, there are a lot of things in the stats that I am looking at that we need to do better,” he said. “… I liked that we were able to get turnovers. But third down on offense and defense we can be better.”
But a win is a win, no matter how it comes. And for a team that was blown out 44-11 by TCU last week, it was much, much better than the alternative.
