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YzzazzBYUs new Robert-Anae fashioned offense accounts for most of what is amazing on the BYU team right now, including: Cody Hoffman breaking Collie's and Pitta's records so early in the season, Williams on pace to outrun Unga in his career, Hill on pace to outrun Williams, BYU's offense putting up 40 points per game, and even--I will venture to say, Hill's remarkable improvement since the Utah game.
Think about it. BYU perenially has a fatal flaw or two. They play great most of the time, but when the game is on the line and really counts, BYU falls prey to whatever weakness it is they have each year. Weak defense, anemic offense, a slow and short secondary, an undersized passer, no serious run threat, tight ends that can't hang on to the ball.
While A BYU upset is almost always expected by fans (we'll never forget Oklahoma), it is rarely accomplished by BYU teams and the problem is often cited as the excuse du' jour. Start the list of games where it really mattered that BYU simply couldn't compete in, and you'll find that as much as fans wanted BYU to contend for the national title, they simply couldn't do it.
In short, Anae has found a way to make up for "it," whatever the fatal flaw might be. This year it would have been that Hill is inexperienced and that he is a horrible passer. (Did anyone here really think he could improve from a 33% completion rate to a 75% completion rate against comparable opponents in just four games?)
Anae makes up for it...in volume.
Among all components of the new offensive scheme, one stat stands out more than all the others. BYU is averaging ninety plays a game. NINETY!
That is a twenty percent increase over last year as well as a twenty percent increase over opponents on average. In short, for every four downs a BYU opponent plays, BYU gets a free down thrown in for good measure.
By the time BYU has played eight games (now) they have played enough for two more full games of real-time experience. That experience is capable of helping Hill do what he did in Houston. All the other games can simply be explained by two things: first, BYU's defense is quite good; second, the offense gets more plays. With these two factors in place, BYU should, on an AVERAGE day, beat their opponents just like they did BSU, low twenties to upper thirties. The Houston game was an abberation because Bills absence triggered blown assignments in the secondary. But early in the season Hill can't pull off a game like that because he simply didn't have the confidence in his receivers to do so. He was second-guessing them and himself all through the Utah game, that's why the Utes' dare-ya-to-pass strategy worked.
With the gaudy stats this system puts up, computers are potentially thrown askew. Note how most of the computer models this week have BYU ranked higher than human voters. The opposite is true for the Wisconsin Badgers, whose comparatively plodding-tempo ground game doesn't yield enough stat meat for computers to chew. They are voted much higher than computers would give them credit for. Could it be that the models have built-in assumptions that more is better? More importantly, could it be that they (the computer models) are right?
Fortunately for the sake of this little debate the two will play each other soon and establish which way the polls, or pollsters, ought to lean. If the computers have been more right than humans all along, BYU should win by an astonishing blowout with Wisconsin never really in the game after the second quarter. Something akin to the way the Georgia Tech game went, but with the offense scoring in the third quarter as opposed to just a pick six.
But the humans may have it right instead. After all, just think in your mind about calling Wisconsin a 7 point underdog to BYU. Would you set the line there? Most people wouldn't. They simply could imagine doing that because Wisconsin is sure to have bigger better faster stronger players and the badgers are playing at home.
But the reality is that oddsmakers set the line for Georgia Tech against BYU as a 4.5 underdog and bettors extended it to 7.
So much for what humans know. Well all right they know a little...
my prediction is BYU wins a closer one than the stats would show: 27-21, and humans will save their poll jobs for another year or more.
Think about it. BYU perenially has a fatal flaw or two. They play great most of the time, but when the game is on the line and really counts, BYU falls prey to whatever weakness it is they have each year. Weak defense, anemic offense, a slow and short secondary, an undersized passer, no serious run threat, tight ends that can't hang on to the ball.
While A BYU upset is almost always expected by fans (we'll never forget Oklahoma), it is rarely accomplished by BYU teams and the problem is often cited as the excuse du' jour. Start the list of games where it really mattered that BYU simply couldn't compete in, and you'll find that as much as fans wanted BYU to contend for the national title, they simply couldn't do it.
In short, Anae has found a way to make up for "it," whatever the fatal flaw might be. This year it would have been that Hill is inexperienced and that he is a horrible passer. (Did anyone here really think he could improve from a 33% completion rate to a 75% completion rate against comparable opponents in just four games?)
Anae makes up for it...in volume.
Among all components of the new offensive scheme, one stat stands out more than all the others. BYU is averaging ninety plays a game. NINETY!
That is a twenty percent increase over last year as well as a twenty percent increase over opponents on average. In short, for every four downs a BYU opponent plays, BYU gets a free down thrown in for good measure.
By the time BYU has played eight games (now) they have played enough for two more full games of real-time experience. That experience is capable of helping Hill do what he did in Houston. All the other games can simply be explained by two things: first, BYU's defense is quite good; second, the offense gets more plays. With these two factors in place, BYU should, on an AVERAGE day, beat their opponents just like they did BSU, low twenties to upper thirties. The Houston game was an abberation because Bills absence triggered blown assignments in the secondary. But early in the season Hill can't pull off a game like that because he simply didn't have the confidence in his receivers to do so. He was second-guessing them and himself all through the Utah game, that's why the Utes' dare-ya-to-pass strategy worked.
With the gaudy stats this system puts up, computers are potentially thrown askew. Note how most of the computer models this week have BYU ranked higher than human voters. The opposite is true for the Wisconsin Badgers, whose comparatively plodding-tempo ground game doesn't yield enough stat meat for computers to chew. They are voted much higher than computers would give them credit for. Could it be that the models have built-in assumptions that more is better? More importantly, could it be that they (the computer models) are right?
Fortunately for the sake of this little debate the two will play each other soon and establish which way the polls, or pollsters, ought to lean. If the computers have been more right than humans all along, BYU should win by an astonishing blowout with Wisconsin never really in the game after the second quarter. Something akin to the way the Georgia Tech game went, but with the offense scoring in the third quarter as opposed to just a pick six.
But the humans may have it right instead. After all, just think in your mind about calling Wisconsin a 7 point underdog to BYU. Would you set the line there? Most people wouldn't. They simply could imagine doing that because Wisconsin is sure to have bigger better faster stronger players and the badgers are playing at home.
But the reality is that oddsmakers set the line for Georgia Tech against BYU as a 4.5 underdog and bettors extended it to 7.
So much for what humans know. Well all right they know a little...
my prediction is BYU wins a closer one than the stats would show: 27-21, and humans will save their poll jobs for another year or more.