Fixing First Game Issues

While I am sure most of us have some concerns about certain aspects of the game, I thought it might be nice to voice where the team should make some improvements in order to step up their game. In my opinion they are small things to fix, but they need fine tuning nonetheless.



1. Clean-up/tighten-up the center to QB exchange.

2. Speed up tempo of relaying plays to QB so that snaps are sooner.

3. Focus on getting off to a fast start in the beginning and not running basic predictable plays in first series.

4. Use play action, roll out plays in selling the run and hitting RB, TE and Hback underneath.

5. On deep balls, get more air underneath so Apo and Hoffman can use their height.

6. Use Juice (Hopefully he recovers from migraine), Alisa and Riley in more O plays - they were a great change of pace and very productive in specific spots.

7. Have DBs not give up so much space off the snap - 10 yds off allows too much open space on catch and run roll out passes and short outs.



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all great points. I'm sure Juice will be fine for next game (I get bad migraines as well).

byucougar1 wrote:
While I am sure most of us have some concerns about certain aspects of the game, I thought it might be nice to voice where the team should make some improvements in order to step up their game. In my opinion they are small things to fix, but they need fine tuning nonetheless.



1. Clean-up/tighten-up the center to QB exchange.

2. Speed up tempo of relaying plays to QB so that snaps are sooner.

3. Focus on getting off to a fast start in the beginning and not running basic predictable plays in first series.

4. Use play action, roll out plays in selling the run and hitting RB, TE and Hback underneath.

5. On deep balls, get more air underneath so Apo and Hoffman can use their height.

6. Use Juice (Hopefully he recovers from migraine), Alisa and Riley in more O plays - they were a great change of pace and very productive in specific spots.

7. Have DBs not give up so much space off the snap - 10 yds off allows too much open space on catch and run roll out passes and short outs.



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1. Agree 100%. The bad snaps threw off timing. One real upsetting thing about that is that the center didn't have a NT over him most of the game, so he wasn't getting hit.

2. The team needs to be much quicker.

3. I don't mind the feel out plays at the beginning of the game to set up other plays.

4. There was more play action and roll out in this game than in the past 6 years combined.

5. Jake's deep ball has actually improved from last year. He's at least keeping it inbounds now.

6. Alisa will probably play more. Juice hopefully will get back. Riley becomes a real threat if they go run throw option on his 3 or 4 plays a game.

7. The 10 yard cushion is part of the shell and it's actually closer to 8. It actually helps to disguise the defense a little bit. With BYU's defense, sometimes the corner comes up and his zone is the flat, sometimes it''s deep quarter or half. But to disguise where he's going, he lines up almost every play in the same place. I do think that throughout the year BYU will play more man coverage this year than in the past, so we may see some bump and run coverage, but that's never been something Bronco has done (even in the 3-3-5 days).

5. Not feeling the more air under the ball at all. The first bomb he threw to Ross had too much air and was under thrown as a result. The 2nd was perfect and had less air.

7. Only time BYU did that was on long passing downs. Hadley/Sampson were playing press and Eason was off by design. The corner situation was as it should be.

Good catch - no pun intended on #5 - what I meant to say was more distance - underthrowing receivers. Even on 2nd touch pass it was still within reach of DB and he almost got it.



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From my perspective, the corners at times looked like they were playing a prevent defense. Ole Miss WR were wide open and not challenged on the mid-range passes. They did get whalloped when they caught the ball but they were no where near as tightly covered as Ole Miss was on Hoffman and Apo. Those two had to work for everything they got and Hoffman was very quiet the entire game - 1 catch. Kind of surprising for who we thought would be a big time receiver this year.



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byucougar1 wrote:
From my perspective, the corners at times looked like they were playing a prevent defense. Ole Miss WR were wide open and not challenged on the mid-range passes. They did get whalloped when they caught the ball but they were no where near as tightly covered as Ole Miss was on Hoffman and Apo. Those two had to work for everything they got and Hoffman was very quiet the entire game - 1 catch. Kind of surprising for who we thought would be a big time receiver this year.



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Think about this a little more, though - playing this way made sure they were always in position to make a tackle, and they did. They gave up ZERO TDs. This is Bronco's philosophy, and it is especially helpful for guys with 0 starting experience in the kind of environment they were put in. Bronco will make you sustain a long drive to score points; tighter coverage is a risk-reward proposition: yes, you give up fewer completions, fewer yards, and have a shot at more picks if you do it right, but you also risk more big plays, loss of momentum, and, most importantly, more points if you get burned.



Ole Miss didn't have the same level of inexperience with their corners, and had the confidence to put them on an island. And they got burned for that in the second half on the Apo TD.

And when you're playing a QB with accuracy issues, (Ole Miss 52%, Texas 56%) then you take your chances with a guy actually hitting his guys. Throw in an inaccurate QB who is now facing a fierce pass rush and you get what we saw last week. Which is the way we want it. So we get it!