HB Arnett's COUGAR SPORTSLINE 801 372 0819 hbarnett@fiber.net and hbarnett@xmission <mailto:hbarnett@xmission.com> PO Box 50424 Provo, Utah 84605 Vol. 28, Issue 3, August 20, 2007 Click <http://www.cougarstreet.com/products/index.php?type-450&PCID=450:0:0:0:0> Here To Order Or Renew Your Subscriptions IT'S STILL A PLAYER'S GAME We love Bronco Mendenhall's creed and code of coaching. What's not to like about his core values he has installed in the BYU football program. He has certainly established himself as unique in his approach to being a head coach. That said, he still has to adhere to the basic coaching principle of football. After all is said and done, your best chance for winning games is still about getting your best football players on the field for as long as possible and hoping your best is better than your opponents. With Arizona less than two weeks away as BYU prepares to open its 2007 season, here is how BYU's best shakes out. Quarterback...If all goes according to plan, Max Hall is the guy BYU coaches think is ready to lead the Cougar offense. We will buy that, but what happens if BYU has a Ben Longshore moment against Arizona? Longshore was the LDS redshirt freshman starting qb at California who broke his leg against Cal State Sacramento in his opening game a few years back and was lost for the rest of the season. If Hall is hurt early, his backup, Brenden Gaskins will still be nursing an injured finger on his throwing hand. Head for the exits early if that scenario ever plays out because despite having some very talented quarterbacks behind Hall and Gaskins, neither James Lark, Jason Munns nor Sam Doman are anywhere close to being ready to play now. Running Backs...Three guys will get almost all of the carries. Manase Tonga, Fui Vakapuna and Harvey Unga will be the triumvirate toting the football for the Cougars. All are big and tough. Unga, despite being just a redshirt freshman, is the most talented of the trio. It may take a few games and no injuries, but he has a chance to be special. We know what Vakapuna and Tonga can do. They run over people. Unga can do that too, but he can also run around them and run from them. He has just enough shake and speed to be scary good. Wide Receivers...There have been several new names mentioned making wide receiver waves during fall camp, but those waves will never make it to shore. It is still the big four. Austin Collie, Matt Allen, Michael Reed and Bryce Mahuika will be the guys making plays and scoring touchdowns. If you are looking for the fifth guy in the rotation, by mid season, our money is on incoming freshman Ryan Kessman. Tight Ends...There won't be many other teams in the nation that have three quality tight ends on their rosters. BYU does. Cougar offensive coaches can mix and match with their tight ends against any team on their schedule and not miss a beat. Dennis Pitta, Vic So'oto and Andrew George are all extremely talented and all will see action, but it will be Pitta that grabs the headlines because he will be scoring the touchdowns. He is the ultimate mismatch for linebackers and safeties because he has great size and speed for a tight end and can catch the ball better than most wide outs. Offensive Line...This is a group that won't get a lot of accolades, but they are the heart of the offense. New offensive line coach, Mark Weber, is one of the best in the business at teaching technique and he has eight guys that can play. Depth will not be a problem this year. The top eight guys include starters Sete Aulai at center, Travis Bright and Ray Feinga at guard and Dallas Reynolds and David Oswald at tacke. Garrett Reden, Tom Sorensen and R.J. Willing are next in line. Defensive Line...The loss of Russell Tialevea at noseguard is a crushing blow to this group. Despite having two returning starters at defensive end in Jan Jorgensen and Ian Dulan, the rest of the depth chart is totally unproven and extremely thin. Another injury here and you can turn out the lights. Linebackers...It is exactly the opposite at this position. BYU is loaded. Once suspensions and injuries run their course, the depth chart is in excellent condition. With lots of guys who can play, it will still be the big three that gets most of the attention. Bryan Kehl and David Nixon are big-time playmakers on the outside. Kelly Poppinga will open some eyes and shut others with his hard hitting style of play. If the defensive line can just keep blockers off this unit, they will be extra special. Defensive Backs...There is no question that the loss of Dustin Gabriel and David Tafuna to season-ending injuries will hurt. Their experience will be missed. Corby Hodgkiss will now play in that spot. With the injuries grabbing the headlines, what shouldn't be forgotten is that the other safety, Quinn Gooch, is still a major talent. Ben Criddle returns from injury to reclaim his starting boundary cornerback job. It looks like Jaime Hill, the BYU secondary coach, has found his replacements for Justin Robinson, who graduated. Kayle Buchanan and Brandon Howard are neck and neck in this battle for playing time at field corner. Buchanan has more experience but Howard has more talent. He also has three more years to play and you can expect him to get most of the playing time as the season moves along. Kicking...Early signs from fall camp show that this might be something that is average at best. It certainly won't be great. Mitch Payne will do the kicking and incoming juco transfer C.J. Santiago will handle the punting chores. We hope our assessment is wrong and that Payne turns out to be a productive and consistent kicker. He certainly will have plenty of opportunity to prove himself because we expect a lot more offensive drives to end in field goal attempts this season instead of touchdowns. WE CAN'T PREDICT THE SCORE OF THE BYU- ARIZONA GAME, BUT WE GUARANTEE THAT MAX HALL WILL THROW AT LEAST ONE INTERCEPTION We freely admit that Max Hall, BYU's new starting quarterback, has been better than we thought he would be during fall camp. The real question is will he be good enough to beat Arizona in his first collegiate start on September 1? Okay, a guarantee is a little strong. How about, we are extremely confident that there will be at least one or more interceptions thrown by Hall against the Wildcats. We don't base that prediction on what we have seen of Hall in fall camp. We base it on the first game histories of the most recent BYU quarterbacks. Here's the list: John Beck, Matt Berry, Brett Engemann, Brandon Doman, Kevin Feterick, Steve Sarkisian, John Walsh, Ty Detmer, Robbie Bosco, Steve Young and Jim McMahon. All, except one, threw at least one interception in their first full start (where they played four quarters) as a qb for BYU. The lone exception was Kevin Feterik. He was 13-20 with no picks in his first collegiate start as a Cougar. Most Talented? Feterik certainly wasn't the most talented BYU qb, but he was still the only recent qb to avoid turning the ball over through the air in his Cougar pigskin premiere. Some of the numbers are interesting. Ty Detmer, who had rock star status as a backup to Sean Covey, opened his starting career with a bomb, and we aren't talking touchdowns. Against Wyoming in Laramie, Detmer was a miserable 9-26 for 133 yards and 4 interceptions. The Cowboys defeated BYU 24-14. Steve Young also had four picks in his opener against Georgia. Robbie Bosco never lost a game in 1984, but he did open his career against Pittsburgh with 2 interceptions. Before Brandon Doman had his miracle 2002 season, his first start the previous year saw him go 7-17 with 2 picks against Colorado State. John Walsh opened with a 17-28 night and two interceptions. Brett Engemann was 35-54 with one aerial miscue. Matt Berry was 14-27 and also threw a pick. John Beck was just 22-45 and two interceptions in his first real start against Stanford. Fall Camp Fall camp is what it is. It is all about hope. The good news is that we actually have seen concrete signs that the hope may be warranted. We have also been around long enough to know that it usually takes some time before the hoopla that naturally surrounds every new BYU starting quarterback comes to fruition. BYU coaches have hooked their wagon to a horse named Max Hall. He may well be a big-time thoroughbred, but historically speaking, he will more than likely stumble a few times coming out of the gate in his first few starts. That is the way it has always been and we see no reason for that to change. An isolated interception, in our opinion, will not be the determining factor for BYU and Max Hall winning or losing games. What will be critical in the Cougars' eventual win-loss record for 2007, is the frequency of interceptions in games. Based on what we have witnessed, Hall and BYU can likely survive at least one and sometimes two interceptions against everybody they play, including Arizona, and still win. Exception The lone exception is UCLA. Their defense is too good to allow BYU to squander any offensive possessions and hope to survive. The BYU defense is not the same caliber as UCLA, but the Cougars are good enough defensively and have a good enough ground game to control the clock and still squeak out wins against the other teams on their schedule, despite being a little sloppy in protecting the ball. We understand why, at this stage of Bronco mania, some would think that anybody that Mendenhall designates as his guy at qb is destined to be a star. There are even some who may think Hall and the Heisman are appropriate alliteration. Unfortunately, history doesn't corroborate it. Give the guy some time. It was what all other good BYU quarterbacks required. The more serious question should be, what if Hall never is the guy, despite having been anointed as the next great QB by BYU coaches two years ago? What if he isn't? How long does BYU go with him if he doesn't perform? And what other options do they even have for this year if he doesn't meet expectations? 0-3? What if the Cougars are 0-3 to open the season and lack of adequate quarterback play is the reason? We certainly aren't expecting that to happen, but we have been around the football block enough times to know that there are plenty of sure-fire-can't-miss quarterbacks that do. And Hall isn't the only guy that needs to prove himself this season. The same can be said of Brandon Doman and Robert Anae. We don't subscribe to the theory that if a coach is hired by Bronco Mendenhall or BYU, they are automatically good coaches. Like Hall, in our opinion, these two BYU offensive coaches still have something to show us. Their first two seasons, they inherited an NFL caliber quarterback in John Beck. In Beck's senior season, the only coaching required was to let Beck know that the opponent was in a third and long situation and he should get ready to get back on the field. Now Doman and Anae will have to earn their money and reputations with a quarterback that may have potential, but has zero Division I snaps. Not Same It won't be the same; especially in the early going of the season. We still like this BYU football team, but not as much as we would if we had a seasoned and proven quarterback and an offensive coordinator and quarterback coach who had actually worked with a new unproven quarterback before. We certainly hope that we will be singing the praise of all three come October and November, but despite what we all want to believe, breaking in new quarterbacks is always a scary proposition. A TEN PERCENT LOSS OF ASSETS WOULD CERTAINLY DRAW SOME ATTENTION When it comes to a bank account or balance sheet, a loss of ten percent would certainly be reason for some serious concern. The same applies to college football teams. A ten percent reduction in assets would certainly get your attention. That is basically what has happened to Bronco Mendenhall and his team. Every Division I football team is only allowed 85 scholarship players per year with which to compete against other Division I teams. Sometimes, because of NCAA recruiting sanctions, scholarship numbers are reduced. There could be other legitimate reasons why a school isn't at the full 85 grant in aids. At BYU, they still have 85 scholarships allocated, but only 77 of those scholarships can be used this season because of an inordinate amount of season-ending injuries that have plagued the program this season. Before fall camp even started, juco offensive line transfer Levi Mack was lost for the year because of surgery required to repair an injury coming out of spring ball. The same can be said of Nate Hutchinson, Kyle Luekenga and Jeff Rhea, three other scholarship players. Jadon Wagner, a walkon, also is gone for the year with a foot injury. Worse Once fall camp got underway, it got worse. In the last two weeks, BYU has lost Russell Tialavea, a starting noseguard, Dustin Gabriel, a starting safety and David Tafuna, another safety, who was going to start in place of Gabriel. J.J. DiLuigi, a promising freshman running back, didn't last past the first scrimmage of fall camp before requiring surgery to repair a broken foot. By our math, that is eight scholarship players not available this year due to injury. That is actually 9.4% of operating capital that BYU will have to do without this season. Unlike the NFL, you can't scan any waiver wires in hopes of picking up players and you can't go back and offer scholarships to players that you originally passed on. Fortunately for BYU, they have a dynamic walkon program that may not provide the same caliber of talent that was lost, but will fill the numbers void and help facilitate practice and play. The key injury that will be the hardest to overcome this season is the loss of Tialavea. The defensive line was extremely thin to begin with and both of his backups, true freshman Eathyn Manumaleuna and redshirt juco transfer, Mosese Foketi, have never played a down of Division I football. Moved BYU coaches moved offensive lineman Rick Wolfley over to the defensive tackle spot in order to try and help, but he too has never played a down in his career. He certainly has the body type of a noseguard at 6-3, 340 pounds, but if we are going to worry about the lack of experience at quarterback, we should be absolutely panicked when it comes to noseguard. TELEVISION TIMETABLE BYU vs. Arizona Saturday, Sept. 1 at Provo Kickoff: 3:30 pm, Mountain Time TV: Versus Network BYU vs. UCLA Saturday, Sept. 8 at Pasadena Kickoff: 4:30 pm Mountain Time TV: Versus Network BYU vs. Tulsa Saturday, Sept. 15 at Tulsa Kickoff: 7:00 pm Mountain Time TV: CSTV As a subscriber, you are allowed to access our new blog. You can view it by going to www.cougarsportsline.blogspot.com <http://www.cougarsportsline.blogspot.com/> Just a reminder that we are now sending the newsletter via two separate email accounts to help solve distribution issues that many subscribers experienced last year. That means you may receive two identical letters. If that is the case, please just discard the extra.