BYU Cougars: Post-game report card vs. New Mexico Lobos

By Todd Erickson  |   Sunday, October 12, 2008  |  Comments( 3 )

BYU Cougars
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Another ugly win for BYU. But a win is a win, especially when you’ve got bitter conference rivals gunning for you every week. Leading by only four points at halftime, BYU shook off its doldrums midway through the third quarter and closed out strong against New Mexico, finishing with a 21-3 victory.

It’s difficult to imagine that Bronco Mendenhall was totally successful keeping his team focused on the Lobos prior to the opening kickoff -- not with a huge showdown against TCU looming on the horizon on Thursday night.

But New Mexico provided enough of a wake-up call for the Cougars, as well as a strong dose of trepidation for BYU fans for at least 37 minutes of game time. Hopefully, it will help Mendenhall’s troops take one game at a time for the rest of the season and muzzle BYU fans from BCS bowl game chatter until the Cougars have proven deserving of it.

BYU offense grade: B

Talk about the slowest start of the season. BYU had two possessions totaling nine plays, four minutes and zero points in the first quarter. It was the first time this year the Cougars were held scoreless in the first quarter.

Max Hall’s 57-yard pass completion to Austin Collie on their first possession of the second quarter ignited the Cougars on their way to a 95-yard touchdown drive. The Y would threaten again at the close of the first half, but Collie was called for offensive pass interference in the end zone, and Justin Sorensen missed a 49-yard field goal with 11 seconds remaining.

The Hall-to-Collie connection would prove to be the dagger in the heart of the Lobos. The duo connected on a 30-yarder to jump-start a 69-yard scoring drive in the third quarter, and then the knockout-blow touchdown drive of 76 yards in the fourth quarter included three Hall-to-Collie completions (13, 11 and 13 yards) capped off by an 8-yard Collie TD reception that made it 21-3.

Collie finished with nine receptions, 170 yards and a score. Hall’s line was 22 of 34 for 273 yards and three TDs -- two of them to tight end Andrew George. Harvey Unga had 95 yards on 22 carries and 30 yards from three receptions to balance out the Cougar attack.

Despite the erratic first half, offensive positives included no sacks, no turnovers and a reduction in penalties from last week (three for 35 yards).

BYU Defense grade: B-plus

At times, BYU’s defense can be pretty frustrating to watch. But when all is said and done, you check out the stats for the game and the unit actually did a better job than you thought.

Take the defensive backs, for example. They allow huge cushions off the line of scrimmage and give up 8- and 10-yard pass completions in droves. So it seems, anyway.

The bend-but-not-break Cougars gave up 144 yards passing from two New Mexico quarterbacks -- double the Lobos’ previous game average -- but they also came up with a key interception and registered three sacks worth minus-32 yards.

The Lobos’ running backs Rodney Ferguson (24 carries, 86 yards) and James Wright (12 attempts, 27 yards) were limited to 1.4 yards and 7.4 yards per carry below their respective season averages.

The Cougar defense also recovered a fumble and was flagged once for 15 yards.

BYU special teams grade: B

The Cougar special teams turned in a workmanlike performance across the specialties. Mitch Payne was perfect on all three extra point attempts, but Sorensen missed on a 49-yard field goal.

C.J. Santiago had a 43.2-yard average on five punts, including three gridiron expanders inside the Lobos' 20. O’Neill Chambers totaled 3 yards on two punt returns.

Collie had a 30-yard return on one kickoff and then botched another return when he stepped out of bounds at the Cougar 5-yard line after catching the line drive.

BYU also contained dangerous return men Franki Solomon and Roland Bruno below their individual return averages.

Overall Team grade: B

Thanks to Coleby Clawson’s two big QB sacks in the last minutes of the game, the Cougars ended up holding New Mexico below 150 net yards rushing, which was one of the four keys to defeating the Lobos.

BYU was plus-2 in turnovers and prevented the Lobos from pulling off any big plays on special teams. Both were keys to the game.

The only key to the game the Cougars failed to deliver on was getting off to a fast start. But a win is a win.

Next up: TCU, Thursday night on VERSUS (DirecTV channel 603).

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About Todd Erickson

Todd Erickson is a member of the Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) and pens the RealFootball365 Top 25 college football power rankings and "Fourth and inches..." weekly columns from August thru January. He is currently working on the second edition of Road to the Rose Bowl...
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