BYU football was without its top two receivers and still found a way to be in position to beat the No. 9 team in the country. What’d we learn?
When it was announced that BYU football would be without its top two receivers for Saturday night’s game against No. 9 Baylor, I was ready to write the Cougars off.
I was wrong.
The Cougars looked like the tougher, gritter team and that was thanks to Jaren Hall’s big day. He looked like the best player on the field, passing for over 260 yards while leading the team to a huge overtime win over the nation’s ninth-best team.
What did we learn from this huge win by BYU on Saturday night?
3. There was no run game in sight
A year removed from Tyler Allgeier, BYU is having a tough time finding a leader in the backfield or really any run game to speak of.
In the opener, Christopher Brooks led the backfield with over 130 yards and the Cougars ran for over 300 yards as a team. But that was South Florida. Against a competent defense on Saturday, BYU didn’t have anyone helping Jaren Hall out in the backfield as Brooks took a major step back and the Cougars hovered around 75 rushing yards on the night.
Brooks is probably going to be the featured back moving forward, but he needs to do much better than he did against the Bears and that’s also on the offensive line.
The run game won’t get away with crawling to 83 yards for an entire game again.