The biggest game on BYU’s horizon is Notre Dame, but Derwin Gray wants the Cougars thinking a lot smaller right now.
That’s the message from the former BYU defensive back as the No. 8 Cougars try to stay unbeaten and avoid a slip-up against Iowa State on Friday night at 8:15 p.m.
MDT on ESPN. If BYU handles the Cyclones and No.
3 Notre Dame takes care of Stanford on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. on NBC, the stage is set for an Oct. 17 showdown in Provo between two undefeated teams.
That possibility has already pushed the hype into overdrive. ABC has the game in primetime at 5:30 p.m., secondary-market ticket prices are climbing and Hill Air Force Base’s F-35s are set for the pregame flyover. But Gray said none of that matters if BYU gets distracted before Friday night’s work is done.
“It makes it a massive challenge because you do not want to overlook Iowa State. You cannot overlook Iowa State.
You have to handle business now,” Gray told the “Y’s Guys” livestream show this week. “One of the good things about BYU is you have returned missionaries - guys who are 23-24.
They are grown men.
“Hopefully the leaders of the team will say, ‘Listen, Notre Dame does not matter! Here is what matters - this meeting, this practice, the way we care for our bodies, the way we prepare,’” Gray continued. “‘What matters is this play that is right before us.’
“They need to get better, they need to execute better, but Iowa State (3-2) is coming to play. They would love nothing more than to catch a BYU team overlooking them.”
Gray knows exactly how different one game can feel from the next. He played defensive back for BYU from 1989-92, and he pointed to the 1990 win over No.
1 Miami as the kind of victory that carried far more weight than the 30-10 win over UTEP the week before. He also noted that beating Notre Dame helped Ty Detmer win the Heisman Trophy.
That’s why Gray said BYU has to block out the noise and stay locked on the Cyclones.
“You don’t want to hear about being the No. 8 team in the country or this is a tuneup for Notre Dame. You want to respect the game and your teammates enough that (in) every practice, every meeting, I’m 100% present,” Gray said.
“If I was talking to the team, my word would be - the only thing that matters is now - N.O.W.! Now.
No distractions. Obsess over the details and win the day - now!
That’s it.”
Gray also had praise for Bear Bachmeier, whose start has been one of the storylines of BYU’s 4-0 beginning. Bachmeier is tied with Robbie Bosco for the best win percentage in BYU history among quarterbacks with at least 15 starts. Bosco went 24-3 in his junior and senior seasons, while Bachmeier is 16-2 only four games into his sophomore year.
“He’s got an NFL arm. He’s not a running back playing quarterback, he’s a quarterback with a running back body.
When he needs to get tough yards, he can,” Gray said. “His leadership, his savvy - you know he’s smart, he went to Stanford, but some guys just have the ‘it’ factor.
“Ty Detmer had the ‘it’ factor. What people don’t understand is Ty sometimes was playing at 170 pounds.
He didn’t have the strongest arm, but some guys just have ‘it.’ I think ‘it’ is the combination of intelligence, competitiveness and a relentless will to win, and I see all those things in Bear.
It’s pretty cool to watch him.”
Gray’s perspective comes from plenty of physical battles of his own. He dealt with a string of knee injuries during his six NFL seasons, and that experience shaped his new book, “It’s Time to Heal.”
“When you tear your MCL, you go through a rehab process and the body forms scar tissue. When you are rehabbing, sometimes it feels like you are popping a ligament again when it’s actually the scar tissue being molded,” Gray said.
“What I find with a lot of people is they have emotional scar tissue. What happens if you don’t mold the scar tissue with an injury?
It calcifies and it hardens and you can’t function.”
As pastor and co-founder of the Transformation Church in Indian Land, South Carolina, Gray said he saw that kind of pain play out in the lives of people around him.
“I just saw a lot of people stuck in trauma from their past. Emotional pain.
Their emotional wounds became their identity,” he said. “I wrote ‘It’s Time to Heal’ to say Jesus is with you through this pain.
He is with you through this process. His grace is enough.
This book is actually a playbook in how to heal.”
Gray received the BYU Distinguished Alumni Award earlier this year. His book “A Time to Heal” is available at Amazon Books.
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