BYU’s two losses have left the Cougars searching for answers, and the most obvious one isn’t on offense. It’s on defense, where missed tackles have piled up at a rate that’s hard to ignore.
The latest example came in the loss to Utah. Isaiah Glasker had Devon Dampier nearly in his grasp on third-and-7, but the Utah quarterback slipped away from the BYU linebacker and turned the play into a first down. On the next snap, Dampier hit Braden Pegan for a touchdown.
That kind of sequence has become part of the story around BYU’s recent slide. Two weeks earlier, the Cougars missed 17 tackles in a 39-31 double-overtime loss at UCF, coming just days after they had climbed as high as No. 2 in the Associated Press Top 25 with a win over Notre Dame.
Quarterback Bear Bachmeier has taken plenty of heat for his four-interception outing against the Utes, and he has owned that performance as BYU heads into a critical game Saturday. But the defensive issues have been just as damaging, if not more so. The Cougars have had trouble finishing plays, and in some cases, those misses have come at the worst possible time.
No. 10 BYU now turns to Baylor in what many are calling a must-win game Saturday at 1:30 p.m. MT on FOX, and tackling has become a central point of emphasis.
“It’s just about repetition, and continuing to work on that,” BYU safety Raider Damuni said. “In individual periods and team periods, we need to make sure we hit and are wrapping up.
“We’re in the right positions; we’re just trying to kill people,” he added. “Sometimes you don’t have to do that, but just get the person down.”
Like most teams, BYU cuts back on live tackling during the regular season compared with spring ball or training camp. That’s standard across college football, where coaches try to protect players and manage recovery. Still, Damuni said the Cougars have not been shying away from the issue.
“The coaches have done a great job the last few weeks of doing different tackling circuits for the whole circuit,” Damuni said.
The numbers back up the concern. Through the first 10 weeks of the season, BYU’s defense had missed 18.7% of its tackle attempts, according to TruMedia data - tied for 135th among 138 FBS teams. Only Florida Atlantic at 18.8% and Iowa State at 19.5% were worse.
Defensive coordinator Kelly Poppinga has been on it, and the players know it. Nusi Taumoepeau said the staff has kept the pressure on the group to clean it up.
“The coaches have been harping on us about (missing tackles),” Taumoepeau said. “It all comes down to the mental part for us.
“We’ve done so many drills, and we’re going to have to go out there and execute; it’s all a mindset,” he added. “You’ve got to want to go out there and hit somebody. We’re all very capable of thinking like that, and I think we’ll be more than fine this week.”
The issue isn’t just missing tackles in general. It’s when those misses happen.
Against UCF, BYU pressured quarterback Keyone Jenkins on 45% of his dropbacks, but the Cougars managed only one sack. Against Utah, Poppinga said the defense was better in open-field tackling overall, but a few critical misses still swung the game.
“As far as our percentage of missed tackling, it was one of our lowest missed-tackle percentages of the season,” Poppinga admitted. “There were some key ones that we missed.”
Now the Cougars have to deal with another quarterback who can make defenses pay when they don’t finish the job. Baylor’s DJ Lagway brings a dual-threat element that can stress BYU in the same way Dampier and Jenkins did.
Poppinga said Lagway is not as dangerous a runner as Dampier, but that doesn’t make him harmless. He backed that up last week in Baylor’s 42-31 win over Iowa State, when he ripped off a season-long 54-yard touchdown run and finished with a season-high 119 yards on the ground to go with 229 passing yards and two touchdowns.
“We know what he’s capable of doing,” Damuni said of Lagway.
Poppinga was equally direct about the challenge.
“He’s big. He’s strong.
He has an arm as good as anybody I’ve seen,” Poppinga said of Lagway. “He can really rip the ball.”
For BYU, the assignment is clear: make him miss in the pocket, make him miss in space, and make the tackles when the chance is there.
“We’ve got to execute the defense,” Poppinga said, “and when we execute the defense and you’re in position to make a play, you’ve got to make a play.”
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