BYU Week 1 Recap: 2017 Called, They Want Their Offense Back...

Credit: McCord Mecham

In 2017, BYU opened up play against Portland State. That game ended with a 20-6 victory that felt like a loss and was followed by a seven-game losing streak. I hate to say it, but I have the same feeling after this Sam Houston game as I did after that Portland State game. I wouldn't say there was a lot of hype by any means for BYU this year, but even this performance doesn't live up to it.

Recap

BYU marched 50 yards in eight plays in their opening drive to score the only points of the first half followed by 11 exchanges of punts and one turnover on downs before halftime. BYU couldn't get anything going in the run game, which made it easy for the Sam Houston secondary to just focus on pass coverage. The highlight of the game for BYU was their punter, Ryan Rehkow, who pinned SHSU within their own 20-yard line four times and averaged 53.2 yards per punt. That places him second in the nation currently with punters with at least eight punts.

In the second half, BYU's main adjustment was switching to their true freshman running back, LJ Martin. Aidan Robbins had 7 carries for 23 yards in the first half. Martin had 16 carries for 91 yards in the second half, averaging 5.7 yards per carry. Martin seemed to have more patience waiting for his offensive line to open up holes for him and taking advantage of it when they did. The second half saw one more scoring drive for BYU after a short field opportunity was given to them by an interception that stopped a driving Sam Houston team.

Takeaways

BYU's defense did look much improved from last year. Last year, we saw BYU's defense give up 26 points to Utah Tech...so any shutout is an improvement from last year. BYU was able to get consistent pressure on Shoemaker, and best of all, we did drop eight players into pass coverage all game long!

I'd like to hope that the offensive issues were just first-game jitters, a new team learning game speed timing from one another, and holding back some playbook before conference play starts. Let's all remember, defense wins championships!