1-0 in conference play
Well ladies and gentlemen, our #11 BYU Football team has passed its first major test of the 2026 season and has advanced to 1-0 in conference play after knocking off a scrappy Arizona team who had this game circled for months. While it wasn’t always pretty, especially in the first half when Arizona was able to essentially play keep-away from BYU and holding the ball for more than 2/3 of the clock time, the team settled, the offense got humming and the defense got tougher and stingier as the game progressed. The Wildcats spent the 2nd half off the scoreboard and getting bullied by BYU’s rushing attack and defensive front.
So from a team stats perspective, how did BYU fare? (Reminder, the stats I post will exclude garbage time plays and games against non-FBS opponents and are opponent-adjusted. Unless stated otherwise, you can assume the stats in this article adhere to that standard) If you like what you see, and are not subscribed, subscribe to CougConnect and come join us in the Discord where we chat about and post stats like these and more.
You may remember in prior articles that I talked about wanting BYU to maximize, to the best of their abilities, the offensive and defensive sides of two of my favorite stats: Eckel Rate and Points/Eckel. The reason I am so partial to these stats is they can tell a lot about a team even in isolation of other stats that can help fill in the picture more clearly. Eckel Rate and Points/Eckel help measure drive QUALITY. How do we define quality? A drive that either ends with an offensive score of some type (FG or TD) OR at some point finds the offense with a 1st Down inside of their opponent’s 40 yard line (“Scoring territory”) Looking at the chart above, we can see that BYU raced past the 5 Points/Eckel threshold that I said was the floor for CFP-caliber offenses in a prior article. While this is fantastic, it’s actually underrepresented a bit because in actuality, Kalani and co were docked in this stat category by having a quality drive on their last drive of the game, but kneeling at the 3 yard line and taking the sportsmanship road. (I know it drives many of you crazy, myself included, but we should expect nothing less from Kalani more than a decade into his tenure. He’s been nothing but consistent in this regard.) For fun, you can pretend that instead of 5.6 BYU in spirit has a 7 which would be good for tied #3 in the country with Georgia and Texas Tech.
While it is a bit early and these stats are going to be much more volatile in the next few weeks compared to later in the season, it paints a picture of how BYU performed against Arizona. on both sides of the ball. I am mostly focusing on these 5 areas:
- Efficient in “Quality Drive” territory offensively and defensively (2.2 Pts/Eckel Margin, #23 nationally)
- Down 80 ranks and nearly 15 plays per game on offense lower than last year (First half woes)
- Rushing powerhouse but didn’t balance the Run/Pass game as much as the prior year. (#116 in Rush Rate)
- Overall successful offensively, struggled a bit finding success defensively, specifically against the pass.
- Extremely successful rushing the ball. #8 offense in the country in Rush Success Rate and #12 in Rush Success Margin.
That is a quality win against a quality team. It was great to get some rust out of the system and see the team make the adjustments they needed to at half to completely take over the game.
So what lies ahead for our Cougs?
At a glance, you might look at Colorado State’s stats and say to yourself “wow, they seem like they might be a pretty good team offensively, but it looks like they have some pretty abysmal success defensively” and to that, you’d be right. It also helps to remember that CSU has played 2 games to date, while admittedly less strong than BYU’s foes to date. One game against Wyoming (1-1) who is presently the #130/138 ranked team in all of FBS according to ESPN’s FPI and is has the #134/138 offensive efficiency. I think the fact that a team with an offense the caliber of Wyoming gave CSU’s defense fits on a per-play success rate should reduce any fear that BYU fans will have about a trap game in Fort Collins.
The other area of consideration is that Wyoming is also #125 in defensive efficiency, again according to ESPN FPI. So take the stats you see with a grain of salt and again remember that, as we don’t have a lot of data points thus far into the season, these stats are going to be very volatile. They could be much better than these stats indicate or worse. We won’t know for certain until we play Saturday.
A few things give me the feeling that this game is not going to be as competitive as some people may think.
- This is likely going to be the best team that CSU will face all season.
- Colorado State has given up 174.5 yards per game on the ground in 2 games against SUU and Wyoming.
- BYU’s offense is going to absolutely feast regardless of what defensive strategies CSU commits to as if they load the box, Bear has shown his ability to deliver passes with insane drive down the field. The ball flies out of his hands. And if they vacate the box, Bear, LJ, and the rest of the RBs/Sweep WRs are going to have a monster day on the ground.
- BYU the past couple of years has been a fantastic early-down team offensively. CSU has thus far given up a first down on 35.9% of their early downs defensively (#130 nationally)
So what should we look out for?
Look for CSU to attempt to make it a shootout. If I were preparing for this game against BYU, I would be preparing to use all the firepower I could muster offensively, understanding that the caliber of offense coming into town is probably not going to be easily stopped by what we’d be capable of throwing at them for an entire 60 minutes. I expect that their strategy will revolve around stolen possessions (they are +7 in turnover margin to date against their 2 opponents) and relying on Hauss Hejny’s arm and playmaking ability to attempt to keep them close.
While you can’t really discount entirely the game played against FCS SUU, I am not seeing stats that make me terrified of Hejny’s arm. Averaging a Depth of Target of 6 yards. BYU prides themselves on having what could shape up to be one of the best DB rooms in the country when all is said and done in Evan Johnson and Therrian Alexander III. Another stat I found interesting in digging into CSU for this game is they have allowed havoc on 16% of their plays against competition that is less than stellar.
(*These stats include FCS and Garbage Time)
So where am I setting my expectations?
I really like this opportunity for BYU to take their talents on the road for the first time this year to what will probably a wild environment at first. I remember what it looked like the other year when Deion and company came rolling into town, though I don’t expect the same degree of fanfare that was brought to that game. Let me give my keys to soundly handling CSU and rolling to what I personally project to be around a 30+ point win.
- Run to establish the pass
BYU was all out of sorts last Saturday as they did not do a great job of getting the defending Big 12 offensive player of the year involved early and often. Use the wrecking crew that we have to force CSU to honor the run and open up the passing lanes. Get back to our bread and butter. BYU is one of the best rushing teams in the country against a team that has been absolute gashed by less than stellar rushing attacks. - Win before 3rd down
While I think that CSU’s 3rd down success rate “success” is notable, I don’t know that I fully believe it had everything to do with their defensive play and likely had more to do with the fact that the offense they were facing was struggling, big time, on 3rd down. If BYU is able to capitalize on early downs as CSU’s defense has demonstrated that they are susceptible to, I don’t know if this will be much of a ball game for long. - Quality Drives
Move the ball. Be efficient. Be surgical. Get the ball into scoring territory early, find paydirt, and control the game. The more one-sided we can make CSU early by forcing them to try to keep up, the better. It will set the stage for our outstanding DBs/Safeties to make big time plays and get the offense back on the field and give our D Line opportunities to wreak havoc on our opponents.
I am really looking forward to seeing how this team handles their first road test of the year. I am sure as is frequently the case, that BYU will have a lot of fan representation in the stands. To those fans, do your best to detract from any home field advantage CSU may try to rely on. Be loud. Be heard.
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