Just when a lot of people figured BYU’s season was wholly doomed, turns out it was only half-doomed. On Saturday night, the Cougars got a look at new life from their best player, receiver Puka Nacua. While the look was better than the lift, whether a 31-28 victory over Boise State, leveling BYU’s record at 5-5, qualifies as a lift … well, it was better than a loss.
The Cougars had dropped four straight games, allowing their season to spiral downward, before three things happened in Boise: 1) Nacua had the game of his college career, including the game-winning touchdown catch in the closing minutes; 2) Jaren Hall looked comfortable and healthy, looked like an NFL quarterback prospect again, for the first time in over a month; 3) the defense played like it meant it.
Those were the keys in keeping anyone, everyone, from singing a sorry requiem for BYU football.
The Cougars had been chopped up and chucked in the air, like meat and fish at Benihana’s, and devoured by opponents since September. It had gotten bad, what with the coaches having their roles rearranged, especially on the defensive side, Kalani Sitake all but slipping on sneakers and a cardigan after games, acting and talking like Mister Rogers, emphasizing loving and hugging up his beaten-down players after every defeat, program insiders blaming the slump on injuries and program outsiders tearing the team apart on social media and in other more personal settings.
One BYU player whispered that his off-the-field life had turned more miserable than what had happened on the field, thanks to frustrated Cougar fans’ sometimes brutal in-his-face reactions to those defeats.
He heard the accusation that he and his teammates had committed the most egregious of all competitive sins. They were quitting, he was told. And, man, that stung.
Either way, BYU seemed to be not only on its substantiated way to an abysmal season, it also was digging a deep, subterranean path straight into the lowest bowel of the Big 12 next season. If the Cougars didn’t have the athletes to avoid getting thrashed at home by Arkansas and on the road at Liberty, beat again on their home field by East Carolina, good lord, what would happen when they had to play Oklahoma State, TCU, Kansas State, et al., back to back to back to back in their new Power 5 setting?
Little of such concern, such weakness was evident against Boise State.
“The guys love each other and they believe in each other,” Sitake said, sans sneakers and cardigan afterward. “They have each other’s back.”
He added the significance of his team “being resilient.”
If the Cougars’ daubers were down, it did not show.
And Nacua was determined to send a strong signal to all those peeking through their trembling fingers to see how BYU would react in its 10th game.
What they saw was a lively, dangerous target that was bulls-eyed 14 times for 157 yards, two touchdowns, including the aforementioned game-winner, showing the talent and emotion necessary to bump the entire team out of its dismal slide.
Sitake called the receiver exactly what he is, certainly what he was on this occasion: “A playmaker.”
The crowded, loosey-goosey reception he made on the left edge of the end zone with 1:46 left, a play that was ruled a touchdown and confirmed after review, (also a play Boise fans will complain about from now ‘til kingdom come), may have saved the fragile psyche of BYU football.
“That’s the opportunity you live for,” Nacua said, grinning.
Some might think the difference between a record of 5-5 and 4-6 meager, no big deal, but desperation had cropped up all around the Cougars, and the focus that came with it was the breeze that freshened their outlook, damn the mediocre record.
No group of athletes wants to be laughed at, to be considered an inglorious transformation inside a proud football program from a serious highlight film — 11- and 10-win seasons — to a Road Runner cartoon in which they co-star as Wile E. Coyote, complete with the cliff falls, the boulders dropping on their heads, the hand grenades blowing up in their faces.
Disappointment might still drape BYU’s 2022 season, but not on Saturday night. Beating Boise State never is taken for granted, never is under-appreciated by the Cougars.
Not with Nacua working his wonders, not with Hall, despite chucking two interceptions, disregarding that to fling dart after dart, reviving his offense in the second half, after a 7-7 tie at the break.
After the Cougars fell behind, 14-7, they fought back to get a field goal, then a touchdown and the lead, then losing that lead, then regaining it, then losing it again, then regaining it at the end.
At no point did they have the disposition of a defeated, downhearted team, which was surprising enough on its own. There’s something to be said and admired about that.
All told, Hall hit 29 of 42 throws — half of them to You-Know-Who — for 377 yards. He spun the ball into tight windows, again and again. He also ran for 82 yards and a touchdown. The offensive front gave the quarterback all kinds of time and he rewarded them with the win.
The defense, which near the end had started to show cracks that have been all too familiar to Sitake in recent weeks, disallowed Boise’s attack from doing anything in the closing minute-and-a-half, sealing the deal for BYU. That resistance had roiled and heaved wickedly during the slump, but there wasn’t a lot of open road here, allowing the normally run-heavy Broncos only 104 rushing yards, the amount it usually yields in a quarter or two.
BYU out-gained Boise State by more than 200 yards.
So complete was the Cougars’ all-around presence, they at times looked like the home team. I’m no fashionista, but BYU’s traditional white road uniforms, trimmed in blue, looked clean and sharp, so clean and sharp against Boise’s annoyingly blue turf that it was a snappier fit than the Broncos’ black garb.
Look good to play good.
One more note: The last throw from Hall to Nacua came on a fourth-and-goal play, and anybody who’s been studying BYU football this season knows that the Cougars have converted fourth downs roughly one-in-five times. No problem, Sitake said, his team would remain aggressive, come what may.
So it was that Nacua’s juggling toe tap was the difference between burying BYU and allowing it a measure of respect — with a bye, a home game against the Team That Used To Be Known As Dixie College, now Utah Tech, and a roadie against Stanford yet to play.
The Cougars’ final record most definitely won’t be stellar. But, to those waiting and wondering, they want you all to know, they haven’t committed the egregious sin. They have not quit.
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