Southern Utah head coach DeLane Fitzgerald apparently wasn’t all that impressed with BYU’s offense.
After BYU beat SUU 41-16 but only rushed for 46 yards, Fitzgerald said he doesn’t think BYU’s offensive line is Big 12 ready.
“BYU’s inability to run the football on us on Saturday is a combination of us being good and them not being where they are supposed to be,” Fitzgerald said on his coach’s show this week. “I worry about them a little bit in the Big 12 with that offensive line. But because of that, they started standing there and throwing the football and we got outclassed in the secondary.”
BYU head coach Kalani Sitake was originally frustrated after the game about his team’s inability to run. Starting running back Aidan Robbins didn’t get a carry after the first quarter.
“I don’t know all the answers right now,” Sitake said after the game. “I just want to see the ball carried with more intensity and get more yards. I don’t know. I’d have to watch the film. But we need somebody that can carry the ball and do it the right way. We need someone that can block for them and make sure we get yards.”
But on Monday, Sitake seemed less concerned. He said SUU was stacking the box, making it harder to run.
“We are going to be fine,” he said. “... I feel really good about where we are at.”
The Cougars are preparing to face 10 straight Power Five teams, starting with Arkansas this week.
Still, Fitzgerald said he thinks BYU might have bigger issues. He said SUU would have stayed in the game had it not had several special teams mistakes.
“We lost the second half by a point?” he said after the game. “Our kids like football more. The last two teams we have played [Arizona State and BYU] our team, our kids, our locker room like football more than the teams we are playing like football. We are going to, come hell or high water, play for three straight hours.”
Last year, SUU played Utah in the second week of the season. It lost 73-7. Fitzgerald said there was little comparison between the Utah football team and the one BYU is about to take into the Big 12.
“This BYU team is not that Utah team we played last year,” he said. “That Utah team was four, five plays away from playing in the College Football Playoff. This [BYU] team right here is somewhere in the 50s. They are just OK. We got beat 73-7 this week last year [against Utah]. And if we play well on special teams today we are in this ball game from start to finish.”
