As BYU attempted on Saturday to do the most important thing, something it had never done before — win a Big 12 game on the road — it had other unspoken intentions in mind, too. Baylor was merely the speed bump to roll over en route.
A speed bump that through the second half turned into a brick wall, a wall that BYU, at times, helped build against itself. More on that in a minute.
The heretofore undefeated Cougars went ahead and finally found victory in league play away from the comfort and crowd noise of LaVell Edwards Stadium to stay unbeaten in five games now. Intention No. 1 was a go, then, at the long end of a 34-28 count.
“We were fortunate to get the win, especially with some of the mistakes that we made,” Kalani Sitake said. “But it was a hard-fought game, a little dramatic at the end, but glad it worked out in our favor.”
Intention No. 2 had been to bolster the notion, inside their own imaginations and in the imaginations of others, that BYU really is a legitimate force in the Big 12 this season, a team that could contend for a title. Some said the 29-point win last week over heavily favored K-State was a lopsided fluke, fueled by the energy of that raucous home crowd and a string of extraordinary events that collectively were singular in nature.
Whether or not that second intention was made real against the Bears at their place remains covered in a heavy cumulus cloud. You could argue that it takes purpose and poise to win in Waco, even against a Baylor team that showed vulnerability from evidence collected in earlier weeks, and the Cougars demonstrated the two P’s about 51 percent of the time on Saturday, just enough to win. The other 49 percent? Two words: train wreck.
When the train wrecks over elongated spans and BYU still wins, Sitake seemed satisfied enough with that, but he did say he’s “greedy,” desiring proper execution and results all the time.
Intention No. 3 was to prove or at least substantiate that a BYU defense that had yet to yield a touchdown to a P4 team this season was as good as it had previously looked. That, too, was accomplished a fraction over half the time. The rest of it … well, the Cougars’ back end made Baylor quarterback Sawyer Robertson look, at times, like Tom Freaking Brady. There were stretches when BYU couldn’t slow the QB down, let alone stop him.
One thing BYU’s D did do rather impressively was shut down the Bears’ run game. And at contest’s end, when the secondary had to come up with a play to preserve the win, leading only by what was a flimsy six points, safety Crew Wakley picked off a pass that did exactly that.
Another intention, No. 4, was to show growth on attack, on an offensive side that had benefited greatly in the past from steady BYU resistance, a defense that repeatedly handed it the ball in favorable and fortuitous field position. Could the Cougar offense sustain long drives, via the pass and the run, when BYU needed them? That question was clearly answered in the affirmative through the first half, when BYU built a 21-point lead, but in the second, it was shrouded in those clouds, when the Cougars couldn’t run the ball on the reg, nor throw it with any consistency. There were moments when that answer was socked in, having visibility of about one foot.
All told, BYU gained 367 yards, 216 through the air, 151 on the ground, but most of those came in the early going. “It was a great start,” Sitake said. “We’re capable of doing all those things. We just got to keep the momentum going.”
On this occasion, they did not. For most of the third and fourth quarters, the Cougars’ offense was an embarrassment. Quarterback Jake Retzlaff, who looked so comfortable and in control in the initial quarters, morphed into a dude who suffered spasms in his arm and in his mind, throwing two interceptions, one of them batted, but the other nothing short of idiotic. Not to be too harsh there, he is a school kid, after all.
“We’ll get back in the film room and figure out exactly what was what,” Retzlaff said. “… When things get tough, you learn something about yourself.”
You can read the details elsewhere, but the chronology of this whole deal is important to quickly review just to give proper flavor and furor to the mix. It went like this: Retzlaff threw a 28-yard TD pass to give BYU a 7-zip lead. After a Cougar interception, Retzlaff pitched the ball to Chase Roberts, who scored, making it 14-0, BYU. After standout play by BYU’s defense, Retzlaff ran 17 yards for a touchdown and a 21-0 margin. Robertson then popped a 19-yard TD run, 21-7. Shortly thereafter, Retzlaff spun a ball as sweetly as it can spin to Darius Lassiter for a 44-yard touchdown, 28-7. A subsequent Baylor TD pass and a BYU field goal made it 31-14 at the break.
And then …
BYU scored all of three points in the second half. It couldn’t run or pass, and at one desperate juncture faked a punt on fourth down to advance the ball. That worked and led to the one field goal. Nothing else amounted to anything. In search for one speck of generosity here, perhaps injuries to a couple of offensive linemen, including Connor Pay, contributed to those difficulties.
Either way, Baylor in the meantime got two more touchdowns.
Errors plagued BYU down the stretch — dropped passes, missed throws, missed blocks, missed assignments, a missed field goal, missed opportunities on both sides of the ball, dumb coaching decisions. Even when BYU’s offense got the ball at midfield, it couldn’t piece together a scoring drive.
As that attack waffled, again and again, it was dependent on BYU’s defense to bail the entire endeavor out. It gave up a 66-yard drive that enabled Baylor to cut the lead to six, but thereafter that defense did what was necessary to give the Cougars what they hadn’t yet experienced — the league road win.
That was made certain when Wakley got his pick at the BYU 46-yard line, perfectly sniffing out Robertson’s throw, ending Baylor’s last scoring threat with a minute remaining.
“I was a little nervous there,” said Sitake. “I was getting a little tight. … [But] we made plays and got the win.”
As it was, BYU’s four previous wins were strangely validated by this fifth win and vexed by it, too, both corroborated and discredited. Nobody expected or expects the Cougars to take victory in every game, far from it. But the surprises of September and new hopes for what might be happening inside of BYU football were sweetened a lot and soured a bit. They were not spoiled, though. Victory overrides every flaw, never having that serious negative effect.
Bring me the brilliant prognosticator who said or wrote that BYU would be 5-0 with its bye week coming up next, and four of its final seven games to be played at home, and I’ll show you a liar, or a fool. But it looks like all of us smart guys and gals who thought we had BYU nailed as something of an also-ran, or something considerably worse, we were the ones who were bamboozled.
BYU had its intentions all lined up on Saturday, most of them good, and by a hair, most of them fulfilled.
“I like the feel, the vibe of this team,” Sitake said.
As some other smart guy once put it, “[Football] hell isn’t merely paved with good intentions, it’s walled and roofed with them. And furnished, too.”
Unless those intentions are what the Cougars, one way, one half, or the other, managed to make them seem here.
Real. 5-0 real.
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