In a game during which BYU made a thousand mistakes — or was it two thousand? — from dropped balls to sloppy assignments and jumpy coverages to missed tackles to careless turnovers to giving up 269 rushing yards to silly play-calls, it went ahead and took victory it had no business taking.
The Cougars won a game that, for everything that’s holy, they could or should have lost.
And that’s why everyone should know, this is a devilishly unholy season for BYU, in the best sense. The Cougars are dangerous. They’re getting down with their bad selves; they’re spitting straight in the face of the football gods, and those same gods are patting them on their hats and pads as they walk away with W’s — seven consecutive now, against zero defeats.
Their unrighteous 38-35 triumph over Oklahoma State on Friday night was, by anyone’s definition, an Honor Code violation. It was dishonest. It was thievery. It was college football’s version of stealing a car, imbibing a bottle of Jack Daniels and smoking a pack of Camels.
The Cougars found their own forgiveness, though, and called it good.
Why? Because they never lost faith.
Yeah, weird, I know.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Brigham Young Cougars quarterback Jake Retzlaff (12) makes the game winning pass in the final seconds of the game for a 38-35 win over the Oklahoma State Cowboys in Provo on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024.
In the postgame, some version of the word “belief” was mentioned again and again. And maybe BYU’s players were the only ones who believed beforehand that what ended up happening would, in fact, happen. The rest of us had to see it to believe it.
Everybody did see what occurred at the end: BYU, down 35-31 with a minute and change left, two timeouts, and 75 yards of green between it and victory, sandwiched snugly between desperation and despair. The Cougars’ best play all night had been consistently running the ball, but there was no time for such nonsense now. Their quarterback, Jake Retzlaff, a dude who too often had heaved the ball around the yard like a sack of cement, suffering two picks and a sub-.500 completion percentage, somehow transformed into a combination of Tom Brady and Lamar Jackson. With the seconds ticking away, he led his offense down the field, including a long run by him, and at the end hit Darius Lassiter with the game-winner, a 35-yard touchdown pass, that was punctuated by two absolutely filthy moves by the receiver, enabling him to dance into the end zone. Eleven seconds remained on the clock, but the game — and every jubilant Cougar’s innocence — was over.
It was nothing short of wicked.
Afterward, Kalani Sitake looked into a camera and said: “We made too many mistakes, but the guys never stopped believing. … It’s all about having a good time.”
And even with the errors, the Cougars enjoyed so much debauchery.
There were times when BYU looked confused, especially on defense, as though Oklahoma State was hitting the Cougars with a stratagem they never expected. Sitake described the showing as “uncharacteristic.” In reality, it was the Cowboys blocking well, running well, and taking advantage of abundant BYU disorganization. Ollie Gordon II gobbled up 107 yards on the ground, quarterback Garret Rangel churned for 77, before both players got banged up, Rangel leaving the game, Gordon hurting, but fighting to get back in.
The count went … 7-zip, BYU; 7-7; 14-7, BYU; 14-14; 14-21, OK State; 21-21; 28-21, BYU; 28-28; 31-28, BYU; 31-35, OK State; and then …
And then, uh-huh, Brady/Jackson entered the game.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Brigham Young Cougars wide receiver Keelan Marion (17) scores a touchdown during the game between the BYU and the Oklahoma State Cowboys in Provo on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024.
Even though the Cougars led for much of the night, there was a sense of vulnerability to what they were doing. When a favored team can’t stop the run on its home field, and the offense is making the aforementioned mistakes, defeat hangs thick in the air along with the darkness.
But as Sitake repeated afterward, his players kept charging, kept believing, even when they might have been or should have been hard-pressed to find reason to, and a team that can do that, can climb over walls, even barriers of its own building, and for all its faults on what was nothing short of an off night go ahead and win, something dangerous and devilish, something extraordinary is going on. It’s a cliche, but when belief dies hard, winning lives easy.
“We can improve,” said Sitake. “But I’m so proud of the way the guys played. Proud of the fight, the belief they have in each other.”
Here’s a truth, then, BYU seems to be understanding seven games into its rather remarkable 2024 football season: Being unbeaten does not mean it’s unbeatable.
That applies most definitely and specifically to these Cougars and they know it. Here’s how: They’re talented, they’re well coached, they have unheralded players who are leaders, they sport a tight esprit de corps, they love football, they rally around one another, all of which is to say, they’re good. But they’re not that good.
They’re not good enough to take anything for granted. But they are good enough, even when perfection eludes them, to play to the tune in their heads of the famous Journey song, “Don’t Stop Believing.”
Maybe that’s one of the benefits of coming off a season a year ago when they won only two conference games and lost seven, when they lost five consecutive games to finish the season. They remember all that. And they remember how they bridged the deep gap from then to an unblemished record now.
I asked Sitake how that bridge was built, and he offered the kind of answer a coach would: “They believe because they put the work in.”
Yeah, another cliche.
Only in this case, maybe it’s a cliche because it’s true.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The student section gets loud as they cheer on the Brigham Young Cougars playing the Oklahoma State Cowboys in Provo on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024.
In that way, BYU football in the here and now, on Friday night and on many Saturdays before, is a coach’s dream, a substantiation of every cliche ever uttered by coaches, head or assistant. It is the mixed embodiment of “hard work pays off,” and what Ronnie Lott said, “If you can believe it, you can achieve it.” We can go even older school here for another example that fits. It was Vince Lombardi who said, “The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work.”
It’s funny how athletes blessed with great natural talent like to emphasize the same thing. The real Tom Brady’s recent quote got a lot of run: “To be successful at anything, the truth is, you don’t have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren’t: consistent, determined and willing to work for it.”
“That’s when belief sets in,” Sitake said.
We’ll save the argument over whether Tom’s words, coming from one of the most gifted quarterbacks of all time, are inspiring or insulting. Either way, it’s safe to say the combo-pack of belief and work is working for BYU. And getting us back on track here, the Cougars are fully aware. That’s how they stayed with it in the face of adversity on Friday night.
Their personnel is not all that different from what it was last season. It’s not as though they got an infusion of five-star recruits or transfers that have revamped the team. “We learned from what happened in our first year in the Big 12,” Sitake said, “and we worked hard to get better.”
More cliches.
But even after Retzlaff threw a careless interception near OK State’s goal line, costing BYU a touchdown and precipitating an OSU score, he shook it off and carried on. Like it was gone out of mind, out of consciousness, out of the way.
BYU’s game against Oklahoma State seemed as though it was out of an old Looney Tunes cartoon in which the Cougars slipped on unseen banana peels and fell through trapdoors, but they just kept coming, straight through to victory’s warm embrace.
On the nuts and bolts of his remarkable winning TD pass to Lassiter, Retzlaff said: “I saw him come open and I threw him the ball.”
Easy-peasy.
But on the overall, overwhelming feeling that swamped him as he and his teammates celebrated the ending, he called it “a spiritual experience.” He also called it “magical.” After it all came down the way it did, Retzlaff just enjoyed the moment.
Regarding his teammates and what’s happening in and around the team as a whole, seven games in, Retlaff said, “They know what they’re doing. They’re making plays, and they believe in each other. … All the guys did an incredible job of believing in me. Our belief in everybody on the field is second to none.”
One last thing Sitake said he believes in: “We’re so close to being unstoppable.”
There’s no forgiveness needed, at this point, for him believing that.
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