BYU Football: Cougars Look to Exploit Utah Utes' Deficiencies

Rice-Eccles hosts the Holy War this year (Photo by Don Green).

Jake Heaps and the BYU offense should be able to make some plays against the Utah defense they will face on Saturday afternoon in Rice-Eccles Stadium.

The Utes have struggled to stop the pass, especially in the past few weeks, and currently rank 88th in pass efficiency defense and 59th in pass yardage given up.

The Utes are giving up 214 yards per game through the air, but against better competition over the past three weeks that number has ballooned to 337. Even run-happy Air Force threw for 201 yards against Utah four weeks ago.

Over the past month, since the competition level has increased for Utah, the Utes are giving up 33 points and 453 total yard per game. Compare that to 12.9 points and 322 total yards per game in their first seven contests.

The Cougars meanwhile have been on a meteoric rise offensively. During the past three weeks, albeit against less than stellar defenses, the Cougars are averaging 48 points and 512 yards per game. That’s light years from where they were even against Wyoming four games ago.

During that span Jake Heaps has completed 63 percent of his passes for 256 yards per game with 8 touchdowns and no interceptions.

Make no mistake about it though, this Utah defense is still the best unit that the Cougars have faced since TCU. But unlike the Horned Frogs, the Utes do have an Achilles Heel that BYU can exploit.

Utah’s defensive philosophy is to play man coverage in the secondary. When they have NFL-caliber talent at multiple positions in the secondary, as they did last season in Robert Johnson and RJ Stanford, the Ute defense becomes very formidable.

This season the Utes have been much more vulnerable without the same level of talent in the secondary.

Don’t expect Utah to change much of what they do defensively though, they still believe they can go man up on the BYU receivers. They will put their corners on an island for most of the game on Saturday.

Expect the Cougars to try to exploit 6-4 receiver Cody Hoffman’s size advantage, by trying to get him matched up on the outside against 5-8 corner Lamar Chapman. Hoffman will also be asked to run some rub routes over the middle of the field as well.

Utah does lead the conference with 36 sacks on the season, a good number of those coming from the secondary. The Utes will bring safety and corner blitzes as witnessed by the fact that Chapman leads his team with 5.5 sacks.

If the Cougars can keep their freshman quarterback upright, there should be opportunities to make some good plays against Utah’s blitz packages.

Jake Heaps will need to show the same kind of poise and confidence on the road against Utah that he has shown the past few weeks against less talented defenses.

BYU’s running game has been key to Heaps’ recent development and success. Over the past four games the Cougars have pummeled opposing defenses, averaging 244 yards on the ground.

That juggernaut will face the No. 10 rush defense in the country in Utah. It will be interesting to see if the Cougars will continue to rely as heavily on the run game on Saturday. It would not be surprising to see BYU change some things up and come out slinging the ball around and using the pass in this game to set up the run.

In our next installment we’ll take a closer look at BYU’s surprising success on the ground this year.