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PROVO — Following the Boise State game, BYU head football coach Bronco Mendenhall took full responsibility for the team’s loss. He stated that everything about the game was his fault and that he felt like he must not have properly prepared the team to compete. Mendenhall even took the blame for BYU’s interception following a safety.
While it’s commendable that he shouldered the blame for the loss, there’s one problem: He’s wrong.
The truth is that this BYU team is just not very good. With each passing week, it is becoming more and more evident that BYU was a very average team that looked terrific due to the Heisman-type performance of Taysom Hill. Once Hill (whom I would argue was the most indispensable player in all of college football) went down, the team’s glaring deficiencies were no longer hidden. Even before Hill’s season-ending injury, the defense looked suspect. The Cougars made average quarterbacks look like stars against Houston, Virginia and Utah State.
To another one of Mendenhall’s points, it is not his fault if players do not get energized for games. That falls squarely on the players. If players cannot find motivation to play FBS football in front of thousands of fans each week, then they need to turn in their pads.
So, in what ways is Mendenhall responsible? It could easily be argued that he recruited the players he now has running the show and is therefore responsible for their lackluster play the past four weeks. There is some validity to that argument.
However, the major problems of this year’s team have come from the defensive side of the ball, which has been the strength of the program for the last three years. It is unrealistic to believe that after stars like Kyle Van Noy and Daniel Sorensen left that there would not be some drop off. It is also unknown how much of the defensive dip in production is due to Mendenhall relinquishing the reins to defensive coordinator Nick Howell.
So, while Mendenhall wants to take the blame for the losses in recent weeks, it is not all his fault. Contrastingly, it will not be all about him if this team starts to win again.
Dylan Cannon is a regular KSL.com contributor and can be reached at DylanCannon86@gmail.com or via twitter @DylanCannon11.
