PROVO — Only three times since 1975 has the BYU football team been shutout.

Tanner Mangum has had a front-row seat for two of them.

Mangum completed 12-of-24 passes for 102 yards with an interception in the Cougars’ 27-0 loss Saturday night to Louisiana State. And while a loss to the 13th-ranked Bayou Bengals is far from disastrous to BYU’s season, the manner of the loss had plenty of people hearkening back to the Cougars’ last shutout: Sept. 26, 2015 — 31-0 at Michigan.

After the disaster in Ann Arbor, BYU won seven of its next eight games. Of course, UConn, East Carolina and Cincinnati aren’t Utah, Wisconsin and Boise State. But the Cougars showed they can bounce back.

“Our main focus right now is to not get down on ourselves, and get back to the film room so that we understand what assignments we missed,” linebacker Butch Pau’u told reporters after the game. “It can’t happen again against Utah.”

Back in 2015, Mangum was a true freshman, recently removed from an LDS church mission to Chile and four games into a season that he had no expectations of playing. He was new, he was fresh, and he let the situation — a wild coach’s philosophy, a road environment, and 110,000 people in The Big House — get the better of him. In the fourth game of his college career, Mangum completed just 12-of-28 passes for 55 yards.

On Saturday night, Mangum posted eerily similar numbers. Two years removed, and now an upperclassman and a team captain, the Eagle, Idaho native was back on a similar stage: completing 50 percent of his passes without one longer than 17 yards.

Certainly, Saturday night’s loss wasn’t all on Mangum’s shoulders. LSU proved itself to be a contender in the SEC and nationally under first-year full-time head coach Ed Orgeron, and running back Derrius Guice lived up to the Heisman Hype he’s been received.

“He’s a solid running back, very hard to tackle and very stout,” Pau’u said of Guice. “He’s a dog; he likes to bounce off tackles, and he likes to run. He’ll take 3-4 guys with him, and that’s what he did tonight.”

It wasn’t a good night for most of the Cougars. BYU’s running back committee of Squally Canada, Kavika Fonua and Brayden El-Bakri ran for just 14 yards on nine carries.

“It definitely was not the showing that you want to have from a running back corps,” said H-back Trey Dye, who caught two passes for eight yards. “At this point, we’ve got to break down film and take any positives that we can.

“Tonight we struggled to have guys that made plays. That’s one thing we’ll have to work on in practice. Utah is not going to be an easy opponent, as well.”

After the game, linebacker and fellow team captain Fred Warner took the leader’s route on Twitter in summing up his feelings for the game.

“Don’t point any fingers,” he tweeted. “We lost this game as a team … point blank. We’re moving on and we’re coming with that heat next week, be ready.”

But Mangum is a team captain. He’s the quarterback at BYU, a school once called “Quarterback U.” for good reason.

He knows the responsibility — and the scrutiny — that comes with his title. In two games as a junior, he’s completed just 54 percent of his passes for 296 yards.

Off the field, he’s been an impressive leader, a model citizen, an advocate for mental health awareness, and an ideal interview in any media setting he’s appeared in. On the field, he’s still an unfinished product.

No one should be turning on Mangum, either inside or outside the locker room, after a road loss to the No. 13 team in the nation. There’s plenty of football left to be played, with big games against Utah, Wisconsin and Boise State, along with the rest of their schedule.

But even the quarterback admits the Cougars need to rebound from Saturday night.

“I know the guys on our team, the leaders we have, and we are not going to let this team dwell on this for too long,” Mangum said. “We’ve got to come back with some excitement and enthusiasm to get ready for next week’s challenge.”

To be clear: Mangum has been an excellent quarterback. An Elite 11 co-MVP alongside NFL quarterback Jameis Winston, Mangum was the No. 3 quarterback prospect in the nation in high school and won the Touchdown Club of Columbus Freshman of the Year award for his 3,377-yard, 23-touchdown season in 2015. In limited action as a sophomore in 2016, he threw for three touchdowns with just one interception.

Related:

No. 13 LSU shuts down BYU, 27-0

Derrius Guice looks like he can thrive in LSU's new offense and the Tigers' inexperience on defense does not appear to be a liability whatsoever. <br> Guice rushed for 120 yards and two touchdowns, and No. 13 LSU never allowed BYU's offense to cross midfield in a 27-0 defeat of the Cougars on Saturday night.

He has talent.

But in Mangum’s 15-5 record at BYU when he’s played, he also has played in just two wins over Power-5 opponents — a Hail Mary against Nebraska, and a few kneel-downs he took in the final seconds of last year’s 31-14 win at Michigan State (as well as a home win against semi-Power-5 team Boise State).

In big games, Mangum still has a ways to go against college football’s best.

“That’s one of the best defenses I’ve seen, in size and strength and speed,” Mangum said of LSU. “Their size up front was big.

“They have big linebackers that fill the whole. And their secondary was very athletic.”

The junior from Idaho has NFL aspirations, with goals of playing on the same stage as his idol, Tom Brady. But to accomplish that, Mangum has to learn how to put his full skills on display on the big stage. Beating Fresno State, Utah State, UMass and Cincinnati isn’t enough for Mangum.

It’s time to show he belongs on the full stage.

“One game doesn’t define your season,” Mangum said. “You’ve got to bounce back right away; you don’t have time to dwell on it and feel sorry for yourself.

Related topics