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PROVO — BYU’s defensive line didn’t have the pressure of needing to register double-digit sacks last Saturday night in their road opener in Tucson, Arizona.
Instead, all they had to do was shut down Heisman Trophy hopeful Khalil Tate.
No pressure.
The Cougars held Tate to just 14 rush yards in the season-opening 28-23 victory at Arizona, setting up another Pac-12 showdown with fellow 1-0 side Cal at 8:15 p.m. MT Saturday (ESPN2, KSL Newsradio).
So how did they do it?
For starters, they needed a spy — someone to take full responsibility of keeping an eye on Tate, both as a runner and a passer. Usually, opposing teams dedicate a linebacker to such a position — someone like middle linebacker Butch Pau’u, or maybe converted safety Zayne Anderson to get a little more speed on him.
But BYU’s plan was different. Their spy was 6-foot-9 and a key force in a pair of upset victories in three seasons with the BYU basketball team against Gonzaga.
“When you have a guy who is 6-9 and can take two steps for 10 yards, he can do pretty well as a spy,” Pau’u said of BYU’s Corbin Kaufusi. “We just did our assignment, and were able to do well in the third quarter.”
Yes, Kaufusi has traded in his basketball shoes for football cleats, but he used every inch of his 6-foot-9, 275-pound frame to corral Tate, and let his defensive backs do the rest.
“Khalil Tate is an athlete, and so it was kind of fun to get to spy that dude and make sure he didn’t get too far,” said Kaufusi, who had seven tackles, two tackles for loss and a sack in the opener. “But it was a great scheme by the coaches.”
The Cougars drew up a scheme to keep Tate corralled, forgoing several opportunities for a sack and forcing the quarterback to beat them with his arm.
Assistant head coach Ed Lamb estimated the Wildcats ran as many as 40 designed run or run-pass-option plays against the Cougars, but Tate took off out of the pocket just eight times.
Defensive coordinator Ilaisa Tuiaki credited Kaufusi for keeping last year’s 1,411-yard rusher in check.
“When we wanted to take off, he had to earn everything he had,” Tuiaki said. “With a guy that big in front of you, it’s really difficult to see where you can go.
“It’s a credit to the defense for having a plan, but it’s really hard to have that big of a guy in front of him.”
Tuiaki said the Cougars’ “stole” the game plan from Lamb’s days at Southern Utah, when the Thunderbirds regularly faced athletic, run-first quarterbacks in Big Sky play and beyond. They threw a lot of pass-rush schemes out the window, often pressing the Wildcats’ inexperienced offensive line with just four down linemen — or even as few as three, noted Trajan Pili, the defensive end who played inside at nose tackle on more than one occasion.
The result didn’t yield much in the way of sacks — but it did result in a win, the Cougars’ 11th season-opening victory in the past 12 seasons.
“I think overall, we played great on the defensive line,” Pili said. “I think we just kind of played off each other. If Khalil was staying in the pocket, then it was because Corbin was staying right there and he could crush it.”
In Saturday’s home opener against Cal, the Cougar defense should have more opportunities to rush the passer. The Golden Bears play three quarterbacks, but the most experienced as redshirt junior Ross Bowers, who threw for 3,089 yards and 18 touchdowns with 12 interceptions, as well as 34 sacks taken, in 2017.
Bowers threw for just 56 yards and was a non-factor in the run game in a 24-17 win over North Carolina in the Bears’ season opener.
So the Cougars could have chances in the pass-rush.
“You’ve just seen a little bit,” Pili said. “But it’s very good.
“It’s about time.”
Double Kaufusi
Corbin wasn’t the only Kaufusi to see time in the Cougars’ win last weekend. His younger brother Devin Kaufusi, who recently returned from a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Germany, also saw time.
“He did good,” Corbin Kaufusi said of his little brother. “I’m kind of on the sideline trying to be a teammate, but I’m a brother and still holding my breath for him.”
Receiving votes
BYU received three votes in the weekly Associated Press Top 25 college football poll, released Tuesday. Utah continues to sit just outside the poll, the unofficial No. 26, while the Cougars were one of the last teams to receive any votes after Saturday’s win over Arizona as 11-point underdogs.
Rece Davis of ESPN, Brent Axe of the Syracuse Post-Standard and Conor O’Neill of the Winston-Salem Journal each gave BYU a vote in this week’s AP Top 25, according to ballots that were released to the public.
