Kalani Sitake isn't shaking up BYU staff, but changes being taken to address ailing defense

PROVO — As the Cougars sit in the throes of a three-game losing streak following the worst loss since the punchless 2017 season, BYU's defense remains a mess.

The Cougars are among the worst defenses in the country in most major statistical categories, including total defense, scoring defense and third-down conversion defense. And while that wasn't the entire reason behind BYU's embarrassing 41-14 loss to Liberty that saw the offense shut out for three quarters during a 38-0 run, the defense is an easy punching bag.

Swing away, Cougar nation; head coach Kalani Sitake won't stop you. But know that you will be swinging at the top boss.

The seventh-year head coach confirmed again Monday that he is calling the plays on defense, but added that defensive coordinator Ilaisa Tuiaki has been reassigned to the defensive line. The full process of defensive play calling duties will continue to be "collaborative," as Sitake has said many times. But the head coach will have the final say.

"At the defensive staff, we work together on game planning, including with our analysts and GAs," Sitake said. "I have a number of guys in that room who have been defensive coordinators before and have a lot of experience. It would be wise to listen to what they say.

"But at the end of the day, I'm coming up with the menu and the personnel. I'm coming up with the plays."

As for Tuiaki, Sitake added, "he's working full time with the D-line."

Sitake has never dismissed a coach in the middle of a season, and he isn't about to start now. When the Cougars' offense was flailing in 2017, BYU finished out the 4-9 campaign before there were sweeping changes on the offensive staff that included firing Cougar legend Ty Detmer.

Any staff changes that come this season would be in the same manner, if at all.

"We need all hands on deck," Sitake said. "I have a responsibility as a head coach, and that is keeping in mind what our fans want and what our players need.

"What I'm really focused on right now is the adversity and the growth that can happen because of (the three-game losing skid). We can become better through this. … What tough times do is expose a lot of things, and not all of it is negative."

Sitake spent a half-dozen years as Kyle Whittingham's defensive coordinator at Utah since 2009, including a promotion to assistant head coach and defensive coordinator from 2012 through 2014. He then followed former Utah State coach Gary Andersen to Oregon State, where he served one season as DC and assistant head coach for the Beavers before accepting his first head coaching job with his alma mater following Bronco Mendenhall's shock departure for the University of Virginia.

A former BYU fullback who played on legendary BYU coach LaVell Edwards' final team in 2000, Sitake started his career in coaching as a defensive backs coach at Eastern Arizona College and then as a defensive graduate assistant at BYU in 2002. He spent just two seasons at Southern Utah on the offensive staff before taking a job at Utah as linebackers coach in 2005 and worked his way up.

He's also recruited a staff with plenty of coordinator experience, including assistant head coach and safeties coach Ed Lamb, who ran defense and special teams at Idaho and San Diego before taking his first Division I head coaching job at SUU in 2008. Linebackers coach Kevin Clune was previously defensive coordinator at Oregon State, Utah State, Hawaii and Weber State, among his many stops since he began coaching in 1991.

One of the things that the varied coaching staff keeps coming back to are fundamentals. In particular, the Cougars' tackling has been lackluster for three consecutive weeks, which led Sitake to instigate "tackling school" for part of last week before heading to Lynchburg, Virginia.

That focus will continue as BYU prepares to host East Carolina in a must-win game Friday night (6 p.m. MDT, ESPN2). Lose to the Pirates, who have won three of their last four games in the American Athletic Conference play, and bowl-eligibility becomes very much in doubt for the Cougars with games remaining against Boise State, Utah Tech and Stanford.

Hence, returning focus to the fundamentals of football. And for a defense that has been exposed in recent weeks, that means tackling.

"It's hard to get everything shifted in one week's time, but if we want to get better at tackling, we have to do that a lot," Sitake said. "It still wasn't good enough, but I only know one way to do it; we've got to hit, got to tackle. The only way to tackle is to go through the motions of it."

But the Cougars also lack a number of playmakers across the defense — from defensive line to the secondary. Talan Alfrey's first-quarter interception against the Flames on Saturday was the first by a BYU defensive back all season (to be fair, BYU linebackers have accounted for five picks, split between Max Tooley and Ben Bywater).

"As DBs, we always talk about tips and overthrows need to be ours. That was an overthrow, and it came right to me. It landed right in my lap," Alfrey said in describing his interception bifurcated by touchdowns by Puka Nacua and Isaac Rex that gave the Cougars a 14-3 advantage over Liberty.

"Every group feels the need to step up, and the DBs have the same desire to step up and do better," he added.

On the defensive line, only John Nelson has multiple sacks (two) and seven other players have one apiece. So there's plenty of headway to make in finding a defensive scheme that accounts for both disruption, havoc and lockdown plays that keeps more points off the scoreboard than the 31.6 points per game the Cougars have allowed.

And that, Alfrey said, requires a good bit of introspection among the players, coaches and staff members, from offense to defense to special teams.

"Individually, we each need to look inside and figure out a lot of things we need to fix," he said. "It's going to be a lot of re-evaluation and introspection for each player to try to figure out what we can do to be better."

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