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Provo • About a half-dozen BYU football players were asked on Monday and Tuesday if they would have taken a 2-2 start to the 2015 season if they knew back in August that star running back Jamaal Williams would withdraw from school, senior quarterback Taysom Hill would suffer a third season-ending injury in the first game and one of the team's best defenders, Travis Tuiloma, would miss all but one of those games.
Not surprisingly, the players all said they would still have expected to go 4-0 in September — that's how players are conditioned to think, linebacker Jherremya Leuta-Douyere said — but a majority of the fans would have taken a pair of wins in a heartbeat.
As for BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall and offensive coordinator Robert Anae, they spoke in the heat of the moment after Saturday's 31-0 shellacking at Michigan as if all was lost, that they had hit "ground zero" and it was time to "start over."
In an interview room underneath Michigan Stadium, they seemingly forgot that they were underdogs in all four games, had won two and nearly pulled off an upset in another. They went heavy on the self-flagellation, each taking the blame for the blowout loss.
That was an overreaction to a hugely disappointing performance. Mendenhall admitted as much on Monday, saying he was "not in a good place" after the game and that a couple days of reflection reminded him that 2-2 is not a bad place to be, given the circumstances.
Actually, Mendenhall's biggest mistake was fueling higher expectations than his team could possibly deliver. As he conceded Monday, his program still doesn't have the depth needed to compete week in and week out with teams like the Cougars played in September.
After the 24-23 loss to now-No. 7 UCLA, Mendenhall said he had "a good team that is on the verge, possibly, of becoming a great team, with some work."
Somehow, he forgot that he was about to roll into the Big House against one of the most successful coaches around with a freshman quarterback making his third career start. Tanner Mangum might become a fine quarterback at BYU, but he's not there yet, as Saturday's abysmal performance revealed.
As Tribune columnist Kurt Kragthorpe noted after the QB — who was four months ago knocking on doors in Chile — Mangum's Magic turned into Mangum's Mirage.
His last-second heroics against Nebraska and Boise State and that wild 84-yard touchdown pass to Mitchell Juergens in the first quarter against the Broncos overshadowed his inability to sustain drives. That proved costly against UCLA, when the defense was left on the field too long and wore down in the fourth quarter.
Fans, and perhaps Mendenhall himself, temporarily thought Mangum could pick up where Hill left off, but the Michigan game provided a harsh dose of reality. Looking back, Mangum's early play was pyrite — fool's gold.
"Tanner is going to be great player, but people probably forgot too quickly that he's just a freshman," said defensive end Graham Rowley, a senior.
Mendenhall more correctly assessed Monday that the reality is that the Cougars are somewhere between their first three games and their performance in the fourth — not as good as he felt they were after UCLA, but not as bad as he thought immediately after the debacle in Ann Arbor.
"I really, really believed we had a great chance to win the game, going into it, and to not have played well, after really believing it was not possible that we wouldn't play well, the starting over part, to me, if I were to reframe it, we have played four games, we have won two, lost two. We have played well in three, not played well in one. And I think it is just a new start for the rest of the year," he clarified Monday.
Mendenhall could take a lesson from former BYU coach LaVell Edwards, who had to witness Saturday's carnage firsthand from the Michigan Stadium press box.
Edwards always preferred the under-promise, over-deliver route — and it worked pretty well for him.
Twitter: @drewjay —
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BYUs roller-coaster opening month
Date Result Attendance Line
Sept. 5 Def. Nebraska, 33-28 89,959 Nebraska by 7
Sept. 12 Def. Boise State, 35-24 63,470 Boise State by 3 1/2
Sept. 19 Lost to UCLA, 24-23 67,612 UCLA by 17
Sept. 26 Lost to Michigan, 31-0 108,940 Michigan by 7