Provo • Why do bad things seem to happen to the BYU Cougars at all the wrong times this season?
Head coach Kalani Sitake expressed those sentiments aloud late Saturday night after his team fell 20-13 to Fresno State and lost starting quarterback Tanner Mangum for the remaining three games of the season due to an Achilles injury.
The non-contact injury came when Mangum was planting his feet to deliver a throw, and was as fluky as season-ending injuries can possibly get. It also came after the junior had completed six straight passes and was was playing one of his better games of the Cougars’ disappointing season.
Perhaps BYU is snakebit.
Maybe the 2-8 Cougars are cursed — especially at the quarterback position.
Since Max Hall started every game for three seasons from 2007-09 and finished his final home game with a rant against rival Utah, BYU’s primary starting quarterbacks have failed to finish a season due to injury six times in the past eight seasons.
BYU quarterbacks’ season-ending injuries since 2010 <br> Year*Quarterback*Injury <br> • 2010*Riley Nelson*Shoulder <br> • 2012*Taysom Hill*Major knee injury <br> • 2014*Taysom Hill*Leg fracture, ligament damage <br> • 2015*Taysom Hill*Lisfranc foot fracture <br> • 2016*Taysom Hill*Hyperextended elbow <br> • 2017*Tanner Mangum*Achilles tendon rupture
Mangum was confirmed to have suffered an Achilles injury late Saturday night. Few details regarding the extent of the injury were available Sunday, but there are fears that the recovery process is six months or more and he won’t be available for spring camp in March.
“I feel bad for him,” Sitake said. “I don’t know the specifics of it, but it was pretty bad.”
Bad also describes the Cougars’ 2017 season, with three games remaining on the schedule, beginning Friday night against UNLV (4-5) at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas. The Rebels followed last week’s 26-16 win over Fresno State with a 31-23 win over Hawaii on Saturday and are suddenly eyeing a bowl bid.
The Cougars’ bowl hopes are dashed, ending a 12-year postseason run.
“I am really disappointed, and I am getting sick of saying that all the time,” Sitake said.
The second-year coach blamed himself first, then his assistant coaches, then the whole team, for the third loss to a team from the Mountain West. The inability to force a single turnover, a boatload of dropped passes by open receivers, inaccurate throws and some red-zone penalties that thwarted drives were the latest woes in this season of misery.
“We had some substitution issues, on special teams and on offense,” said Sitake, now 11-12 at BYU. “That’s just crap, this late in the season. That stuff should not be happening. That’s on coaches.”
The Cougars were seventh in the country in turnover margin last year when they went 9-4. They are 112th this year.
“We need to work harder at the little details, myself included,” said defensive end Sione Takitaki. “It all falls back on us.”
To his credit, Sitake has not used injuries as an excuse, but they continue to pile up. Backup quarterback Beau Hoge was limping noticeably after filling in for Mangum in the fourth quarter, and tight end Matt Bushman was ailing some after taking the hit that caused him to fumble on BYU’s final possession.
Hoge will presumably get the start Friday if he’s available, but Sitake also mentioned freshman Joe Critchlow as a possibility in his postgame radio interview.
Squally Canada, one of the Cougars’ few healthy running backs, had 12 carries for 84 yards and a touchdown against the Bulldogs. He said the team will rally behind whoever gets the call to take snaps.
“We have confidence in anybody who is back there,” Canada said. “As a team, as a unit, we pump each other up. If somebody goes down, it is next man up. It is the mindset you gotta have. As you have seen this season, people have been going down, and it has gotta be next man up.”
As for the mistakes, Canada said the blame falls on the players first.
“We just gotta stop [shooting] ourselves in the foot,” he said. “We gotta stop stepping on our own toes. We got to minimize our mistakes. ... When coach calls the play, we just gotta execute, no matter if anybody disagrees.”
Friday’s game <br> BYU at UNLV, 8:30 p.m. MST <br> TV: ESPN2 <br>