Cougars report: Notes, quotes

March 26, 2008
The Sports Xchange

Notes, quotes · Inside slant · Strategy and personnel

SPRING OBJECTIVES
The focus will be on defense. The task? Replace eight starters, including all four players in the secondary. Even then, the situation is not as bad as it might seem. Senior Kellen Fowler filled in as a starter at the end of last season because of injury, and David Tafuna -- scheduled to be a starter in 2007 before he suffered a season-ending foot injury in fall camp -- should be 100 percent by August. David Nixon moves to inside linebacker to take Bryan Kehl's spot, and the Cougars must find complementary players. Offensively, BYU must fine-tune an offensive line that returns four starters but struggled at times last season -- especially against UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl.

BUILDING BLOCKS
If Max Hall delivered an 11-2 record as a new starting QB behind a suspect offensive line last season, how good will he be with another year in the system with a line expected to improve? That's a scary proposition for the rest of the MWC. Sophomore RB Harvey Unga, last season's freshman of the year in the conference, anchors a solid running game, and TE Dennis Pitta almost made BYU forget about playmaker Jonny Harline, who graduated in 2006. BYU's defensive line will be strong, with junior end Jan Jorgensen providing the anchor. For a unit replacing so many starters, experience at the line may be the best position to have.

SCHEDULE SITUATION
The Cougars had to scramble to schedule Football Championship Subdivision power Northern Iowa to start the season but follow that with Pac-10 members Washington and UCLA. It's a far more manageable schedule than the two previous seasons, in which BYU started both seasons 1-2 before running off 10 straight wins each.

QUOTE TO NOTE
"We want to go undefeated, and we feel that we can. We're wearing shirts that say, 'Quest for Perfection.' During the offseason, we had shirts on that said, 'Our Personal Best.' We're just trying to give our personal best every day. We all know that if we can do that, we can go undefeated come September and come the season. But it's going to take all we did in the winter, it's going to take all spring, it's going to take all summer. So we have a long ways to go to meet that goal." -- DE Jan Jorgensen, to the Deseret Morning News.