The defense should be as motivated as possible this week. If they continue to struggle that would likely mean their ceiling simply isn’t that high and teams have figured out how to attack them.
Now that LJ is healthier and the run game appears to be improving, it will be up to the defense how well BYU finishes out the season.
I still think and have since K-State that the run defense has looked pretty mediocre. BYU is also not covering a lot of the underneath stuff very well. I think partly this is by design in order to not give up the big play and partly because the edge containment has not been very good. On that note, I think BYU will need to play more aggressively by putting more guys in the box to stop the run & short pass game and make UCF beat BYU over the top. But I am not at all convinced we will see that change.