Connor Pay was on Jake Hatch's "Locked on Cougs" podcast/Youtube show today. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Connor Pay is being paid via NIL to come on the podcast once a week. Connor is an awesome guest...he doesn't just give player/coach speak. He has insightful, real comments.

Here are some of the highlights:

• BYU's O-line uses a zone blocking scheme which is fairly complicated and requires a lot of chemistry and cohesion.  Everyone on the O-line is either playing a new position or they're new at BYU, so they're still building up that cohesion. 

• Sam Houston's defensive strategy was to create chaos at the line of scrimmage and to use twists to confuse our O-line (which worked) to create a bunch of space for their linebackers to freely make plays. Connor said those twists were really throwing off the O-line and it made it difficult to be on the same page for their blocking assignments. They need to work on figuring out how to pass off blocking assignments as they're twisting, etc.

• Connor said that finally by the 3rd quarter, the O-line had figured out what Sam Houston was doing and they all got on the same page and were working as a more unified unit.  A lot less confusion.  Soon after that is when LJ got put into the game.  The run blocking was so much better when LJ came in.  That's not to take away from LJ's talent, but Connor did point out that Aidan Robbins got the short end of the stick, because when he was getting snaps, the O-line was still working to get on the same page. Aidan will look much better against SUU as the O-line continues to improve their cohesion.

• Connor also pointed out that due to bad, self inflicted penalties (including numerous from the O-line), they had to throw the ball much more than they otherwise would have and it made the offense more one dimensional.   Definitely expects to get that cleaned up and that'll have a big positive impact on the offense overall.

• He confirmed that there were a lot of wrong routes that were run.

• Outside blocking was poor (i.e. WR blocking), which really hurt the run game as well and didnt allow any of our screens to be successful.

• He's watched a bunch of film on SUU. They run more of a vanilla defense, especially compared to Sam Houston.  This will be a great game for the O-line to work on their blocking schemes.  Nobody is overlooking SUU though...they all saw SUU almost beat ASU and they're a well coached team.

Great interview overall. Any time a player from the team is interviewed, the one-ness and unity of this team is evident. The defensive players have been sticking up for the offensive performance, giving them some credit for not turning the ball over, etc (while also pointing out that they know they can perform way better). They all compliment each other, regardless of what side of the ball they play on. Great to see.

Overall I'm a lot more optimistic about the team than I was immediately after the Sam Houston game.  A lot of the issues do seem fixable.  (I'm still worred about our back-up WRs though).

Here's the link if you want to watch for yourself: