Cincinnati’s Offense Continues to Stumble in Primetime Loss to BYU
BY Keegan Nickoson | Bearcat Journal
Any effort Cincinnati made to gain some momentum was met with complete system failure—failed 4th-and-1 attempts, jumping offsides on punts, and fumbles when the offense was rolling. The Bearcats could not do the things necessary to beat a good team, leading to their 26-14 loss to BYU Saturday night and ending their chances of a spot in the Big 12 title game.
BYU showed the difference between a middle-of-the-pack and top-of-the-line Big 12 team on Saturday night. Despite playing with a true freshman quarterback, without their leading receiver, Chase Roberts, the Cougars never did anything that could cost them the game. They played efficient, largely error-free football, bleeding the Bearcats dry.
“ Winning’s the name of the game,” Brendan Sorsby said. “We’re not doing that these past three weeks. You got the passing game going a little bit more tonight, but it can’t just be one or the other. We gotta find a way to get both going at the same time. That’s where you become an elite offense, is whenever you’re pass or run game can both be hitting on the same night, and we didn’t have that tonight, but there’s still a lot of stuff that we left out there.”
Cincinnati, on the other hand, fumbled basically every opportunity they got. Starting with a 4th & 1 within the BYU five-yard line in the first quarter. Satterfield decided to call the same play he used on a 3rd & 1 earlier in the drive, a direct snap to Tawee Walker, who was stopped well short of the line to gain.
Then came the field goals, three of them to be exact. The first two were blatant misses on Stephen Rusnak, who has been very solid all season outside of Saturday’s debauchery and his miss against Utah. The last was on Max Fletcher, the holder. When the ball came off Rusnak’s foot, it was clear it didn’t have a chance to make it through the uprights.
“ I hurt for Steven; he’s missed one field goal in 10 games, and we missed three tonight. So if you got nine more points on the board, it’s different in the fourth quarter,” Satterfield said. “The way they’re calling plays, the way we’re calling plays, this is a really good red zone defense… Then I felt like the three field goal attempts were right there, around where you don’t go for it; it was a little bit outside of the red zone area, right there at it. You gotta make the plays when plays need to be made.”
Despite all that, Cincinnati still found itself in a position to climb back into the game. With 14 minutes left in the game and the score sitting at 20-7, mainly due to an offsides on a BYU punt that handed the ball back to the Cougars, Brendan Sorsby had the offense rolling for the first time in the second half. Completions to Joe Royer, Caleb Goodie and Evan Pryor put Cincinnati in BYU territory. Then, Cyrus Allen fumbled, giving the ball back to BYU and killing the Bearcats’ momentum.
The Bearcats scored on their next possession, cutting the deficit to 6 points. But LJ Martin did what he did all night and ran over Cincinnati’s defense, picking up multiple first downs, bleeding just under four minutes of game time and eventually exploding through UC’s defense for a 33-yard score, effectively ending the game.
“ They do a great job of huddling, slowing the game down, handing the ball to Martin, who’s an outstanding back,” Satterfield said.
“I think he leads the Big 12 in rushing, so they’re just gonna let him carry the football and Bear Bachmeier as well. I think he had 13 carries tonight. Those two guys are big backs. I felt like we had some great initial contact. It may go another two or three yards, and you do that multiple times, that’s a first down. I thought he did an outstanding job with that. The guy had 32 carries tonight. That’s an incredible workload from a running back there.”
Cincinnati’s team, at the end of the day, is built on playing complementary football. The 3-3-5 scheme that Tyson Veidt employs will never be a completely shut-down defense. Teams will be able to run against it; they’ll be able to dominate time of possession. But if the group limits big plays and plays well in the red zone, they will put the offense in a position to win the game, which they have in 10 of 11 games this season, the Utah loss abstaining.
They did just that tonight. The defense’s only mistakes were a facemask penalty, which many people disagreed with, and a couple of missed tackles against LJ Martin at the point of attack.
The defense didn’t miss three field goals, call the same short-yardage play on the opponent’s five-yard line, jump offsides on a punt, or fumble in opponent territory. As long as the offense struggles, the team as a whole will struggle.
“ Our coaches set us up to make plays, man, and we just gotta make ’em, it’s not the scheme, it’s none of that,” Linebacker Jack Dingle told reporters following Saturday’s game.
“We gotta go in and do our job and make the plays that we have to make.”
Cincinnati has had opportunities to win its last two games, but as it plugs one hole, another leak emerges. Whether it’s special teams blunders or ball security. The Bearcats got the passing game going compared to their losses to Utah and Arizona. Sorsby threw for 300 yards and completed 66% of his passes. He added two scores and had an ugly interception, along with some errant throws.
It might be something in the water, as the Bearcats fell to 1-10 in November under Scott Satterfield. With a road game against TCU coming next weekend, Cincinnati is in danger of losing four straight games to end the season, similarly to losing five straight to end the 2024 season.