Finally, a Look at BYU

Offense: they have a lot of experience returning on the O-Line.  8 players on the depth chart have starts, including the 4 main starters from last year's team.  All of their WRs are back, with a few new additions in freshmen, redshirts, etc.  The RBs have two semi-experienced guys in J.J. DiLuigi and Bryan Kariya who are in their third year in the program, with 125 carries between them.  They also add the Juice, an outstanding true freshman who can carry the ball some.  There are a lot of young, inexperienced TEs competing to fill the void left by two guys on NFL rosters.  I imagine the offense will use fewer TE sets until that gets somewhat settled.  Last year was actually more of the exception, as we often saw two TEs in the game, usually there is just one (and in the Nate Meikle years, a lot of plays were run with zero TEs and 3-4 WRs).
The QB situation is obviously the big, highly-publicized question mark.  By all accounts, Riley Nelson and Jake Heaps (and James Lark for that matter), appear to be better-than-serviceable, but Nelson is still a run-first guy and Heaps and Lark are still inexperienced.  They have a solid O-Line and WRs to help ease the transition.  I imagine they will ease Heaps along and let Nelson do his thing in the mean time.  Given that they have 3 QBs that were highly recruited out of high school (4 if you count Jason Munns, but I wouldn't use the word "highly" in reference to his recruitment), one of them is bound to be able to get the job done well.

Defense: there are a lot of new starters on the defense.  However, that is not to say that the team is inexperienced.  D-Line: Fuga and Putnam both played significantly the past two seasons, Manumaleuna started every game as a freshman before his mission, So'oto has been around forever (at 3 different positions).  Depth is a bigger concern on the D-Line than experience: after the first 5 guys in the rotation you are looking at mostly freshmen.  At LB, however, experience is the concern, where depth is not as big of a deal.  Jordan Pendleton was THE playmaker on last year's defense, but the rest of the guys are either new to the program or have only played on special teams.  Given the mobile QBs/option attacks BYU faces the first 4 games of the season, these guys will have to learn quickly.  For once, the secondary isn't the biggest concern.  3 of 4 starters return, as do most of the backups.  The lone new starter is junior Steven Thomas, who is entering his 4th season in the program, so he is a somewhat experienced player.  While the secondary is always A concern at BYU, having 5 or 6 known guys is much better than usual, and the fact that it isn't THE concern is nice for a change.

Schedule: the non-conference schedule should have 4 bowl-bound teams in it.  It looks like this: Washington, at Florida State, Nevada, and at Utah State.  They should beat Nevada and Utah State, they could beat Washington, and they should lose at Florida State.  They could lose any of the four and could win any of the four, with the possible exception of the Florida State game.  Although miracles do happen: it is the week after the Seminoles travel to Oklahoma and Florida State is typically a better road team than home team, but given the dominating performance in Provo against a veteran BYU team...you get the drift.  I'll call this 2-2, certainly with a good chance for 3-1.

Conference home games are San Diego State, Wyoming, UNLV, and New Mexico.  This season is a bit of a yawner for home games, compared to last season, both in conference and non-conference games.  BYU shouldn't have any trouble dispatching of any of these teams at home.  They have an "extra" day to prepare for San Diego State with a Friday night game the week prior, and an extra week to prepare for UNLV with a bye ahead of that.  I feel safe calling this 4-0.

Conference road games are Air Force, TCU, CSU, and Utah.  BYU should beat CSU and probably should beat Air Force (but I'm high on them this season).  A lot can happen between now and November 27th, but Utah has the edge right now.  TCU, assuming that they are still in the top 10 at that time, should take care of business in Fort Worth.  We'll go 2-2 here, though I believe it either comes together or not and they go 3-1 or 1-3.

Outlook: looking at what BYU lost on both sides of the ball, how they performed last year, and the schedule this year, 8-4 has always sounded about right to me for 2010.  If things come together, they could possibly get up to 10-2.  If things go horribly, horribly wrong, they should still get to 7-5, or maybe as bad as 6-6.  The disparity between BYU and the bottom half of the MWC is too great for it to get much worse than that right now, even with a mostly improved MWC this season.  I'll start at 8-4, feeling confident that BYU will do AT LEAST that well this season.

The fact that there has not been an announcement about going independent is no surprise to me.  BYU has put in way too much effort and research to rush into any decision.  I think, as far as timing is concerned, it may be better to be in the MWC next season, and go independent after that.  I believe that BYU should be favored to win the MWC next season and could very well do so with younger Boise State and TCU teams coming to Provo (barring a major shake-up in the scheduling, like adding Nevada and Fresno State).  10-2/11-1 and an MWC title next season should be enough to get to a BCS game, given that the loss at Texas is respectable.  Then when 2012 comes the sky is the limit as an independent.  I know it's a little early to be making 2011 predictions (I promise I haven't written off 2010 yet...), but there you have it: BYU 2011 MWC champs, assuming they are still in a 9-team MWC.