Kelly Poppinga Outlines His Top Two Priorities for BYU's Defense During Bye Week

The BYU defensive staff will focus on two key areas during the bye week

BYU defensive end Hunter Clegg against Colorado State | Jaren Wilkey/BYU PHOTO

On Saturday, BYU went into Fort Collins and dominated the first three quarters against Colorado State. The fourth and final quarter of the game, things turned sloppy on both sides of the ball. BYU defensive coordinator Kelly Poppinga said on Coordinator's Corner that fixing key penalties and tightening up in the red zone, are the top of the priority list for the bye week.

"That was probably the part that I was most disappointed with was just the way we finished the game after we had played so well for three quarters," Poppinga said on Monday.

After allowing just seven points in three quarters, BYU allowed 16 points in the fourth quarter. A big part of the problem were defensive penalties. Jake Clifton was called for holding and Tausili Akana was called for roughing the passer. Earlier in the game, BYU had two other unncecessary roughness penalties on defense.

Poppinga is confident that his players will respond during the bye week and clean up the costly penalties.

"On both of those drives we had penalties...that's obviously discipline issues that I've got to take care of, that's on me more than anybody and just making sure our guys are playing clean football...we've got to fix those issues and we will, our guys will respond."

Making Red Zone Defense A Strength Again

What if I told you BYU's defense was below average last season in terms of allowing offenses to march down the field? In 2025, the Cougars ranked 81st in scoring position drives allowed at 54%. Said differently, 54% of opponents' drives reached the BYU 40 yard-line or deeper.

Although the BYU defense ranked 81st in quality drive rate allowed, they ranked 35th in points per drive allowed. When offenses reached BYU territory, the defense was one of the best in college football at keeping points off the board.

The BYU defense ranked 10th in touchdowns allowed per quality drive and 8th in red zone touchdown rate allowed.

In 2026, BYU's red zone defense hasn't been as dominant. That's going to be a point of emphasis for the defense during the bye week.

"Right now one of our issues in the red zone is we have four major penalties throughout the season that have led to touchdowns, and so we've got to get that fixed. That's one of my biggest emphases of this, this bye week: make sure we get everything cleaned up in the red zone. We were so good a year ago...they haven't got down there many times this year, which is a good sign, but we need to, we need to respond better in those situations than we did a week ago against Arizona, but we've got to be better."

As Poppinga noted, BYU hasn't allowed as many quality drives as last season. BYU ranks 13th in scording position drives allowed which is a major step in the right direction compared to last year. However, once teams have been in the red zone, they have had more success than they did a season ago. Excluding garbage time, BYU has allowed touchdowns on 60% of red zone drives. That ranks 39th in FBS so far this season.

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