If you are the University of Hawaii football team, you don’t just replace John Ursua at slotback.
What you can do, however, is maximize the talents and speed of Cedric Byrd II.
And, the Rainbow Warriors sure got plenty in Saturday night’s 45-38 season-opening victory over Arizona.
Byrd caught 14 passes for 224 yards and four touchdowns, the most productive game by a Football Bowl Subdivision player in a season opener in 20 years.
There might still be Wildcats out there futilely giving chase.
“He (Byrd) is fast, I mean really fast,” Wildcats coach Kevin Sumlin marveled after the nationally televised game. “He got deep on us more than a couple times. He’s got great quickness and is hard to tackle. He’s a good player.”
The Warriors thought so, too, and their opinion was confirmed as soon as he arrived on campus last spring as a transfer from Long Beach (Calif.) City College. Byrd was the eye-opener of spring practice and did not disappoint in a junior season in which he was second on the team in receptions (79), yards (970) and touchdowns (nine) to Ursua, whose numbers were 89 catches, 1,343 yards and an NCAA-leading 16 touchdowns.
With Ursua’s junior year departure for the Seattle Seahawks, who made him a seventh-round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft, UH coaches tasked Byrd, a preseason All-Mountain West Conference selection, with elevating his game on a couple of levels.
They sought what head coach Nick Rolovich termed “more extroverted leadership.” And, they asked him to build on 2018 by just turning on the after-burners when he made a catch and bolting upfield.
In Rolovich’s lexicon, they commanded Byrd to “puncture” the defense after getting his hands on the ball. “We saw some plays last year where he was hesitating (after the catch), squaring up on guys trying too hard to make them miss,” Rolovich said. “No offense to JC football, but when you go up a level, this isn’t flag football. You go for it … the first down or the end zone.”
Offensive coordinator Brian Smith said, “When you square up on and try to make a move on defenders you give the defense time to converge on you. We just want (the UH receivers) to catch it and then, either hit the rail on the sideline or, if it is something he has to stop and catch, then, not set his feet and ‘puncture’ upfield. Really, it has been an emphasis with all of (the receivers).”
In Byrd’s case it paid off with 10 of his 14 catches going for either first downs or touchdowns.
“All of (the receivers), especially Jared (Smart), did a good job of getting up field vertically in this one,” Smith said.
Pro Football Focus graded Byrd out at “81%” for the game.
Former Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush, watching on TV, shared his enjoyment on the Warriors victory, tweeting, “Cedric Byrd II (#6 Hawaii) went off, too, 14 catches, 224 yards, and 4 TD’s sheeeesh!”
Sumlin said, “They exploited us when we got into some man-to-man (defenses) and got into the deep gap and (then) just ran by us.”
The problem with relying on a man-to-man defense, the Wildcats learned the hard way Saturday night, was they had nobody who could soar with Byrd.