The next two Saturdays, BYU faces two conference title contenders and the Cougars' own tenuous quest to three-peat as Mountain West champions.

Big games? At 8-2 Air Force? At 10-0 Utah? They're a pair of BYU Super Bowls.

Bronco Mendenhall's staff is aware of the script. It's the toughest seven days of the season. It is the season.

Mendenhall likes what he sees in his squad since the loss at TCU; they've gone 3-0 and averaged 42.6 points a game. "I like their mindset because they don't think they've arrived," he said.

That's exactly the team persistence AFA coach Troy Calhoun sees in his squad.

"You never stop learning, never stop hunting, never stop pecking. You have to keep your crosshairs set," Calhoun said.

The Cougars are banking that they've improved since leaving Fort Worth, where visions of an undefeated run crashed and burned.

Shaken, the comeback road has been rough. So has the truth. Since leaving Fort Worth, BYU's defense is giving up 33 points a game. But ... they're still winning by an average of nine points a game.

BYU defensive coordinator Jaime Hill can bark off the stats, they're tattooed in his brain.

The Cougar defense is giving up 28 points per game on the road but just 11 ppg at home. The Utes are undefeated and AFA is 5-0 since freshman Tim Jefferson started at QB. Since whipping Northern Iowa (8-2), the Cougars haven't beaten a team with a winning record. And it's Senior Day at the Academy on Saturday. So, once more, BYU will get an opponent's best shot.

The 8-2 Falcons have registered 60 "explosive" plays on the ground and 30 "explosive" plays through the air this season. "Those are amazing numbers," Hill said.

Beginning with the first time the two teams played in 1956, BYU won 16 out of its first 17 matchups against Air Force. The Cougars won 12 in a row from 1983-94 but have gone just 6-5 against the Falcons since the 1995 season. BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall is 3-0 all-time against Air Force, winning those games by an average of 21 points per game. The Cougars last lost a game in Falcon Stadium back in 2002.

Since Monday, dissecting AFA's option dominated Cougar practices, as the scout team broke down every aspect of what the Falcons do.

"It's different than anything we do all season," said D-line coach Steve Kaufusi. "It has our players' attention. It's got their fast-twitch muscles working."

Working through AFA's personnel groups will finish today.

"Last year, it took us until Thursday's practice before the game to get to where we'd exposed players to all the looks," Hill said.