Tuiaki probably shouldn’t be that high, but he’s better than most BYU fans give him credit for. He suffers from the same issue that affected Pau Gasol during his Laker’s career. Nobody wanted to put any blame on Kobe, so whenever something went bad it kind of defaulted to blaming Pau.
For example, BYU scored 3 second-half points on 6 drives against CCU, but a fair number over there on CougarBoard continue to insist that Tuiaki and the defense were to blame for the loss. Not the fact that over a large portion of the second half, the BYU offense ran 28 plays for 32 total yards. If the offense can’t stay on the field, of course you lose the Time of Possession battle, but that requires admitting that either Zach Wilson didn’t play well or that CCU was stifling and outplaying BYU (or both). So it’s just easier to blame it on poor coaching decisions by the defensive coordinator and imagine it’s easily changed and not reflective of any underlying reality – hence why Tuiaki gets more than his fair share of vitriol