I’ve got a feeling about Bear Bachmeier.

And I’m not the only one.

There are a whole lot of others — you could be one of them — who have the same feeling.

Some of them are extraordinarily smart football people who have reason to trust what they feel.

Maybe, at least in this corner, it’s not as much a feeling as it is an inkling, a guess, a hunch. No, it’s more than just that. It’s something landing on a wide-open county two-lane to glory between an assertion and an assumption. An informed observation. It’s not quite a certainty or a conclusion, but stronger than a mere supposition.

Dude’s about to have a big, big year.

Not a big, big year like last season.

A bigger year.

A whale of a year. A beast of a season.

Sophomore jinx be damned.

Bachmeier can sense it, too: “This is the best time of year,” he recently said. “We are really excited.”

The emphasis there was on “we,” the QB’s team.

There’s one troubling “if” hanging over the deal, a bugger of a thought, and it seems dirty to even put it into words this early, but the BYU quarterback has to dodge injury. He has to stay healthy. If he does, hold onto your shorts, folks. The Cougars’ offense led by You-Know-Who will be like a fighter who has all his tools working — hooks, jabs, crosses, uppercuts, body shots, knockouts.

Bachmeier seems able now, more able, to make sound reads, to deliver the ball on time, on target, to lead and lift his team. More on that in about 17 or so paragraphs from an individual who knew as much about the importance of those QB qualities as anyone.

Meantime, there’s this: Aaron Roderick, one of the aforementioned intelligent others, is not a man prone to tossing around lavish praise. Especially the empty kind. The BYU offensive coordinator typically plays it cool. And he’s not going throttle up with bombastic kudos aimed at his QB this time. There’s too much work yet ahead. But those of us who have known Roderick for a while now can sense from him something more in his regard for Bachmeier, for what Bachmeier might be on the edge of achieving.

“He’s sharp and he’s smart,” Roderick said the other day, as confident in what he’s been teaching his quarterback as the quarterback is in absorbing and practicing it.

Bachmeier is using both his brains and his physical capabilities to advance from what he did a year ago, impressive as it was for a kid familiar with only bits and pieces of the BYU attack, to what he’s doing now, more fully immersed in what’s all around him, on approach to his second season.

“Experience is huge,” Roderick said. Particularly for a QB who can pass and run with it.

Anybody who has watched Bachmeier captain the Cougars’ attack in fall camp has seen him peruse the field and deliver throws to the right receiver at the right time for the right reason. Typically, he hasn’t had 290-pound defensive linemen up in his grill, attempting to tear his head off en route to disrupting his rhythm, but, either way, there’s a calmness not only in his personal demeanor but also in his effect on everyone in the huddle, everyone on the team.

The profundity in that duality is remarkably valuable.

Roderick doesn’t want Bachmeier as exposed as he was last season, running like a madman at times, on some occasions more than competently, a tactic that was understandable and even called for and expected due to the fact that he was rather literally learning on the run. It’s not unusual for a quarterback who can move to lean on that skill when pressure comes and he’s not sure what else to do. If he can pick up a first down, then pick the durn thing up. If he can score, then … well, why fiddle-faddle around?

This time, he’s learning not on the run, but on the pass, how to use his arm, not his abandon.

Roderick knows that abandon is part of what makes Bachmeier what he is — a threat defenses have trouble accounting for, as long as it’s not reckless. He likes the increased sophistication he’s seeing.

Three aspects to BYU’s offense and keys to Bachmeier’s improvement are rudimentary: 1) his offensive line, the guys up front who provide protection and comfort, and grade road; 2) a ground game that includes Big 12 offensive player of the year LJ Martin, who will carry a heavy load, in addition to backups capable of giving him a break now and again; and 3) targets who get open and are dependable.

It looks as though those aspects and keys are covered.

BYU’s offensive line has talent and depth. The run game is obvious. The receivers? That’s a question being answered by size and skill, that’s what Roderick insisted. Jojo Phillips, Kyler Kasper, Walker Lyons, Roger Saleapaga, Reggie Frischknecht are tall enough to run an effective rebounding drill. Others, such as freshman Legend Glasker and returner Tiger Bachmeier, will contribute, so says the demure OC.

They’ll have to in order for Bear’s road to stay wide open.

Still, at BYU, so much of what’s good starts and finishes with a gifted quarterback. That’s the way it was for the Cougars back in the day; that’s the way it remains. In modern-day college football, you either have one or you don’t.

BYU has one.

Has one that is giving every indication that he’s ready to soar to new heights and determined to take his teammates with him.

The late-great Mike Leach once told me the quarterback might not be everything to a team, but he’s a really big thing — especially in ways that others might not immediately think about.

“Everyone always wants to ask about a quarterback,” he said. “How strong is he? How big is he? How far can he throw it? That’s backwards. What comes first is … Can he make good reads? Can he lead? Is he accurate? As a quarterback, your ultimate job is to elevate the people around you. You have your finger on the trigger. You decide what happens. … Everyone draws off what [you] do.”

Yeah, I’ve got a feeling, or whatever it is.

Bear Bachmeier’s bound to have a big, big year. A whale of a year. A beast of a season. And he just might take his team along for the ride, straight up that county two-lane.