With the first scrimmage out of the way, the picture is becoming more clear.
On Saturday, BYU football held its first scrimmage of fall camp with a family-only audience in attendance at LaVell Edwards Stadium. And it serves as the first big piece of what the Cougars will look like this fall.
“Overall, I thought we got everything we needed,” coach Kalani Sitake said. “Obviously, we had some guys banged up, but no one out for the year.”
With the Cougars being midway through Week 2 of fall camp, it’s to be expected that the quarterback race should be yielding results soon. It’s not quite there, but offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick said the scrimmage “stayed true to the pattern that we’ve been seeing up to this point in practice.”
However, Roderick said all three of the contenders showed good things on the field. Jaren Hall and Baylor Romney not only look like veterans, but they run the offense efficiently. And Jacob Conover is still making some young mistakes, but shows glimpses of promise — and even reminds Roderick of a young Zach Wilson.
“The quarterback picture is becoming more clear,” Roderick said. “I’m not quite ready to say what it is yet — I need to watch this film — but things are starting to become more clear each day.”
It seems the quarterback battle is the last big, remaining battle left for the offense as Roderick said 95% of the offense is in.
The two-deep depth chart may still change a little, but is “right on track,” Roderick said.
As far as who surprised Roderick or may serve as a surprise for fans once the season starts, the offensive coordinator was quick to call out Miles Davis.
The freshman running back played in four games during the 2020 season, rushing for 96 yards and two touchdowns on 15 carries. The Las Vegas native also added 43 receiving yards on four catches.
Roderick made one thing clear on Saturday: Davis is a good player and he will play this fall.
“That guy stands out,” Roderick said. “Every time he plays, he does something good. Same thing happened last year as a freshman, he’d get in games and he was playing a different speed than everybody else.”
Roderick went on to call out the top three tight ends — Dallin Holker, Isaac Rex and Masen Wake — as guys who are playing really well and provide a lot of flexibility to the offense.
But who won the scrimmage — offense or defense? Coaches didn’t give a clear answer because it’s not that easy of a question.
Assistant head coach Ed Lamb said the defensive players went away feeling like they kept the offense off the scoreboard. The defense had the upper hand, but the offense has big tools in tackle-breaking running backs Tyler Allgeier and Lopini Katoa — and those weren’t used.
While the scrimmage was mostly live, there were no tackles made on Allgeier, Katoa or the quarterbacks. Sitake had previously said that the quarterbacks weren’t going to be hit during fall camp.
Because the Cougars don’t run a triple option, Sitake said there was no need to go fully live just yet.
However, considering BYU lost an NFL-caliber quarterback in Zach Wilson, Sitake said the drop off from last season hasn’t been too severe.
“I saw some good things from defense and I saw some really good things from offense, and away we go,” Sitake said. “This is just a really good opportunity for us to learn and get better.”
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