Spring Football in Full Swing…
22 March 2009
Quinn Gooch
45 Comments
I’ve been to a couple spring practices and I have formed a few opinions about how the team is looking, but first I would like to thank Mike for all the hard work he put in this basketball season. I understand how much time it takes to write for the blog. Thanks Mike, you did a bang up job! Enjoy the off season.
To those football fanatics -spring is in full swing- pads are being popped, angers are flaring, fights are breaking out. In short, it’s great. Posts won’t be as frequent, but they’ll be worth a few minutes of your time. Just check over your shoulder and make sure the boss is behind closed doors. We don’t want anyone losing their job in this recession.
Dear Quinn and/or Markell;
I read that there was some fisty cuffs at the scrimmage last fri. Someone tackled a little too briskly for a few recievers. I have to chuckle a little at that, it says to me that the players are longing for some contact, and decidedly tired of lifting and running etc. I understand that no one wants ti get a key player hurt, but this football, right? This isn’t intramurals, THIS IS DIVISION ONE FOOTBALL.
I’m interested to know what a typical fight sounds like at a BYU practice. Do they use real 4 lettered words or is it mostly Mormon cursing like “What the freak!”, “I’m gonna kick your ace!”, “Aw dangit!”?
I’m wondering what role Coach Mendenhall plays in these practices. Does he get in and work with the players (I’d imagine the position coach does that) or does he just mostly observe, kind of like what Lavell did?
Also, does he really ever get after it? I mean, he seems to just run around with his whistle but does he ever yell, cuss, and/or scream at any players to try to get them going or to get his point across? In one of the games last year there was a shot of him talking on the headset and he seemed fairly upset and swearing at whomever he was talking to. Does that sound correct or how does he communicate and motivate?
I enjoyed it, the fans on this site are great and very knowledgeable. Hopefully this next year brings some great things for BYU sports. Both football and bball have good pieces. They’ve done really good things and next on the list is to do something amazing, BCS or sweet 16…..go cougs
Quinn & Markell-
I have a few general questions that I hope you would answer before you get into specifics:
1. It seems to me that whatever LB position it is that Kehl & Nixon have played, a good percentage of the time they (the most athletic on the field…I think) have been split out wide covering a flanker and thus are not in run support and have not been the leading tacklers; if I were an OC I would put someone out there by design to occupy them because they end up playing like a 5th DB; why do we use this position like this as opposed to putting our best/fastest LB where they can make more plays like the LB from UNLV was used?
2. Last year Jorgensen said that Tialavea (SP?) was the best athlete on the field sometimes and would be a key to the defense; what happened to him? He neither had very many tackles or sacks.
3. Jan said that they are going back to a more basic defense; what happened and why did Coach Hill make it more complicated?
4. Are we going to be any faster on defense this year?
5. How do you think are OL will do being slightly smaller and hopefully quicker?
Thanks
Hall needs to see the whole field and check off his receivers.
Hall Needs to see the whole field and check off his receivers!
Hall Needs to see the whole field and check off his receivers!
Hall Needs to see the whole field and check off his receivers!
Hall Needs to see the whole field and check off his receivers!
Hall Needs to see the whole field and check off his receivers!
Need I say more?????
GCW-
I’m not sure if we will ever know or should know where the blame lay for losing 3 out of the last 7 games but speaking as a fan and outsider in terms of the team, I am fairly confident that Hall was not solely responsible for it but it should be spread around to the whole team including coaches. It’s interesting that for the first 6 games we all thought they were a national title contender. It is also clear that they went to to Las Vegas in a similar state of mind as Oregon did when they played us in 06…totally unhappy to be there.
I want to add my thanks to Mike. I didn’t chime in much but I really enjoyed his insights and the comments they generated. I think if we’d known before the season that the BBall team would do this well we’d have been surprised.
Who amongst the True Blue Cougar fans remember this time 25 years ago, the silver anniversary, in the spring after Steve Young, Gordon Hudson and some others in key positions including the OL had graduated and we wondered how the new team in 84 would do…we just wonder if there could be a correlation?
I remember going to the grocery store in August 1984 and reading the college football preview – the thing I most remember about it was how it said that it was going to be a rebuilding year for BYU.
I’m excited for Fall camp. That will be a big deal. I’m not very excited for Spring Ball. No junior college transfers. No incoming freshman. A ton of injuries (apparently football players can’t practice with a broken finger now). And NO SPRING FOOTBALL GAME. Which seems like a typical anti-fan move by Bronco.
Oh well, I still bought season tickets yesterday. Just wish it was Fall already.
GO COUGARS!
Walt–
There are many other problems beside Hall not seeing the field, which by the way is one of his greatest weaknesses…and needs to be corrected. As I watched games, it was clear 80% of the time, where the ball was going, and if I, as a novice could tell, I’m certain other defenses could tell also.
I might add, the “National Contender” statement was wishful thinking by many fans that were not grounded in reality. There were many weaknesses of that team that were abundantly clear from the beginning of the season. Anyway, your points are well taken, and I enjoyed reading them. The team does not seem to play as a team or with real heart of champions. They expect something to be given to them…the “ill” of our society as a whole it seems.
The overal inexperience of our coaches is one area that jumps out at me. Bronco is still relatively new to the scene. Anae did not come to BYU with a wealth of background as an Offensive Coordinator and hopefully will learn, but there is no guarentee that he will ever be a wizard at OC.
Bronco’s theories and directions are all great, but translating all of it to X’s and O’s is still not perfected. Letting go of being the D. Coordinator would be a start, and becoming a serious student of the great head coaches of the game would be a wonderful direction to head. And I’d like to see them find a young brilliant Defensive mind to bring into the fold.
I’m not sure it is a matter of seeing the whole field. I think it is handling pressure. We didn’t get much defensive pressure on Max the first half of the year but when TCU and Utah brought the pressure Max struggled.
I think when he has time he is great and makes good decisions and good throws. If there is pressure and he has to hurry is when he crumbles. Poor decisions, poor throws and/or fumbles.
That is something I hope he is working on. The ability to make quicker decisions and stay composed when the heat is on. Other teams are going to pressure Max now that they know he doesn’t hold up to it well.
Having said that I like what Max is saying to start this year out and how he has apparently worked hard since last year was over.
As for the headset tantrum Bronco supposedly threw last year – I have seen that clip over and over and no one can conclude he was swearing. I’m not saying he wasn’t but no one can say he was. He was upset, that you can say for sure.
The decision to cancel the Spring game was not an anti-fan movie by Bronco. They had nowhere to play the thing because the stadium is the middle of a turf renovaton. If Bronco is ant-fan, he wouldn’t be doing his coach show on TV or holding firesides when the team is on the road.
I am just glad I can start reading blogs about BYU football agian !!!!!!
Welcome back Quinn & Markell!!!!!!!!
Question, is it possible to watch the team practice at any time?
I was at the scrimmage observing the officiating, it was a pretty good fight! 6-7 guys were really mixing it up, throwing punches and the like. In a game there would have been several ejections. In addition, Bronco jumped right in the middle to break it up. He was all fired up to the point he went a little J. Golden on the guys. While he stayed away from the “big mother” of all swear words, he was definetly let them have some of the others. Good to see him get fired up! Here’s to no more on-the-field firesides!
Bronco wanted to hold the game at the RSL stadium, but they were going to charge the team a couple thousand and then charge the fans for parking and an arm and a leg to watch the game. He didn’t like it so he said no to them and many other places who wanted to do the same. He didn’t want to hold the game at any random place where the players could get injured (from a bad field), or the fans couldn’t be accomodated. Could you imagine 16k people going to a high school stadium? No worries guys, he’s got the players and the fans in his best intentions.
Actually, BYU has an amazing soccer stadium now, with enough bleachers to accomodate the fans for a spring game just South of the Field House, and they refused to go there…so the fans were not important enough to bend just a bit! You know, the people who show up and fill the stadium and pay the costs of the team…you know…the fan…
I’m pretty sure that the people who do the heavy lifting when it comes to paying for the costs of the team are the boosters. Ticket sales and concessions help, but the real dough comes from boosters.
And I don’t know this, but I suspect it isn’t as simple as Bronco saying he wants to use the soccer field. It’s not marked for football, scheduling is never that simple, and the soccer folks probably aren’t too anxious to have it torn up by playing a football game on it.
Point being is that Bronco probably deserves some slack on this one.
From the news articles and past few years watching Coach operate, I also wonder if he is not worried about injury. It seems that many years we see a key player suffer injury in the Spring game.
We need contact at some point, but I absolutely hate hearing about the season-ended injury in the Spring game – before the “season” even started! Of course, people will be ranting about how we “needed” this Spring Game after we lose to OU, but let’s be honest up front – Spring Game cancelled isn’t going to decide the outcome with OU!
This year we are thin at multiple areas, especially as we build up the O-line and backfield. Secondary has been hit the hardest by injury over the past few years and this year we aren’t looking that deep, either.
I agree with Mars – more excited for fall when we no for sure if Manase is back and we see some JUCO transfers and RMs get back.
As a soccer player in high school, I absolutely HATED it when the football team used our pitch, or when we had to play on the dreaded hump of a piece of grass called a football field…
I would rather the team start making preparations for OU than worry about doing a script for the fans.
BTW has Bronco done anything against his statement to hold traditions as one of the pillars of the program?
Make preparations…. they will definitely need it.
So, they don’t hit hard in spring, then they hit hard in fall, and get injuries just before the opening game. I say you hit hard all the time, and you never give 80%, because THAT is when a player gets hurt in practice.
Last year, our team hit like pansies. Nobody is scared of getting hit by BYU anymore. Quit being scared of what MIGHT happen, and MAKE good things happen.
If you don’t play hard all the time, then you don’t play in the game. Injury will come to somebody starting, no matter what. Better to come when they are doing their best.
PS…I promise you, OU is not playing patty-cake in their preparations!
I can’t believe that anyone would say that Bronco is anti-fan. Bronco has done more to bring BYU football, on a personal level, to more fans than any coach that I have ever been aware of. What about the firesides, Thursday’s Heroes, the coaches shows, and simply responding to emails? Those were just to name a few things. No offense, but such statements about Bronco being anti-fan don’t jive with me.
The way I see it, Bronco will always to everything, first and foremost, that is best for the team as it represents BYU and the LDS church. He also is willing to change and experiment with the process. As a fan, I don’t mind that at all. I am willing to sacrifice the spring game to give Bronco the benefit of the doubt.
Srring football is an enigma for me. The phrase, “it determines starters for Fall practice” simply isn’t true. To many times I have seen new players come into Fall practice and completely take a position over, shoving older players into second and third team status. I see more skill set improvement, during late afternoon summer drills then is shown in Spring Practice. Spring just shows players what they need to work on if they plan on playing, and for that reason, its a good plan. The fact the coaches will spend the last week of Spring practicing agains OU is good. I’ll miss not being able to watch a Spring game, it was always fun meeting with other practice spys, and we never really watch the game anyway,– always comparing notes!
I know the coaches are trying hard to manage the injuries. I would suspect they have the experience to make the right decisions.
I remember last year we were doing less in practice so that we hopefully would be more physical in games and the first part of the year that seemed to work. The UCLA game and others we were certainly the more physical team. As the year went on that seemed to subside.
I guess my question is did it subside because injuries started mounting up? Scott Johnson was one of the big hitters and his comments that he was playing hurt the 2nd half of the year made me wonder how many others were too. I suspect it’s hard to hit when you are nursing injuries.
Bronco is certainly not anti-fan. I have followed BYU football since the 70’s and I can easily say Bronco’s teams have been the easiest and most satisfying to be a fan of. Don’t get me wrong I loved Lavell but Bronco just seems to have the right perspective about what the football team should do and stand for.
There are some fans that choose not to be good fans. I think this really grates on Bronco. He is very “team” oriented and believes that everyone should put aside personal agendas and support the team 100%.
Of course you are never going to get all the fans to buy into that concept and what Bronco needs to do is understand this and let it go. Then again maybe he understands that the same “team” principle that has helped him succeed as a coach would also help the program get to the next level if everyone else outside of the team did the same thing.
Beating OU would be a great start – I agree with Jeffrey let’s prepare for them and skip the scrimmage.
Everyone needs to remember how much they complained about lack of preparation for big opponents – to much of trying to treat every opponent the same. When we learned that TCU started to prepare for us after the loss the previous year I heard a lot of folks ask why we didn’t do that.
This issue about the Spring game is ridiculous. Sure it is fun to take the kids to the game, but many of the starters sit out anyway. In my mind it basically takes away from practice time. Why not allow the coaches all the time they can to spend with players in coaching postion mastery and skills. When Sept 5th rolls around, I don’t think any of us care about what happened in the Spring game.
As for Bronco not being fan friendly. What a joke. That also is ridiculous. If anybody has had any contact with Bronco or the chance to attend the firesides or anything else, you know what a genuine guy he is. I think one of the posters said it earlier on this site, that Bronco has done more to bring BYU football close the fans than any other coach. I totally agree and would go one step further…win or lose, Bronco is the guy you want to lead your program.
See y’all in Dallas Sept 5th!
It’s finally here: the 2009 BYU football schedule in all its glory.
Sept 5: BYU vs Oklahoma (neutral site, time TBD; ESPN or ABC)
Sept 12: BYU at Tulane (ESPN2 – only MWC team to get ESPN coverage so far)
Sept 19: Florida State at BYU (Versus/HD)
Sept 26: Colorad State at BYU (mtn.)
Oct 2: Utah State at BYU (mtn.)
Oct 10: BYU at UNLV (mtn.)
Oct 17: BYU at SDSU (mtn.)
Oct 24: TCU at BYU (Versus/HD)
Nov 7: BYU at Wyoming (mtn.)
Nov 14: BYU at New Mexico (mtn.)
Nov 21: Air Force at BYU (CBS College Sports/HD)
NOV 28: UTAH at BYU (CBS College Sports/HD & mtn./HD)
Rise and shout! The Cougars are out!
The schedule looks good. I just wish the Mtn would get with the program and put all their games out in HD. On the other hand, I’d rather not lose to Utah again in HD. I can only stomach Whittingham’s cocky grin in 1080p for so long.
NEIL –
Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I spent the week moving into a new home.
To your point about the fights. A fight is a fight. I don’t care who you are or where you come from. If you are pissed enough to get into a fight your emotions are hot and you act like you normally would not. About the word choice…there usually are not many words said. Fights usually start with something like, “Quit holding me (while simultaneously throwing a punch)”
After that all energy is spent on fighting and not talking.
AttuAK –
Coach Mendenhall is a very intimidating figure on the practice field and in the meetings. While he does not interact with the Offense much he is definitely in the mix on ST and Defense during practice yelling and getting after guys.
Does he swear? No. He has one word he likes to use. It is considered by some to be a swear word, but not by all. and he uses it maybe 3 or 4 times a year, depending on how mad we make him. But he doesn’t need to swear to command attention.
Walt –
1. Outside LB’s will never be leading tacklers because they are just not in on any play that goes away. The leading tackler in our defense will ALWAYS be the SMLB aka “Mike.” The D is designed to funnel everything for him. My job a lot of the time was take on things to free up Cameron or Kelly. We have had two outstanding MLBs in Poppinga and Jensen. As awesome as Bryan and Dave are they could not have played inside. It is just too different. Their strength is speed, quickness and evading. Inside you have to just plug things up sometimes, you can’t go around with speed.
Also Bryan and Dave were invaluable in there ability to pass rush off the edge. Something they could not do inside.
Walt –
2. Tialavea. Sometimes it just takes guys a little to get back from serious knee surgery. Russell is one of the most athletic people I have met. He will only get better and better. It is just really hard to come back from an injury like his and be awesome again right away. It takes time for your body to respond the way it used to.
3. Complicated D. We need to have a MORE complicated D. The guys are just going to have to figure it out. With a vanilla D teams can scheme you too easily. Our D scheme is moving in the right direction and I think Coach Hill and COach Mendenhall will continue to add things to it.
Walt –
4. OL. I have thought that this years OL would be great and from what I hear they are not going to disappoint. People forget that Brown and WIlling started before their missions so really 3 of 5 are coming back. That is really what the norm is for an OL. You have 3 vets and 2 new comers. I have heard nothing but good things about Speredon and Alleto since spring started. I expect this group to be a great unit.
Its too early to really tell but does anybody have any idea how pendleton is progressing? He sounds like a stud athlete so I hope he can get that position down.
Markell-
Your, Quinn & other former players’ who are invited guests to this blog are just really invaluable and give us glimpse into the game that we have never had before! Each of us (especially me), the fans, means well…but we are just amateurs and know very little about the game. Thanks for putting up with us and please forgive us for the way we act sometimes. Who knows, maybe this is the team…one year removed?
Bronco the “anti-fan” give me a break! I grew up at LES and never got to slap five with the players after the game. My kids are spoiled rotten with the access they have to the players because of what Bronco has done.
What ails us? Predictability. Like Markell said, we need to make it MORE difficult for teams to scheme against us. TCU and Utah took extra time to prepare for the Y and look what they did with that time. Keep them guessing. I know the Utah coaches were a little nervous about how Harvey was running all over them and they were discussing a switch in their scheme to put more guys on the line to stop the run and leave their DB’s in man. Imagine what would have happened had Hall been throwing into man coverage, would those picks have happened and changed the game? Instead, the Utah coaches decided that BYU would not stick with the run, and sure enough, BYU dropped the run like a bad habit and that’s when the game turned.
I like Anae, I think he knows football, and especially the role of the offensive line. I just wonder where he was a coach that was hired before Bronco was, and kind of forced onto Bronco, if he’s “Bronco’s guy.”
Where’s Ty Detmer? I know he’s enjoying retirement, but I’ll chip in part of my annual salary to pay his as the Offensive Coordinator!!!
I believe Anae was the OL coach at Texas Tech before he came to BYU.
Coach Anae was O-Line coach at Texas Tech for 2000-04, O-Line and running game at UNLV for 1997-98, O-Line for Boise St 1996. He was at Ricks and a BYU grad assistant before that. Anae was also on the O-Line for the 1984 Championship team.
I’m not always into Dick Harmon but I loved this quote today:
“But one thing is certain, if BYU’s offense trots out the same predictable attack, good defensive coaches will simply checkmate most of it, sending defenders to the right spots and no amount of “perfect execution” will counter that.”
(See: http://deseretnews.com/article/705294182/BYUs-rough-finish-is-needed-wake-up-call.html)
He was not forced onto Bronco. Coach Mendenhall went and got him to try and rejuvenate a less than fearful offense. At the time (as is still the case) Texas Tech was one of the most daunting offensive systems in NCAAFB. The only problem is that the real TT OC, I think, runs a more complicated offense which keeps Defenses on their heels.
It is so easy to defend AFA because they have 5 plays. We are becoming too much like that. Even with superstars, it is just too easy to defend.
Interesting insight Markell, I was under the impression that Coach Anae was brought on board right before Bronco was made the head man. So thanks for the correction. Bottom line is getting a play caller to keep the D guessing. Has anyone heard any talk about Ty Detmer connected with BYU coaching in the future? I know it’s probably just in my dreams, but he’s one of the brightest (offensive) football minds around!
Quinn, Markell & Staff-
Would you please share with us in any format you would like about what happens when the team goes underground from the end of spring practice to the start of fall camp:
1. Is Coach Omer the only one who can have contact with the players?
2. Where do they practice and can the coaches peer out the window and watch them
3. What contact can the other coaches have?
4. How do they decide what to do?
5. How are the position captains chosen and are they the same as the captains during the season?
6. Is there any positioning going on for positions, etc.
7. How do the coaches get progress reports?
8. When and how do the players who do players fit in who were not at spring practice?
There are many other questions but I think you could embellish on these and keep us fed for most of the next 3.5 months.
Thanks
Quinn & Markell-
Is this a good idea or not?
Leave your response!
Categories
Good Info.
Archives
Meta
Tags
Most Commented