But considering the obvious strengths inherent with both sides of the football entering this year’s campaign, it stands to reason why Cougar coaches seem to be a bit more upbeat than otherwise.

Take BYU offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick, as the most recent example. Of all the coaches on staff, Roderick isn’t one of the top coaches anyone would pinpoint as a ‘hype guy’ and certainly not someone prone to hyperbole. All that considered, Roderick spoke forthright and enthusiastically regarding his offense to the media following Monday’s practice session while pointing out some rather obvious factors that should make fans optimistic.

“The biggest strength of our whole offense right now is just a lot of guys that have played a lot of snaps in in big games and uh guys that know what they’re doing,” Roderick said. “We’re just we’re farther along than we’ve ever been as terms of knowing the offense.”

That strength was made apparent during Monday’s open session. The session opened with tight end Walker Lyons catching a pass over the middle, which was followed up by Legend Glasker making a great over-the-shoulder grab versus top cornerback Evan Johnson. Roger Saleapaga was out there, too, making his share of impressive grabs while coaches continued to praise the work they’ve seen from Oregon transfer receiver Kyler Kasper.

But what a second, all of those offensive guys listed above are brand new.

Sure, they’re new at key positions, although the battery, namely the quarterback, top running back and most of the offensive line are all returning from a season ago.

“It always starts with the line,” Roderick affirmed. “You know, those guys are they have a lot of information to process every play, and um so those veteran guys are really critical to our success.”

With the battery mostly intact from last season, the goal now is to continue the practice successes shown on Monday with every session leading up to BYU’s first game of the season versus Utah Tech.

“We’re only five practices in (and) we need to keep keep developing that chemistry,” Roderick said. “It takes time. It’s just every single rep adds up, you know, and you want to when you get to the games, you want it to be the thousandth time that they’ve thrown this ball in this situation. When you’re calling that play on third down,  hopefully you’ve banked a thousand reps at it, and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish out here, and we’re we’re making progress.”

A lot of the progress being made is at the tight end position where both Lyons and Saleapaga have taken the lead almost immediately following their transfers from USC and Oregon, respectively.

“This this the best tight end group we’ve had since I’ve been here as a group,” Roderick said. “Ryner and Walker are two of our best players, and they will play in the game together a lot. Those guys are a big part of what we’re doing.”

Another aspect that’s helping BYU’s offensive progression is having smart kids, at least according to Roderick, who pointed out quarterback Bear Bachmeier’s intelligence when asked about the sophomore signal-caller’s progression.

“He’s a really smart kid,” he said. “On most every play, he has multiple options to get us into the best play possible. We give him parameters, but he’s a smart dude, and and he has smart players around him, too. That’s one of our strengths here is we have smart kids.”

In conclusion, the offensive progress is on point through five days of fall practices, and although there’s still a ways to go, fans can expect an offense that should be an improved overall product from that of last season with abilities to win out in different situations.

“We want to be the type of offense that can win any type of game, any way we have to win it,” Roderick concluded. “If we have to run the ball and grind it out in bad weather or something like that, we feel like we can do that. If we need to come from behind and throw the ball around, we feel like we can do that, too. We want to be a balanced team, but I think what people are going to enjoy seeing is just that we’re going to be a really tough, hard-nosed team that’s going to play really, really hard and play with a lot of energy and a lot of passion.”