BYU football using spring camp to evolve strategies
-
- BYU senior quarterback Jake Retzlaff throws a pass during a spring camp practice at the indoor practice facility in Provo on Saturday, March 15, 2025.
-
- BYU defensive coordinator Jay Hill directs his team during a spring camp practice at the indoor practice facility in Provo on Saturday, March 15, 2025.
-
- BYU senior quarterback Jake Retzlaff smiles after a good play during a spring camp practice at the indoor practice facility in Provo on Saturday, March 15, 2025.
-
- BYU tight end Carsen Ryan runs up field during a spring camp practice at the indoor practice facility in Provo on Saturday, March 15, 2025.
It’s easy to be an armchair quarterback and second guess the decisions made by the players and coaches of your favorite college football team.
But how much context do you have?
Probably not as much as the players and coaches do.
Those guys spend countless hours not just looking for how to matchup against opponents but also to attempt to catch their own tendencies.
“We watched the whole season from last year and the whole season is cut up,” BYU offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick said after practice on Saturday. “You watch all your third downs — short, medium, long — and you watch all your red zone high and low, and you watch all your run and pass concepts. You get a different perspective when you look back on the season and when you watch things that way.”
The goal is to identify things that work and things that need to change.
“Often times patterns emerge,” Roderick said. “Sometimes you realize that maybe you did something a little too much or maybe should’ve done something a little bit more.”
He also noted that sometimes that deep dive helps individual player performances stand out and pointed to Cougar wide receiver Keelan Marion as an example.
“Sometimes you notice certain players, like wow, that guy really played well for us last year,” Roderick said. “When we watched cutups, he really showed up. He made a lot of contested catches last year. I think most fans think of him as a kickoff returner and a guy who is exciting running with the ball, but he made a lot of really good catches for us in tight space.”
Roderick explained that all of that research is then applied into deciding how to move forward as a unit for the upcoming season.
“You try to make tweaks to your offense to get the ball to your best players,” Roderick said. “You also have to always have just enough new stuff that your opponents have seen before to stay ahead of the good defenses we play in this conference.
“But you still want to have a core identity. The core identity of our offense is going to stay the same but I think we have enough new wrinkles that we will have surprises for people.”
And while a big part of spring is working on technique and fundamentals, Roderick said there simply isn’t enough practice time in fall camp and during the season to really get those adjustments down.
That means March is a crucial time for implementing the tweaks and wrinkles that make a team better when fall rolls around.
“If you want to get good at something new, if you don’t start doing it in spring it’s hard to be good at it by fall,” Roderick said. “You get 15 practices in spring and 29 in the fall, and then you have 12 weeks of three practices a week during the season. So your practice season is more than halfway over before you play your first game. If you aren’t working on things in spring, it’s tough to put in anything new midseason because you are only going to get a few reps at it. Now is the time, for sure.”
That goes for both the offense and the defense, according to Cougar defensive coordinator Jay Hill.
Hill pointed out that there are a lot of things that impact how a defense needs to adapt, both before and during a season.
“The defense is always changing,” Hill said. “It changes based on personnel and opponent. Do I feel like we can stop the run with base personnel or do we add one to the box or do we try to slant and move a little bit? It’s always changing.”
He singled out the defensive line as an example and how having certain types of athletes in the trenches requires different approaches.
“Last year we didn’t really have a 300-pounder who was playing for us, so we were doing more slants and stunts to eat up gaps and try to keep offenses on their toes about where we were going to be,” Hill said. “And it worked. This year is a little different. We added some guys and subtracted some guys, so the scheme is ever evolving.”
Like Roderick, Hill does believe blowing things up every year is the best approach but he doesn’t want to get stagnant either. He said his football career has provided a lot of ideas about different options he has.
“I don’t think the scheme changes drastically but what we need to do to be successful does change,” Hill said. “I’ve got basically a 25-year playbook that we can draw from to try to get guys in the best positions possible to be successful.”
BYU senior quarterback Jake Retzlaff gave a player’s point of view and grinned as he talked about how these nuances are things he enjoys.
“It’s the game within the game,” Retzlaff said. “When it comes to self-scouting, tendencies are a big thing. We are doing everything we can to break those tendencies, everything to run a play off of a play. It’s super-fun. The ins and outs, the Xs and Os, those are the things I love about football. It’s awesome to see it unfold from both sides of the ball.”
He added that when those get implemented during practice, it can be intriguing to see how they play out.
“We get surprised by our defense. They do some really creative stuff,” Retzlaff said. “Offensively when we get something working like that, it’s super, super fun.”
