I love this new coaching staff

Football
1

What a thrill it is each day to learn whom the coaches have recruited including but not limited to the four 4 star players.

How refreshing it is to hear our new coach say how grateful he is to have these highly sought after athletes that come to BYU to help us make the team better.

It is so refreshing to NOT hear a HC tell the athlete that it is he that should be grateful to come to BYU.

Yes I am extremely grateful to have a new HC that is not arrogant and one that does not set himself up as the perfect example for all the season coaches in our Nation to follow regarding what is or is not moral in football, explaining that football is just a game that is not all that important.

I am so happy to hear about all the teaching going on the field during practice instead of the latest silly slogan.

I love the work ethic of each and everyone of our new coaches and I am extremely grateful for the opportunity that the University of Virginia gave to us to have this new group of coaches.

I would like to take this moment to thank UV and wish them well.

2

Thank you UVA!

Bronco did a lot of good but not all good. He left the team in reasonable shape. The foundation seems better to me. However, he hit his ceiling at BYU and did not adapt to achieve his self stated goals. Kept trying to do the same old thing better…definition of crazy, right? Keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Very happy with the new group of coaches. Let’s see how the Honeymoon goes. I expect there will be some disappointments but I also expect adaptability, change, and improvement.

1 Like
3

I agree with most of what you are saying except for this. Morality is always important on or off the field. And, everyone connected with the team sees football as being important to the players, coaches, cheerleaders, announcers etc and etc…Many work and receive incomes to take care of their families. Players hope to have help paying for their education in return for their work and examples on and off the field. And, to introduce people to the Church. It’s easy to talk about the Cougar teams and then about the Church. And, that’s for the fans. Also, for the fans, sports often is a release from the worlds problems. And on and on and on.
Yes, it’s just a game…

4

I’m not sure what this thread is about…

Is it about how happy you are with the new coaching staff or is it about unhappy you are with the previous staff? Is it an opportunity to praise a new coaching staff that we know very little about or is it an opportunity to, once again, denigrate and criticize a staff that is no longer at BYU?

I am hopeful that this new staff will be successful, both in developing players and young men as well as winning football games. Do I feel the need to find fault with everything the previous coaches did or did not do? No… not really. I’m not sure what purpose it serves.

People are strange…

5

grasshopper,

I agree with all that you said regarding morality. My reference to the morality speeches from Bronco was when he lectured to all the season coaches of the nation, that football was just a game and not all that important. We should never run up the score. These are just kids. It isn’t moral. The next game, UCLA comes to Provo, a very proud P5 conference team from the Pac 10 and we beat them 59-0. Later we beat FCS teams 70-0.

I am in favor of playing your best at all times. When the opportunity comes to play back ups, they should play their best at all times. I am not opposed to playing your best at all times. I am grateful for the 59-0 scores. I am grateful for the 70-0 scores if indeed we absolutely have to schedule teams that would allow that kind of a score.

What I do not approve of us lecturing to seasoned coaches about anything, but especially when we set ourselves up as the leader for all to follow and than do the opposite when the opportunity arises.

It is better to say nothing than to say something that you wish you had not said.

6

Jim,
I agree with you. My main intent is to express my gratitude for the new staff that we have. In doing so, I find it difficult not to compare. When comparing, the two staffs, I find everything I read about now, regarding the new staff as extremely positive and in most of what I read, it is the opposite of the old staff.

As far as not knowing about our new staff, I know that our HC signed four new 4 star players along with many 3 star players. I know that Bronco sighed 24 players that are all three star players.

I know that Bronco has in the past favored 3 star players and less and has developed them to their fullest, while sitting 4 start players on the bench and failed at developing his two 5 star players to their highest potential and when they transferred out, the did so as damaged goods that could not make it anywhere.

I know that the new coach tells his four star players that he was grateful to them for coming to the Y to help us develop into a more powerful team. The old coach told the 4-5 star players that it was they that should be grateful to be able to play at BYU and not the other way around.

I like the way the new coaching staff trains the best 11 players to play different positions so that we can have the best 11 players on the field as much as possible at all times and at the same time, strengthen the depth .

I like the daily updates on what changes are being made and what systems are being used and what skills are being taught. The old coach kept us informed on the newest slogans, and what was going on in the community and fireside chats,

I know that this HC is much better at recruiting. I know that this OC is a hall of fame QB an a Heisman Trophy Winner and helped to coach Brett Farve and others in the NFL while spending 14 years in the NFL. I know that he coached a high school team that he took over as losers and made winners out of them. I know he had a brother, Coy that was a great in the NFL. I know that he came from a football family that ate, drank, slept, and talked football from birth to present and had a dad that was a great high school coach. I know that he is so highly regarded by our HC that he not only is the OC but also is the QB coach and directs the whole Offense.

I know that our Wide Receiver coach is also a hall of fame Wide Receiver and played in the Canadian League for 14 years and was probably the best Wide Receiver in Canada’s history. I know that he was one of the best Wide Receivers to every play for BYU. I know that he did a great job coaching at BYU before Bronco fired him. Perhaps he was too good.

I know that Bronco was a good defense coordinator even as a head coach. I know that we now have a good defense coordinator also.

I know that Bronco puts football at # 5 or 6 somewhere just below fireside chats as being important to hm. I know that football is the most important thing that these new coaches do while coaching.

We can discuss semantics here but not necessary as we all know what I am talking About and we can all give each other credit without being told the importance of God, Church, family education, world peace and humanity).

I love the difference and I love the direction that our new coaches are taking us. I find it difficult to appreciate all the changes without making comparisons My intent is to be grateful for the new direction. My intent is not to bad mouth the outgoing coaches, but when the appreciation is mostly for the positive changes, I find it difficult to sound posiitve for those outgoing coaches. Sorry. There is no intent to offend.

7

While I didn’t agree with their decisions and coaching style or play calling all the time, I KNOW that the previous coaching staff at BYU was successful in many different ways. I KNOW most of the players loved the coaches and had nothing but good things to say about them. I KNOW for a fact that at the judgement seat nobody will ask us how successful we were at playing a sport or winning a football championship. I KNOW that character, integrity and loving God and your fellow man or more important things. I KNOW these things and I can say it with 100% conviction.

I KNOW that I have high hopes for the new coaching staff and I THINK they will do a good job. I KNOW that the current staff has not proven one thing so far. I KNOW they haven’t won a single football game yet. I KNOW they haven’t graduated a single player yet. I KNOW all of these things are factual.

I also KNOW that you want to see the BYU football team be successful and you WANT football to be the top priority at BYU.

I HOPE you get what you want.

1 Like
8

Jim,

Like Bronco, I know that you are a very wonderful person. I don’t think that you completely understand that which I am trying to convey.

" I also KNOW that you want to see the BYU football team be successful and you WANT football to be the top priority at BYU. I HOPE you get what you want".

Nobody understands more than I do that God, Church, Family, Education is more important than football. I may not be 100% sure that fireside chats for all people are more important than BYU Cougar Football.

When I go to Church, and listen to stories about the trinity, I want the speakers, and the teacher’s to be well prepared.
While preparing their talks, their lessons, I want that preparation to be #1 importance to them while preparing. Do I want that preparation to be more important than the Trinity? Of course not. I am certain that you are intelligent enough to figure
out what I am saying.

When a painter paints the inside and/or the outside of my house, I want him/her to have total concentration on the job I hire him/her to do. Does that mean that she should never think about the Trinity? Of course not. Does it mean that painting should be more important the the TRINITY? Of course not. Again, I believe that you are an intelligent person and being as intelligent as I believe that you are, I am sure that you can figure out what I am trying to convey.

By the same token, I want our Coaching staff to coach football in the exact same way that this current football staff is coaching where football recruiting, football teaching, football coaching and strategies are more important than cute slogans. So do I think that Bronco is more religious than the current staff. Heck no. Do I think that Bronco loves the Trinity more than the current staff? Absolutely not.

I think that this staff believes that each person should do the job they are assigned to do in the very best manner that they
can. Sunday Schools teachers should put totally effort in preparing for their lessons. The Sunday School Teachers, the Bishops, Stake Presidents, General Authorities, and the 2 !/2 minutes speakers should spend all the time preparing for their lessons in order to give the best understanding of the gospel that they can. I think that the football coaches, basketball coaches ,Baseball, Volleyball, Rugby, Gymnastic coaches all the other coaches, be in dance, public speaking o what ever, need to concentrate on their assigned jobs. Does that mean that their assigned jobs is more important than the Trinity? Of course not.

In summary: Do you remember the scripture, “Those that pray in public shall be rewarded by that public while those that pray in the closet shall be rewarded by me, so sayet the Lord?”

9

The one thing I think bronco did wrong was to make the Coaches office basically off limits to the players…

With Sitake, he wants to bring back the “family” feeling of the football team that Lavell had…

Most of the players have noticed the change and have said that they appreciate the atmosphere at BYU now…

Bronco had a tough job, he had mandates from the BOT and demands from the fans to deal with (Sometimes those two things conflicted).

So I won’t bash Bronco on his style, just his choices for assistant coaches… :O)

1 Like
10

I agree Floyd.

and can somebody tell me when we started using the term “trinity” in the church? I thought that referred to a 3 in 1 godhead…

1 Like
11

I use it as God the Father, Jesus the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit, perhaps one in spirit, but three distinct personages.
Sorry about the semantics.

12

This is a place to cuss, discuss, and analyze sports. Do we really need to get into deciding what people can or cannot say about current or previous coaching staff? Where was that in the user agreement? This is supposed to be a place where we can express our thoughts on BYU sports whether they are well ground, trial balloons or thinking out loud. Do we now need to set up “safe zones” or disallowed topic areas?

Let me just mix it up a bit:

Jake Heaps - wanted to love him but he under performed and fled. I say it is mostly his issue and not the coaches lack of kid gloves handling in my opinion.

Bronco - Did many good things. Built a solid foundation. Could not accomplish what he said. Wonderful guy. Hard to understand his assistant coaching choices much of the time. Made some real bone headed coaching moves in my opinion.

RA - Had some great moments and at times things clicked. Struggled to adapt. Much offense was left on the table in my opinion.

Nelson - Gave all he had to give. Sometimes did great but few seem to remember those times. Sometimes he was not good. Should have benched himself when he was hurting the team. If Jake was able to man up and fix his psyche then perhaps we would not have had the Nelson years, in my opinion. But Jake ran…did I mention that?

All the amazing, best ever, QBs that didn’t play - Not convinced they were the best ever. Don’t know why they did not inspire the coaches in practice but don’t believe it was conspiracy and hate. Didn’t see much from them in games. Lark looked like he could have been very good with seasoning but was not impressed with his last game. Didn’t see anything special in my opinion.

OK, criticize and censor away!

13

RA drove all of us nuts with his GFGH philosophy. His middle dives (lame) He also did away with the TEnd to everyone’s chagrin.
to his credit, BYU was 94% in the blue zone his last year…#1 in the nation.

All of the national sports hubs have BYU as having a losing season or barely 500. Put me squarely in the “BYU will be good this year” category with at the most 3 or 4 loses. I love our senior QB, both our QBs actually. I see savvy smart coaches on both sides of the ball with plenty of game day talent. If anything, I think the other teams have to worry about a unpredictable BYU team that catches them by surprise.

14

A couple of interesting points that need to be made here -

  1. Back in 2013, SUU quarterback Brad Sorensen was drafted in the seventh round of the draft by the San Diego Chargers. Sorensen transferred to SUU from BYU to get more playing time given that he was buried behind Jake Heaps and Riley Nelson on the Cougars depth chart.

  2. This season Ammon Olsen, another SUU quarterback who arrived in Cedar City via BYU (although he did attend SUU as a freshman before coming to the Y) in hope of getting more playing time, has a chance to be drafted. Olsen was invited to and played in the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl and is consider by some as one of the more underrated quarterbacks in this year’s class.

The most hilarious part of this was the take on Brad Sorensen, who was actually drafted - “he was buried behind Jake Heaps and Riley Nelson on the Cougars depth chart”.

In my ever so humble opinion, if a guy like Brad Sorensen who is a nfl caliber quarterback, is BURIED in the depth chart behind two very average QB’s in Heaps (had potential but never materialized) and Nelson (who had a very low ceiling) then there was something very wrong with the approach of the head coach and offensive coordinator. On this note alone, I am not so sad that the coaching staff is gone.

1 Like
15

something we will never understand…Why Lark and Sorensen were never even looked at here at BYU.

To me, it is a clear sign that Bronco had to go or is it Anae? I would say that when Sitake says that he will find and play the best 11 athletes, he may be underlining the fact that Bronco sure messed up on some very good QBs.

In the same breath, you have to allow QBs enough freedom to make mistakes without having to look over their shoulders.

16

You mean Lark and Mums (sp?)
And you wonder why Ty Detmer kept saying not now I am happy here in Texas. He may have saw what he thought of BM and RA.

I am really glad for the change.

1 Like
17

Heaps was a bust and Riley was hot and cold. Don’t know why the other QBs didn’t win more looks in practice and perhaps earn some game time. Lark got some game time and looked like he could have been good but I don’t recall his performances being particularly good. You could see promise in him. Then again we saw promise in Heaps.

Would have liked to see the other guys, especially during the Riley experiment. Again, don’t know why we didn’t. Some of them as Jimmer Hawk has pointed out have gone on to some greater success which tells us they could have been better than at the Riley experiment.

Like other’s have expressed, glad the coaches have been “refreshed.” Ty is a sharp guy. Makes more sense why he is back now rather than earlier. Having Cahoon back is awesome. Sitake brings a great vibe and a willingness to learn. Got to love that.

The lack of the Tight End…wow, that is something I did not understand. Recall that the TE was about the only thing that brought us back in the UCF game in FL. Then of course we abandoned it in order to loose. Looking forward to the TE play again.

1 Like
18

Another reply to grass hopper regarding morality:

Sataki said it exactly like I feel it. He is a deeply religious man and knows all about morality but his words, as exact as I can remember them are this:

" I am not the teams elder, or bishop, or what ever. " “I am the teams coach”.

I love it and this has been my feeling for the past 11 years. I wanted our HC to coach to have footballl important to him. Instead, I saw a HC that would rather act like our Elder, or Bishop or what ever.

He spent more time proving to us before important games that football was not all that important. He took a family outing during a bye week instead of preparing to play vs. Utah which we were favored by 7 but instead, lost by 7. He would rather give the time off for rest and relaxation and use only 7 of 21 days allowed to practice for the Bowl game vs Cal which we were favored to win by 7 but lost instead. Cal took all 21 days to practice to play us.

Our old HC was more interested in letting the world know how religious and good he was than he was interested in bringing our team a win. That’s my opinion based on 11 years of observation of the old HC. I will be forever grateful to Va. U.

People brag about the good shape he left us in. I disagree. He scheduled 6 patsy teams on each Independent schedule with an average SOS around 100 as a guarantee to put a winning schedule and a meaningless Bowl game on his resumé.

To me, this is not leaving us in a good position, but instead, holding us back from true honest earned achievement.

19

How did BM show people how he was religious? Not practicing has nothing to do with Eternal Life. You do know head coaches must be Temple Recommend holders. Why do you suppose that is?

20

Grasshopper:
Q. How did BM show people how he was religious?
A. He made it very clear, (Unnecessarily, in my opinion) that football was around #5 in importance behind
God, Church, Education, Family, and maybe even after Fireside Chats. He was alway coming up with cute slogans, (Honor, Loyality, etc) He was lecturing to coaches of this nation and to the coaches where he served his foreign mission about Morality as it applles to football, not running up the score etc.
Lots more etc.

We all know that, but Bronco had the need to be the example and teacher to tell us that.

Q. Not practicing has nothing to do with Eternal Life.
A. Are you sure. (Sunday) etc.

Q. You do know head coaches must be Temple Recommend holders.
A. of course. I started the Y during shcool year 1953-54

Q. Why do you suppose that is?
A. I believe that Sataki is a very religious man, and I know that he is Temple worthy.
His words this past week was this:
“I am not the teams Elder, or Bishop, or what ever. I am the teams coach and that is what I
intendto do.----Coach”

I like that approach to being a head coach.

Do you feel that Sataki is less of a good LDS because he believes that coaching is his main job as
the HC at BYU?

Do you believe that BM approach is better then Sataki’s approach because MM preaches to the Urban Myers, the Nick Sabens, the Pete Caroll’s and the Petersons in college football that football is just a game and that it is immoral to run up the score because these are just kids. Next, in our own stadium, we beat the proud Pac 12, proud UCLA 59-0. What about these kids. Next we go on to beat FCS team 70-0.
what about these kids.

I think that BM means well but is still very immature and has a special need to be recognized for being more spirtual than the rest of us.

I think that Sataki is much more mature and gives us credit of knowing what the Gospel teaches without him telling us. I like his approach that he is not the Elder or the Bishop or what ever. He is indeed the head coach. And that is what he will do. He will coach. I like that,