Jaren Hall: We Had To Get Real With Ourselves

PROVO, Utah – BYU football snapped its losing streak to top Boise State getting the team one step closer to bowl eligibility, and now they get a much-needed off week after 10 straight weeks of playing football.

There were some ups and downs during October’s losing streak.

There were changes made to who was calling plays and some on-field personnel tweaks and it took a few weeks for those moves to make an impact. One of the biggest changes was the play-calling duties on defense with head coach Kalani Sitake taking over.

BYU quarterback Jaen Hall was asked about all of the changes during his weekly visit on Unrivaled. In short, he said it was all about being confident in one’s abilities.

“I just think it’s been a lot of beliefs. We didn’t talk about much being different,” Hall said. “It is still the same coaches calling plays, and a couple had a different part with that. It was all pretty similar.

“Guys on the defense, along with us on the offense, we saw what we were going up against them all week. A lot of guys were more bought in, just like we had to buy in more on offense. It was more of a team thing. […] The belief on the sideline, regardless if they scored or didn’t score, there was a lot of confidence. That is all it was and that was different, we had a little more confidence and swagger.”

This win allows the team to go into the off-week with even more confidence and time to rest, recover, and take a small break from a game-week grind before wrapping up the season with two games left.

BYU Cougars Get Real

The next goal for BYU football is to get to that sixth win to keep its bowl streak alive and that should happen against Utah Tech on Saturday, Nov. 19. Prior to the Boise State game, the Cougars were sitting at four wins and a bowl game seemed uncertain with games against Boise State and Stanford left on the schedule.

Hall mentioned that the team took a rare moment to look ahead to check in with their big picture and season goals.

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“Last week we got real with each other. We only had four wins and we needed six to get to a bowl game and we were running out of games. For a minute, we put up on the screen what we needed to do. It was extra motivation to get locked in for the next game.

“We looked ahead a little for the intentions of believing it would help us. Then we got dialed back into Boise, and it helped. […] We definitely had to look at that because at the end of the day we want to go to a bowl game.”

Now a bowl game is nearly secure, the next goal is to just win every game left which is against Utah Tech and then Stanford while trying to finish the regular season at 7-5 to help the Cougars get to the best bowl game possible.

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