Riley Nelson: BYU Football Had QB Competition To Avoid Transfers

PROVO, Utah – BYU officially named junior Zach Wilson its starting quarterback for the home opener against Navy on Labor Day night.

The move seemed to be the obvious choice since Wilson has started 16 total games but there had been some concern due to his injury history that he has not lived up to his hype.

During fall camp, head coach Kalani Sitake and BYU’s passing game coordinator Aaron Roderick have said that reps have been spread fairly evenly across the board.

“So far it has been equal reps from Zach [Wilson], Jaren [Hall], and Baylor Romney], exactly equal so far,” Roderick said during fall camp. “Then I have been mixing in Sol-Jay [Maiava] where I can and he has been getting reps every day as well. He is an exciting young player and when he goes in we keep joking something exciting is going to happen.”

Jaren Hall and Zach Wilson each completed deep balls to Gunner Romney today in practice. #BYU #BYUFootball @kslsports pic.twitter.com/5loCSeqPJ4

— Mitch Harper (@Mitch_Harper) August 12, 2020

Even during BYU Football with Kalani Sitake on KSL NewsRadio, Sitake reiterated that Wilson has work to do and he is confident in all four quarterbacks.

“I thought Zach did some really good things but needs to show some improvement but he is willing to do it and is working extremely hard,” Sitake said. “Looking at Baylor and Jaren, they are working really hard for the position that they are in right now to compete. It was a really strong competition all the way through camp. We feel we have three guys who can play who have experience and a fourth [in freshman Sol-Jay Maiava] if we need to lean on to win games.”

Coach Sitake is right to have confidence in all of his quarterbacks but there is also something to be said about showering praise of your starting quarterback. These others also have been on the field and probably have a feeling that Wilson very well could be on a short hook if he starts to stumble, and that could lead to opportunities to the others.

Fake Quarterback Competition?

The BYU offensive staff has plenty of actual film to look at between Wilson, Romney, and Hall; the trio all started and played in 2019. So, was there a need for a quarterback competition during limited spring and into fall camp?

BYU radio color analyst Riley Nelson joined KSL Unrivaled to question if the competition between the quarterbacks was just a ploy to push Wilson but also more importantly dangle a carrot for Romney and Hall to keep their interest and not enter the transfer portal.

“I thought it was cute. … I think they had to do their best to open up a competition to, quite frankly and candidly, keep guys there so that Jaren and Baylor stayed within the program,” Nelson said. “If history has proven anything at BYU, it’s that you’re going to need more than one quarterback. With each of those guys proving that they could contribute at different times last year, they wanted to keep everyone in the quarterback committed what they were going away.”

This makes sense on a few levels because coaches want to keep their most talented players around and Nelson is correct since BYU has not had a starter go start to finish since Taysom Hill did it in 2013. Hill did start in 12 games in 2016 missing just the finale against Wyoming and Tanner Mangum played in every game in 2015 but did not start the opener vs. Nebraska. It has been few and far between that the Cougars have had the benefit of health at the quarterback position.

Coaches need to keep players happy and motivated and the biggest thing to get players working hard is the possibility of playing time and that seems to be why Sitake is praising all the quarterbacks and waited until the end of fall camp to name a starter, according to Nelson.

All three can play and have played well as a starter so if Sitake were to have a quasi-open quarterback competition to keep Hall and Romney around, well coaches have to do the best thing for their team and being deep at quarterback is a priority for this BYU football team.

Tune into KSL Unrivaled every Monday through Friday, 7-9 p.m., or download the KSL NewsRadio app to subscribe to the podcast.