Ben Bywater Announces Return To BYU Football For 2024 Season
Dec 22, 2023, 3:21 PM | Updated: Dec 23, 2023, 3:02 pm
PROVO, Utah – Veteran BYU linebacker Ben Bywater is running it back for one more season.
Bywater shared a reel on his Instagram page announcing that he’s returning for the 2024 season. The caption read, “Comin back for one more!”
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The 6-foot-3, 235-pound Bywater has already competed in five different seasons with the BYU football program. But he’s able to return due to the extra year of eligibility caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Bywater was a captain last season for the Cougars from the MAC linebacker spot. He appeared in four games before suffering a season-ending shoulder injury at Kansas. During those four games, Bywater had 32 tackles, three tackles for loss, and a sack.
Bywater had surgery on his injured shoulder in October.
The star linebacker joins Tyler Batty, Connor Pay, Brayden Keim, and Keanu Hill, as players on the 2024 BYU squad that are taking advantage of the extra year offered by the COVID season.
Ben Bywater career snapshot at BYU
Ben Bywater has played in 33 games in his BYU football career. He’s racked up 247 tackles, 15.5 tackles for loss, three sacks, and three interceptions. One of those interceptions was a pick-six in the New Mexico Bowl last season.
That performance in Albuquerque against SMU earned him defensive MVP honors in the New Mexico Bowl last season.
Bywater signed with BYU in the 2017 recruiting class out of Olympus High School.
Depth at linebacker
Getting Bywater adds a lot more depth to BYU’s linebacker unit that already returns rising underclassmen Harrison Taggart, Siale Esera, and Ace Kaufusi. BYU also brought in Weber State transfer linebacker Jack Kelly, who will enroll next month.
Mitch Harper is a BYU Insider for sports.ksl.com and host of the Cougar Tracks Podcast (SUBSCRIBE) and Cougar Sports Saturday (Saturday from 12–3 p.m.) on KSL Newsradio. Follow Mitch’s coverage of BYU in the Big 12 Conference on X and Threads: @Mitch_Harper.
