Bronco Mendenhall's second spring at the helm of BYU football comes to a close this week, and while he's far more prepared to do due diligence as a head coach, he's still had to shuffle and dance.

Injuries to his offensive line, which required multiple player surgeries this winter, depletion of his defensive line to graduation and introducing a 3-4 front from his 3-3-5 alignment forced Mendenhall to play dodgeball with reps, scrimmages and personnel.

Spring practices are routinely events for teaching younger players, fine-tuning execution and evaluating talent. This spring took those tasks to an unusual level not normally witnessed in these parts.

Here's the rundown.

By design, offensive coordinator Robert Anae took an experienced roster on that side of the ball and purposely narrowed the scope of plays practiced. He didn't add wrinkles, expand formations, install trick plays or even try to exploit Mendenhall's defense. He had John Beck and Company run the same dozen plays over and over and over again.

Anae's philosophy was simple. He wanted to evaluate players, see what they could do, and he didn't need a gob of drawings with X's and O's to wade and stumble over to get it done.

He found this especially beneficial for young players like running backs Manase Tonga, Ray Hudson, Wayne Latu and freshman tight end Andrew George.

Secondly, Anae believes the core of BYU's offense has to be down pat, with an execution level that borders on flawless and at a rhythm and pace that is choreographed so it becomes second nature to linemen, backs and receivers, who have to be on the same page with the QB.

After a dozen practices, it looks like it worked. The offense looks polished. Beck, as expected, is playing like a seasoned senior completing about 80 percent of his passes. As SportsWest TV analyst Blaine Fowler put it last week, "Beck's never looked better with reads and delivery."

BYU's offense, based on the triangle of tight ends, running backs and receivers, has morphed away from the Texas Tech scheme Anae brought to Provo a year ago. Because of tight end depth, led by Johnny Harline and Daniel Coats, it is a retrofit to the Cougar offense run by Doug Scovil in the early '80s.

Defensively, Mendenhall's 3-4 front had a shaky start, as expected. The first week, players made mistakes, had miscues and got burned a lot. The offensive line teed off on the young D-line. Even with defensive grad assistant Micah Alba barking out what the offense was going to do while Beck awaited the snap, defenders couldn't make plays. Even with having only a dozen different plays to worry about, they couldn't make stops often.

After two weeks, this changed. Mendenhall tried to simplify implementation of the 3-4, but still, the agenda on defense was the opposite of Anae's. Mendenhall installed multiple fronts, multiple coverages and multiple blitz packages, stepping up the versatility as quick as his players could digest it.

Last week, defenders made plays. Despite early whistles on sacks, defenders got a lot of sacks. And the depleted O-line, which had resorted to "holding" defenders for weeks, had to resort to "creative" techniques to keep out pass rushers.

And the secondary? It looks better. The zone coverages have thrown off the offense at times, leading to stalled drives, sacks and the corners have even knocked down passes in the process.

"This defense is more physical than last year," Tonga said. "The secondary is faster and reacts quicker than they did a year ago."

The strength of the defense is nine linebackers, who rotate into the four spots. They are athletic, active and have absorbed blitz responsibilities that BYU's safeties tried to execute and usually failed at doing a year ago.

As one "expert" noted last week: "Last year those safeties who blitzed could be taken out by a flick of a blocker's hand. It's taking a lot more than that with these 'backers.' "

Secondary tactics appear sound, freeing safeties to make more plays and help the corners.

"The zone we're seeing out of our guys on D are actually going to help us on offense," quarterback coach Brandon Doman said. "It's more of what we'll be seeing during the season."

So, what's it all mean?

Who knows. It's spring.

Saturday's Blue and White game isn't going to reveal anything. Like spring practices, it will be a watered down affair and this year it will be more of a controlled scrimmage instead of a game.

View Comments

Unlike fall practice and prior spring drills, there have been no 80-play scrimmages the past 30 days with the Cougars — by design.

What you've got at BYU this spring is a laboratory experiment, classroom football.

The screech of chalk on the board is pretty loud.


E-mail: dharmon@desnews.com

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