For Outland Trophy candidate Brady Christensen, confirmation that the BYU football program was on the track back to respectability, at least offensively, came two years ago on a sunny Saturday in Madison, Wisconsin.
The date was Sept. 15, 2018, and unheralded BYU — less than a year removed from its worst season in nearly 50 years and the painful firing of popular Cougars legend Ty Detmer as offensive coordinator — had just stunned No. 6 Wisconsin 24-21 in front of 80,720 fans at Camp Randall Stadium.
Veterans such as Tanner Mangum, Aleva Hifo, Dylan Collie, Moroni Laulu-Pututau and Squally Canada threw and caught the passes and ran for the yards and touchdowns, but it was a young offensive line that did the heavy lifting: freshmen Keanu Saleapaga, James Empey and Christensen, and sophomores Tristen Hoge and Chandon Herring. Coaches gave BYU’s strength and conditioning staff the game ball.
“The moment that sticks out to me is the Wisconsin game,” Christensen said Monday as the No. 8-ranked Cougars (8-0) entered a bye week and took some time to reflect on what so far has been a special season. “That’s when I knew we had the guys to win against anyone. We had the talent to win. We had the coaches to win.”
“He wasn’t promised anything, but I guarantee you that Zach went to BYU thinking he would be the starter from day 1. That’s how much he believes in himself.” — Former BYU recruiting coordinator Tevita Ofahengaue
Head coach Kalani Sitake’s rebuild from that woeful 4-9 season in 2017 when BYU had one of the worst offenses in all of college football began in the trenches. Empey and Christensen are now juniors and all-America candidates, while Hoge, Herring, starting left guard Clark Barrington and valuable reserves Blake Freeland, Joe Tukuafu, Connor Pay and Saleapaga have combined with them to form one of the top offensive lines in the country.
“Now that it is coming together, it is not necessarily a surprise,” Christensen said. “It has kinda been like, ‘Finally, we are here.’ We knew we could get to this point, and now that we are finally here it feels awesome.”
The foundation for a return to offensive prominence nationally was poured 16 days after Detmer was dismissed. Sitake gambled a bit on LSU offensive line coach Jeff Grimes, who had never been a full-time play-caller, to replace the former Heisman Trophy winner as his second OC.
Then Sitake, Grimes and two former offensive coordinators they brought in a few weeks later — receivers coach Fesi Sitake and quarterbacks coach Aaron Roderick — struck recruiting gold. They persuaded under-recruited local prep quarterback Zach Wilson to play his college football for the program he grew up despising. They sold the baby-faced Wilson, an annual Utah football camp attendee and Boise State commit, on their vision of restoring BYU as Quarterback U.
They told Wilson, who has never lacked confidence, that he could lead that offensive resurgence. Obviously, he has, because the junior is now a Heisman candidate and would be a candidate for college football’s most improved player award, if such an honor existed.
“He wasn’t promised anything, but I guarantee you that Zach went to BYU thinking he would be the starter from day one,” said longtime Wilson family friend Tevita Ofahengaue, who was the Cougars’ recruiting coordinator in 2017 when Wilson signed in December of that year. “That’s how much he believes in himself.”
A few months later, after Wilson had already enrolled early, the offensive staff added more under-recruited athletes who would become stars — tight end Dallin Holker (currently on a church mission), walk-on running back Tyler Allgeier and receivers Gunner Romney and Dax Milne, the latter a walk-on who spurned offers from smaller schools such as Weber State at the behest of Fesi Sitake, who even two years ago predicted big things for the wispy Bingham High star.
“For whatever reason, people were just overlooking Dax,” Fesi Sitake said in October. “Just because maybe he didn’t test out at the gym, didn’t pass the eyeball test. But I loved the way he worked, every drill he did, and the way he would finish things.”
Four of BYU’s 11 starting offensive players in last week’s 51-17 crushing of Boise State began their Cougar careers as walk-ons. Sitake’s recruiting strategy of building a preferred walk-on (PWO) program has paid off handsomely.
Back to 2018. When the season of redemption rolled around, the aforementioned offensive coaches were convinced that Wilson was their man at quarterback, according to multiple sources, but felt pressure to make Mangum the opening-game starter against Arizona. Loyalty means a lot to Kalani Sitake, and coaches were hoping the Idahoan who had delivered memorable wins over Nebraska and Boise State his freshman season had more magic left.
He did, for awhile.
When Mangum delivered a 28-23 win in Tucson, having fought back from an Achilles injury that cut short his junior season, Wilson’s route to stardom had to be shelved. But two games after he engineered the upset of Wisconsin, Mangum’s lack of the kind of mobility needed to run Grimes’ offense was exposed in back-to-back blowout losses to No. 11 Washington and instate rival Utah State, and the Wilson era began in Provo.
“It has been a three-year process. We went all in,” Roderick told The Zone Sports Network on Wednesday. “Most of the guys who are playing now are in their third year in the offense. We went all in with those guys in year one, and just took our lumps, and tried to hang on and keep the games close.”
Roderick told David James and Patrick Kinahan the Cougars and Wilson improved last year, even though their record was a middling 7-6 and they ended the season with consecutive losses with Wilson at the helm after a fractured thumb caused him to miss four games in the middle of the season.
“We knew we were getting a lot better on offense, and we could feel it,” Roderick said. “We saw a lot of progress. We had a couple disappointing losses last year, but also some wins — there were good wins (over USC, Tennessee, Boise State, Utah State and Liberty) — that showed us we were going the right way.”
Said Christensen, Wilson’s blindside protector at left tackle: “After beating Wisconsin (in 2018), we thought we could win against anybody. But obviously that didn’t turn out over the next 15 games or so. We lost some games we shouldn’t have.”
Grimes and company kept the faith.
“We have said something I hoped to say at the beginning of the season, that we are one of the best teams in the country, and we are one of the best offenses in the country,” Grimes said on his “Coordinators’ Corner” program Monday. “When you look at our body of work, I think it is up there with any offense in the country right now. I think we have incredible balance at every position. I have been in this position before and we had a weakness at a certain spot. I really don’t think we do.”
Looking back at those first few games in 2018, Romney — perhaps the most prized recruit of the Cougars’ 2018 signing class — said there were a lot of growing pains as the inexperienced offensive linemen continued to develop physically and freshmen receivers saw bits and pieces of playing time behind some established journeymen. A boatload of running back injuries also sunk the offense the last three seasons.
“There are going to be defenses that figure you out, so you have to adjust,” Romney said. “So when the coaching staff did that and we saw the results from doing that, I knew we were going to be solid from then on because of their ability to make changes and fit the offense to the players and the personnel that we have. So it is not a surprise to me that we are seeing the things that we are seeing now.”
Things such as a No. 8 national ranking in both major polls. The Cougars are eighth in the country in total offense (533.4 yards per game) and scoring offense (45.3 points per game) and Wilson is being talked about as a probable NFL first-round draft pick if he declares early for the draft next April.
It feels like the turnaround is almost complete. Roderick said the offense will roll next year, too, even if Wilson departs as expected, because the QB position is well-stocked in Provo.
“We all kinda had a feeling we were going to be pretty good this year,” Roderick said. “None of us were popping off about it or anything. Our staff had a really good feeling that we were going to be great on offense. It has been a process and it is fun now that our players are seeing that this works if we all do it together and do it the right way.”
That 2017 season is a distant memory, but the groundwork that was laid in 2018 sure isn’t.