When news broke last spring that there was a very good chance that fifth-year senior quarterback Jake Retzlaff would not be a part of the BYU football team in 2025, panic and disappointment swept through Cougar Nation and the program.
The development was especially disturbing to the two men who had developed Retzlaff into one of the best quarterbacks in the Big 12, offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick and assistant quarterbacks coach Matt Mitchell.
But while many believed the season was lost, Roderick and Mitchell viewed it as a challenge.
Coaches are always talking about the need to be ready for sudden change on the football field; Roderick and Mitchell applied that to their attitude regarding their starting quarterback moving forward.
“We just tried to dive in to help get the other guys ready and just control what we could control,” Mitchell said a few weeks ago. “Getting the other guys in position to succeed became the priority.”
Turns out, that “other guy” was true freshman Bear Bachmeier, a 19-year-old who spent spring ball at Stanford. Bachmeier announced he was transferring to BYU on May 4, about 17 days before a civil lawsuit was filed against Retzlaff, but later dismissed.
Retzlaff announced on July 11 that he was leaving BYU in the face of a seven-game suspension, and committed on July 21 to Tulane, where he is currently flourishing.
By that time, Roderick and Mitchell were already preparing Bachmeier, Treyson Bourguet and McCae Hillstead to take Retzlaff’s place. They gave Bachmeier the starting job on Aug. 19, making him the first true freshman to ever start in a season opener for the Cougars.
Obviously, the decision — made primarily by Roderick but with heavy input from Mitchell and other offensive assistants and then rubber-stamped by head coach Kalani Sitake — was the right one. Bachmeier has led No. 11 BYU to a 7-0 record, and has quickly become one of the best quarterbacks in the Big 12, despite his youth and inexperience. He’s been the Big 12 Freshman of the Week five times.
But that’s only part of the story. The path for Bachmeier’s success started to get paved while he was still at Stanford finishing up some schoolwork there, with Mitchell the chief designer.
By the time fall camp started on July 30, Bachmeier had already learned the playbook.
“It is a big testament to coach Mitchell and coach A Rod,” Bachmeier said the week before he led the Cougars to a 69-0 waxing of Portland State. “I met with coach Mitchell almost every day (doing) install one, install two, install three and so forth. … I give a lot of credit to coach Mitchell because he taught me the whole playbook in a month, two months.”
Mitchell said a lot of that tutelage came via Zoom because Bachmeier was still at Stanford until mid-June. It reminded the assistant coach of 2020, when the pandemic forced people to meet remotely.
“You can’t be as dynamic teaching on Zoom, but man, he has a really good battery life, and he had a very good baseline understanding of offensive and defensive football from the get-go,” Mitchell said. “With two older brothers, Hank and Tiger, in football he had that base, and then he got some good coaching in (high school) and at Stanford. He had to put up with some long Zooms with me, but he did a great job. He’s very smart. Very, very smart.”
A WR in college, Mitchell is BYU’s QB whisperer
On more than one occasion, Bachmeier has referred to Mitchell as a quarterback whisperer, of sorts, the kind of coach who seems to know what QBs are going through, although he played receiver at Wheaton College in Illinois for four years before going into coaching.
Coincidentally, the other two architects of BYU’s passing offense, Roderick and receivers coach/passing game coordinator Fesi Sitake, were also receivers in college.
“One of the things coach Mitchell and coach Roderick advocate for is playing free and playing to the strength in your game,” Bachmeier said. “The off-platform throws and just making plays, having the capability to use your legs to go get that first down. It’s a great scheme, and a reason why we won a great amount of games last year, too.”
Mitchell humbly downplays the QB whisperer tag, saying that Roderick and Sitake deserve that title more than he does.
“A Rod is the real quarterback guru, and Fesi knows a lot about quarterbacking, too, having coached at Weber (State),” Mitchell said. “He is an excellent coach, and then A Rod has a strong track record with QBs. That speaks for itself. He’s a very, very, very good quarterback guy.”
Who is Matt Mitchell and how did he get to BYU?
Mitchell grew up in the Bay Area in Northern California before heading East to play his college football as a 5-foot-10, 180-pound receiver. He was an offensive analyst at Notre Dame under Brian Kelly in 2015-16, and then moved on to Western Kentucky, where he was the quarterbacks coach in 2018.
He headed back West in 2019, landing a job as the offensive coordinator at Snow College in Ephraim, Utah. Former BYU defensive lineman Jan Jorgensen, a good friend, was Snow’s defensive coordinator and he and Mitchell remain close to this day (Jorgensen is now Utah State’s outside linebackers coach).
While Mitchell was at Snow, he attended the same church as then-BYU offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes, who hired him as a graduate assistant at BYU in 2020 when Harvey Unga was promoted to running backs coach.
“I was in a full-time position at Snow and everything, but took a GA job at BYU,” Mitchell said. “That was probably the best career move I’ve ever made.”
From BYU to Baylor, and back to BYU
Mitchell followed Grimes to Baylor in 2021 and was an offensive analyst on the Bears’ Big 12 championship team. Roderick persuaded him to return to BYU in 2022 as an offensive analyst working with the quarterbacks, and last winter he was promoted to assistant quarterbacks coach.
“I just think Matt is a really good coach, and we had a good working relationship when he was here before,” Roderick said when asked why he wanted Mitchell back in Provo. “He’s done a really good job with our quarterbacks. He does a lot to help me out and help our staff out. He’s an excellent coach.”
Mitchell said he learned a lot from Kelly at Notre Dame, and followed Mike Sanford to Bowling Green, Kentucky, when Sanford became head coach of the Hilltoppers.
Why did he come back to BYU for a second stint in Provo?
“We won the Big 12 championship that year at Baylor, which was a great experience. But A Rod kind of recruited me back to have more direct coaching responsibility with the quarterbacks here,” he said. “That was a really big deal to me. That’s a huge reason why I came back. On top of that, I think this is a really, really good job. The fanbase is just outstanding here, and I think you can get really, really great players and great people here.”
Most notably a freshman quarterback named Bear.
