As rumors were swirling that BYU Cougars head football coach Kalani Sitake was considering leaving for the same job at Penn State, Sitake made the comment that such talk was “a good sign that things are going well for us.”
On Friday night, ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported that BYU is indeed losing one of its coaches to another job.
Thamel reported that assistant quarterbacks coach Matt Mitchell is leaving to become the quarterbacks coach at Colorado State under Jim Mora, who was recently named head coach following a wildly successful stint at UConn.
While Mitchell had a relatively small official title at BYU, his impact has been immense since he joined the staff in 2022, and especially this season.
Star freshman quarterback Bear Bachmeier has given a great deal of credit to Mitchell for helping him master the Cougars’ playbook in a short amount of time after he transferred to BYU from Stanford in the spring.
“I give a lot of credit to coach Mitchell because he taught me the whole playbook in a month, two months,” Bachmeier said after he earned the starting quarterback job during the summer.
Bachmeier has gone on to far exceed just about everyone’s expectations this season, as he has completed 68% of his passes for 2,708 yards with 14 touchdowns against six interceptions as the Cougars are 11-2 with the Pop-Tarts Bowl still left to play (Bachmeier has also run for 527 yards on 146 carries with 11 touchdowns).
Mitchell began his coaching career at Notre Dame in 2015 as an offensive analyst and has also had stints at Western Kentucky, Snow College and Baylor.
He was an offensive analyst at BYU during the 2020 season in between his stints at Snow and Baylor before returning to BYU in 2022.
Mitchell will be joining a Colorado State program that will be moving to the Pac-12 Conference from the Mountain West Conference next season.