What Kalani Sitake shared about team’s first scrimmage of fall camp, the QB battle and more

Kalani Sitake is well aware that everyone wants to know who his starting quarterback will be, but frankly, he doesn’t feel too anxious to provide an answer just yet.

“I see some great competition,” BYU’s head football coach told reporters Monday afternoon in Provo. “Right now we’re not ready to make an announcement, but I think we have some really good quarterbacks. (Jake Retzlaff and Gerry Bohanon) have definitely improved from Practice 1 to now. All the (quarterbacks) have gotten better, but it’s hard to make a decision right now.

“It’s something that will happen naturally, it’s not something that we can force-feed or create a deadline on,” Sitake continued regarding the QB question. “We’ve been through quarterback competitions before, and when it’s right we’ll be able to announce it, but now isn’t the time.”

It may very well take at least another scrimmage for the Cougars’ starting quarterback to emerge. BYU had its first intrasquad exhibition of the fall last Saturday, where it ran 102 live plays in an affair Sitake called “evenly matched between offense and defense.”

“It’s hard to even say one side won,” Sitake said. “... We had some success on offense and some success on defense. I think a lot of our guys did exactly how we thought they would ... I know we’re a really physical team, and we need to be mentally tough. It was good to get out there and make some mistakes now. We had some penalties, nothing out of the ordinary and very fixable issues we can handle, so we’ll get that done.”

According to Sitake, the team escaped Saturday’s action relatively unscathed in terms of injuries, with no players seriously hurt or out for the season.

Running backs LJ Martin and Hinckley Ropati were both held out of the scrimmage altogether, though Sitake said he is “still expecting” Martin to be ready for the season opener and to even get some live work in before then.

While the quarterbacks played contact-free football during the scrimmage, offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick was pleased with the results from his other position groups in terms of their toughness and physicality, a past BYU trademark he hopes will return to the field in 2024.

“Physicality has been the No. 1 priority since last season,” Roderick said. “We need to get back to playing the way we played the three years prior where we were a physical team that could run the ball.

“I believe that we are heading in the right direction. It’s an everyday thing and an 11-man deal. Everyone on our offense has to be physical, everyone has a role in the run game and when we are running the football, our play-action pass and ability to stretch the field opens up.”

Such physicality begins with the offensive line, where the early returns for new position coach TJ Woods have proven encouraging. The Cougars have rotated “six or seven guys” around the starting five throughout camp, and while Connor Pay is all but entrenched at center, players such as Brayden Keim, Caleb Etienne and Weylin Lapuaho have spent time at multiple positions to experiment with different looks.

“I know that Coach Woods is about getting a rhythm with those same five guys, and we’ll get there soon, probably earlier than (announcing) the quarterback,” Sitake said of his front five. “(Woods is) the one coach who coaches the most on the field. We need him to be good, and TJ knows how to get them rolling. Technique-wise and fundamentally, I’ve been seeing huge improvement. They’re tough kids and TJ knows how to get the most out of them. I’m really happy with the way the O-line is working right now.”

Added Roderick regarding the line: “They have improved and have gotten better. We still need to go do it in a real game, but I believe in those guys and in what we are doing. They are really well coached.”

Though BYU’s quarterback and offensive line situations have seemingly received the most outside attention, Sitake insists that “every” position still features a battle of sorts to finalize the depth chart’s pecking order.

“I’m not really worried about who the 11 starters are that will be in on Play 1,” Sitake said. “I’d like to see how many guys we can trust to be on the field on defense.

“It should be more than 11, and it’s the same thing on offense. The goal is to get as many starters as we can that are available and can help us win. The best 11 will be in on the first snap.”

But of course, the most important starter will always be the quarterback. While Sitake did say he and his staff “would like to” have a starting quarterback selected prior to BYU’s Week 1 matchup with Southern Illinois, Roderick shared his own confidence and patience in the current process, feeling that the race at hand between Retzlaff and Bohanon isn’t unlike the program’s QB derbies of recent years.

“I’m not in a hurry,” Roderick said. “My experience with these things is usually the decision gets made on the field and it gets to a point where everybody on the team knows, and then then when we say who the starter is, everybody’s like, ‘Yeah, duh.’

“That’s what we’re looking for. We’re not quite there yet. It’s (a) good battle but we’ll keep going for a while. There’s no rush.”