BYU finished its second week of fall camp with its first practice at LaVell Edwards Stadium Saturday morning. The squad spent a lot of time scrimmaging as camp reaches the midpoint before getting into full game week prep at the end of the month.
View the 2023 Fall Camp photo gallery by BYU Photo.
Read some comments from head coach Kalani Sitake following Saturday's scrimmage.
On the progress of fall camp
“The key is getting our live work in during these scrimmages and make sure we learn as much as we can until the game versus Sam Houston three weeks from now. I’m happy with the team so far. I’m pleased with the players’ efforts and leadership but also with the coaches. [Defensive Coordinator] Jay [Hill] demands quite a bit from the defense and [Offensive Coordinator] Aaron Roderick seems to be doing what he always does. [Quarterback] Kedon [Slovis] looks comfortable in the offense. A lot of the other quarterbacks look the same. Altogether, the team looks pretty good for three weeks before the game.”
On Saturday’s scrimmage
“I saw some guys stand-out. It’s easier to evaluate when we watch the film, but we have some talented players and great skill players. We had some good battles up front between the offensive and defensive lines. We had 105 live snaps today. We wanted to see our guys stress a little bit and put them in different situations. It took a long time, but it was nice to have the reps. We had some penalties, some things we can clean up, more from the defensive side than the offense. Those were things like late hits and facemasks, things we can control. We have to be more disciplined than that. Overall, it was a good scrimmage. Some guys were able to shine a little bit today.”
On practicing substitutions
“You want to see what it’s going to look like, so you don’t have to take timeouts every time to cover up mistakes. This year with the rolling clock, the calls will have to be a lot quicker after converting first downs. I could tell that it was stressing Roderick a little bit because you have to get the call in about seven or eight seconds quicker. Roderick did a great job getting those calls in. We had all of our guys on headsets today and made it a mock game with substitutions.”
On special teams
“The way our kickers were kicking today looked nice and the returns did too. During this first scrimmage, it was about the mechanics and making sure all 11 guys were lined up correctly and that they had their assignments down. Now, we’ll start working on the technique and execution. Overall, though, I thought they executed well. That’s a huge complement to our players and to what Kelly Poppinga’s doing as our special teams coordinator. It’s not easy to balance the special teams and get your guys to pass rush and start the run. That’s Kelly Poppinga. He gets it done.”
On practicing at LaVell Edwards Stadium
“I could see how our newcomers, the guys who hadn’t played in the stadium yet, they were really excited for this practice. We did it in spring, but now we know this is weeks away. The guys are hungry for it. We had players that wanted to play every snap. That’s a good sign. We had good energy too. We’re not going through a lull in fall camp. The guys have great energy and passion right now.”
On position battles
“We have three weeks before the first game. Right now, we know the break off for the travel squad. I don’t know if there’s a lot of change-up between the ones, twos and threes but we still have some battles going on. We had a great battle today. We’ll start to narrow it down as we get closer. I imagine that a week from now we’ll be close to being set and we’ll be set a week away from the game. There’s a lot of things we want to fix, and we have time to have guys practice and compete to win those spots. On defense, we have our base group and all our subgroups that go with it. We’re looking for our third and fourth corner, our fourth and fifth safety.”