I know it's in vogue to discount Tanner's freshman year as the result of horribly thrown jump balls caught only by the grace of the greatest BYU receiving core of all time, led by he of 50 receiving yards per game fame, the White Randy Moss, Mitch Mathews. I know it’s popular to claim we knew all along that what we saw in 2017 was the real Tanner. I also know this line of thinking is bunk.11. Shoutout to The Wire even though I'm ten years late to the party. Stringer for life.
Freshman Tanner was superb. Freshman Tanner made reads. He made gutsy moves in the pocket. He made controlled moves in the pocket. He threw a ball 57 yards in the air on a rope. He distributed the ball as well as any BYU QB in recent memory22. Here's the list of times a BYU QB has had 5 guys catch at least 30 passes in a season since 2001. John Beck in '05. Max Hall in '07. Max Hall in '09. Tanner Mangum in '15. That's it. (check the footnote, it’s important). He led a game-winning drive on a bum leg after digging the team out of a 14-0 hole. He was unfazed in the big moments. He threw 4 TDs against USU on the road in 6 degree weather which probably doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment until you remember we had a total of 3 points against UMass with 54 seconds left in the 4th quarter last year.
Yes, he also looked disastrous at times, as you might expect from someone who hadn’t participated in spring ball, who didn’t get first team reps during fall camp, who was learning a new offense, who lived in the deserts of Chile 3 months before stepping in against Nebraska, who deployed Adam Hine and Algie Brown as running backs, whose last meaningful game was played 4 years prior.
But this is also the fellow who nearly pulled off one of the largest bowl comebacks of all-time. A fellow who had enough something to bounce back from 5 consecutive turnovers and score 28 in a row. By my count, starting after the 5th turnover, Tanner threw 31 accurate passes on his next 50 atttempts. That’s a 62% level of accuracy against a defense that knows you’re going to be passing every down, asgainst a high caliber defensive line that loves nothing more than rushing the QB care-free. BYU’s comeback was ultimately undone by an amazing pass-break up, an unlucky PI call, a coach who gave away three minutes by failing to consider yet another trick play from his rival, and a coach who didn’t have the guts to call for an onside kick even when all the laws of momentum demanded it. Ah Bronco… I still don’t miss you (maybe after another 4 win season, but even then I doubt it)
Freshman Tanner was talented. He had freshman flaws, but the skills we saw led us to believe greatness was coming down the line. I can’t entertain any revisionist history that suggests otherwise.
The question now is whether that talent is forever buried under the mismanagement of the worst offensive coaching staff in BYU history, and in particular an offensive coordinator who was so clueless he decided the best way to calm down his quarterback after throwing a pick-six on the first play at Utah in 2016 would be to call passes on 15 of the next 18 plays. Somehow he believed continuing to pass the ball would yield superior results than attempting to run with Jamaal Williams, one of the top-3 RBs in BYU history, or running with Taysom Hill, the best rushing QB in BYU history.
How bad was the offense during the Ty regime? Here’s a fun guessing game for you. Who scored more receiving TDs? BYU as a team in 2017 or Ross Apo in his best season? The answer is ... BYU in 2017 (13 to 9) but you had to think about it for a moment right? It was so bad that instead of going up-tempo on the final drive against Boise in 2016 we opted to drain the clock and settled for a 44-yard field goal (because we're really great at those). It was so bad that within 5 minutes of YouTubing I was able to find 3 separate examples of route designs where we sent multiple receivers to the exact same spot on the field.
Of the now fired offensive staff, zero of the members were coaching college before joining BYU, zero of them are coaching college now that they’ve left BYU, so perhaps we can reason that none of them actually coached while they were at BYU. That might explain how plays such as the below were more the norm than the exception
Just found a horribly-filmed video on my phone of just how bad BYU was at football in 2017. Basically the sports fandom version of the Zapruder film. pic.twitter.com/jis3NJ7atY— Zach Bloxham (@zblox) August 22, 2018
This then is where the case for starting Tanner Mangum in 2018 rests. Do you believe that the 2016 and 2017 damage can be undone? Do you believe it will help Tanner, going from zero quality offensive coaches in 2016 and 2017 to two coaches in 2018 with play-calling experience (Roderick, Sitake) and another with stints across some of college’s hottest spots (Grimes) and another who at the very least was coaching college football before joining BYU (Steward)? It has to right?
And then there’s the experience thing. Tanner has seen stuff. He’s seen the speed and physicality of elite defenses. He’s made the cross-country road trips. He’s seen team dysfunction, highs and lows. He knows guys in the locker room. He’s played on ABC and ESPN before. He’s been hammered in the press. He’s showed up to church after big losses. He’s played against rivals. He’s made big plays. That all has to help right?
What he doesn’t have is experience with this offense. This will be Tanner’s 4th – I repeat 4th!! – new offensive philosophy he’ll have digested at BYU. His first was the Doman offense when he greyshirted in the fall of 2012, then the Anae offense in 2015, the Ty regime of 2016-17, and finally the current Grimes-Roderick-Sitake conglomeration. Does the brain get overloaded with that much change? Do the differences in reads and playcalls and pace and shotgun vs pistol vs under-center muddy the waters? It would have to, right?
Thus enters the case for Wilson. He has more time with this offense, having spring reps on his side. He hasn’t had to devote any of his time to overcoming an injury. He has a clean slate, not having to delete two years of pro-style brainwashing from his hard drive. He doesn’t have the pressure of a fabulous freshman season that he has to live up to, a former magic that he has to recapture. He can start the season relatively care-free, knowing that a 2-3 start as a freshman would be a positive outcome for many in the program, and even a 1-3 start wouldn’t be the end of the world.
I’ve gone back and forth on this decision probably a good 50 times this month. And I can’t shake the feeling that letting Wilson redshirt this year while leading the scout team, while also seeing duty in those four critical redshirt games is the way to go (2 of which have to be the Washington and Wisconsin games so he can get a taste of the true tests ahead). We all remember what one year of scout team life did for Max Hall. He soaked it up like a QB PhD program and debuted in 2007 ready to rock.
At the same time, I can’t shake the feeling that the Arizona and Cal games are unusually huge for this BYU team. You win one of those two (or both) and the season and more importantly the future outlook for the program just feels so much different. And if Wilson is even marginally better than Tanner then it makes sense that you play him out of the gate and try to pocket those crucial wins. I get the fear of throwing Wilson to the Washington and Wisconsin wolves, but next year BYU starts with Utah, Tennessee, USC, and Washington. Whether you throw him to the wolves now or later, it’s happening eventually.
So what’s the conclusion? I remember running this same debate through my mind back in 2010 with Jake Heaps and Riley Nelson. I wanted Jake Heaps to redshirt back in 2010 and it didn’t happen. He played tons straight out of the gate, admittedly to pretty great success. And he wasn't the only one this decade. Taysom looked extremely promising at times in 2012 as a freshman. Tanner looked like a future star as a freshman in 2015. The last few times we’ve rolled the dice on a rookie QB it has turned out pretty well… for their freshman year at least. Their careers as a whole have been a different story. And I guess in the end the career element is what I keep coming back to.
If Wilson is truly as good as reports are suggesting, then BYU should focus on putting him in a position to be really, really good for as long as possible. That means letting him develop through 2018 in a redshirt role. In doing so Wilson will come into the 2019 season with 2 spring trainings, 2 fall camps, and 4 games of live experience to his name. His body will be one year the stronger, his mind one year faster. He'll stand behind an offensive line that should return 4 of its 5 starters, throw to a pair of highly recruited receivers in Romney and Roberts, a 4th year speedy slot guy in Hifo, with a seasoned Bushman, MLP, and Holker contributing from the tight end spot. His coaches will be over their rookie growing pains. Maybe even Ula Tolutau will be back or Katoa will be ready to make the leap. On paper that sounds like a legitimate college football offense! Not to mention one that won't have to go up against two of the four teams expected to make this years playoff. If Wilson is good then let's deploy him when our team is good enough to match him (or at least better than they are now).
While the change in offense will be an upgrade this year, it won’t be immediately perfect. It never is. Remember when Mike Leach debuted his mighty air raid offense at Washington State? Their first game they scored 6 points. It makes more sense to expose Tanner to the kinks of this new scheme, to stand behind a revamped offensive line without Koroma to anchor it. It’s better to let Tanner take the heat when Grimes' rookie playcalls come in late or go awry or make no sense. It's better to let Tanner deal with this running back crew, a group so disappointing that every positional castoff ends up getting a shot there.
And who knows, maybe somehow we'll get an awesome Tanner Mangum comeback story while we’re at it. 2015 was a long time ago ... but it wasn't that long.
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