Provo • Jake Retzlaff has never been through a quarterback battle like this one before.
During his two years in junior college, he was named the starter relatively quickly. In high school, it was mostly the same. Maybe the only comparable experience he had was back as a junior when he stole the job from the starter in the middle of the season.
That time, his Centennial High School team was visiting Mater Dei and getting thumped. He came in at the end of the game and put together two quick touchdown drives.
“That was how I got my foot in the door,” he said. “So it was kind of like a surprise. Like, ‘Oh this guy is good.’ So it was a three-man rotation a lot of the times. But I got the nod a lot of the other times [after that]. It was a very complex situation. But it doesn’t compare to this.”
It’s what makes this current quarterback battle at BYU more challenging for the incumbent leader to navigate. With the Cougars at the end of their third week of training camp, they have still yet to choose between Retzlaff and Gerry Bohanon.
Retzlaff is the quarterback with a track record in Provo. He started four games a year ago. Bohanon is the newcomer, a transfer by way of Baylor and USF.
Retzlaff is still trying to figure out how to handle a battle this drawn out. He’s also figuring out what more he needs to show to win the job. To him, it isn’t necessarily something tangible anymore.
“Just keep the consistency going,” he speculated of what the staff wants to see. ”Just keep playing good every day. Have no lapses. Just keep the consistency up basically.”
When asked if he thought he’d already shown that through spring and fall camp, he thought so.
“I mean I think I’ve done a pretty good job of that. You can always do better. But yeah I think I’ve been pretty consistent overall,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune.
Coming into the offseason, the pathway for Retzlaff to win the job centered on cutting down on turnovers. He had three interceptions in four games last year. One was a 99-yard pick-six against Oklahoma. But in spring camp, he did not throw a single interception. It seemed to bode well for his prospects of being the starter.
Now, though, there has been a new curveball thrown into the competition. Bohanon wasn’t fully healthy throughout the spring. He was still recovering from a torn labrum and working on his arm strength. Last winter, he couldn’t throw more than 60 times a week without pain.
But after a full summer of rehab, he’s looked stronger. He started moving the offense more efficiently as a pocket passer and a runner. He had a 45-yard keeper last week and followed it with two chunk plays through the air to Cody Hagen and Tei Nacua. It was a flash of playmaking ability that BYU hadn’t seen before.
Now, Retzlaff has to compete with that. It turned a relatively benign battle into a full-on heater.
“Honestly, it’s a great competition,” head coach Kalani Sitake said. “We are not ready to make an announcement. But I think we have some really good quarterbacks. And those two have definitely improved since practice one to now. In terms of the quarterback position, it is hard to make a decision right now.”
Offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick indicated he is in no rush to make a decision. He pointed to a past quarterback battle between Zach Wilson and Jaren Hall. BYU named a starter three days before kickoff. By that standard, 14 days before the season opener feels like an eternity.
“We are getting there, but I’m not in a hurry,” he said. “We are just going to keep playing for a little bit. I would prefer that. My experience with these things is, usually, that decision gets made on the field. And it gets to the point where everybody on the team knows. Then when we say who the starter is, everyone is like, ‘Yeah, duh.’ You know? That’s what we’re looking for. We’re not quite there. There’s no rush.”
As for Retzlaff, he skirted around the question of whether he thinks there’s value in naming a starter soon.
“The way I’d answer that is A-Rod has been doing this a lot longer than I have. So whatever he does, I trust him,” he said. “I’ve never been in a quarterback battle in the Power Four where two guys are competing for the starting job. He’s done this a lot of times with a lot of good quarterbacks. I know Jaren and Zach did something like this. I trust whatever he says. And I’ll stick with that.”
Sitake hinted that maybe BYU is getting closer to naming a starter after the team’s first scrimmage last Saturday. He said there was some separation but not enough. Retzlaff thought the scrimmage went well.
“Really well. I think I played pretty well. I think the offense did a lot of really good things,” he said. “Obviously first scrimmage of fall camp, there are still some things we want to clean up. So overall, there are some positives coming out of it but still some things to work on.”
Roderick didn’t rule out a scenario where two quarterbacks play Week 1. But he said it’s still unlikely.
“I don’t want to do that, but I would never say never. That’s not how I want it to go, though,” he said.
Still, it leaves Retzlaff in an unfamiliar place fighting for the job. The one resource he has is former BYU quarterback John Beck. He’s been in quarterback battles in Provo before and worked with both Retzlaff and Bohanon.
“He just told me he fought for the starting job every single year of his life here. And I was like, ‘Well if he did it, I can do it too,’” Retzlaff said.
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