Glory Years - What is Different Now

I got reflecting on Gifford Nielsen - a Seventy - coming to Las Vegas to speak and sent a note to my BYU Law School son interning in Australia to give context to remind him of Elder Nielsen not being sure how much detail he would know since it was before his birth - but he is a huge BYU fan and has heard and read it all.



So I ended up mentioning that Gary Sheide got a brief NFL look, didn't mention Virgil Carter because that was mid sixties and before Lavell took over, and that after Sheide, without a break in succession, Nielsen, Wilson, McMahon, Young, and Bosco all got drafted and earned pay checks. Bosco never recovered from a shoulder injury his senior year - or may have lasted longer than the two seasons he was on the payroll with the Packers.



I stopped there - because the string was broken before Detmer came along - then a break - and we put a lefty in the CFL when his dad bought a team - Feterik. Then another gap before Sarkisian. Gap. Doman. Then another gap before Beck and Hall. And that string is already broken.



That is the main difference. I don't know that those early QBs were always better athletes than we get now, but BYU was ahead of its time and those guys thus overachieved. Other programs caught up.



It would be nice to reel off 6 NFL QBs in a row again. I do not expect Riley Nelson - and I love Riley - to start that string. Maybe the next guy will.



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Well you got 2 Beck and Hall. RN would be 3rd if he coulg get there. Who was QB before Beck? Was it Engleman?

Engemann begat Pendlen who begat Berry who begat Beck.

Cougarbib2 wrote:
So I ended up mentioning that Gary Sheide got a brief NFL look, didn't mention Virgil Carter because that was mid sixties and before Lavell took over, and that after Sheide, without a break in succession, Nielsen, Wilson, McMahon, Young, and Bosco all got drafted and earned pay checks. Bosco never recovered from a shoulder injury his senior year - or may have lasted longer than the two seasons he was on the payroll with the Packers.



I stopped there - because the string was broken before Detmer came along - then a break - and we put a lefty in the CFL when his dad bought a team - Feterik. Then another gap before Sarkisian. Gap. Doman. Then another gap before Beck and Hall. And that string is already broken.

Actually, Sarkisian came before Feterik.



John Walsh, who was a decent college QB, immediately followed Detmer (though Walsh was injured early in his first season, giving way to Clements, Hancock, and Young). It was Walsh who convinced Sarkisian to come to BYU when Walsh decided to leave as a junior.



The real gaps were years when BYU was noodling around for a starter: 1986-87 (Lindley, Jensen, Covey), 1997 (Shoemaker, Miller, Feterik), 2000 (Engemann, Peterson, Doman), 2002-04 (Engemann, Pendleton, Brown, Mortensen, Berry, Beck).



The big thing that has changed is that everyone is passing the ball now, so NFL teams feel no need to draft a BYU QB simply because they were trained to throw the ball in college. In fact, since BYU has gone away from the pro style, West Coast Offense, BYU QBs have struggled in the NFL because the systems are so different.

Ironically - we never get the sequence wrong on the great ones but it gets real fuzzy in between. And Feterik and Sark were not exactly dog meat. I stand corrected on that sequence.



Walsh, of course, went undrafted after being led to believe that he would go first round.



He ignored my advice and went early - could have had a great senior year.



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Aside from the fact that we're not producing NFL caliber QBs, Bronco has a higher rate of double digit winning seasons and bowl wins than any other coach in BYU history.



I'd say the only thing that is different is that in not running a typical 80s pro set, we're not relying on QBs with prototypical size and arm strength to win us ball games. We're still winning.



I think in a perfect world, Taysom Hill, then Tanner Mangum deliver both wins and NFL caliber QBs.



One thing that is also different, is that in the decades that BYU has existed, we've never had the kind of recent run in talent at wide receiver. Collie, now Hoffman, Apo (and we have several studs in the pipeline) is unprecedented. We used to have to rely on sure handed midgets without speed or guys with speed and no hands (ie Rod Wilkerson).



Some of our past great QBs would have loved to throw to our current targets. (now if we can just fix the TE problem from the last 2 years)