Mendenhall's mission: Keep players healthy

Today, Bronco Mendenhall hatches out an intricate plan for football players returning to his program. It isn't anything mysterious, genius or groundbreaking, but it could have a key impact on his troops leading up to 2006 fall camp.

Last week, Mendenhall met with conditioning coach Jay Omer to discuss the offseason workout structure. Both men came out with a design that they hope will prevent what happened last August when a dozen players, most of them key defensive secondary prospects, suffered hamstring injuries within 72 hours.

One of the victims, cornerback Kayle Buchanan, was vying for a starting spot and didn't recover until half the season had expired.

"In all my years of coaching, I've never seen anything like that happen to a team before," Mendenhall said. "I'm not making it an excuse, but aside from obvious challenges with the secondary experience we had to work with, having that many players out of fall camp had a big impact on our football team last year."

How?

Mendenhall's staff, especially on defense, had to restructure drills to fit the bodies available. They trimmed down the famed pursuit drill, and protected remaining players from injury and fatigue. That created an imbalance in the team structure between the offense and defense.

Where the new offense under coordinator Robert Anae became polished, the defense started August camp as a patchwork daily guessing game as to who could perform and how far they could be pushed.

"I take full responsibility for the preparation of the team, for the defense. That is my job," Mendenhall said.

But he also admits, the most frustrating thing he's ever experienced in coaching defense was this past year when he knew exactly what needed to be done in practice, couldn't do it, then stood on the sidelines during games and witnessed his worst fears during the week confirmed.

Personnel issues and talent aside — that is what will haunt him over the 2005 season.

In the offseason of 2005, BYU players worked hard but maybe not the right way. Some of what they did may have led to overdeveloping the leg quads to underdevelopment of the hamstrings.

There are Cougar faithful anxious to see defensive changes, from scrapping the 3-3-5 alignment to Mendenhall giving up the reins as coordinator to focus on his job as head coach.