Coaches admit it will be difficult for one of the newcomers — while Hall redshirted at ASU, the others will be true freshmen — to overtake Jason Beck on the depth chart. "(Jason Beck) has been here a number of years, rather than just one," Mendenhall said. "He is familiar with the system, he's familiar with the expectations, he's familiar with college life, he's familiar with this place. All those things can't be underestimated."

As recently as a couple of years ago, it seemed that Ben Olson, the all-everything recruit who signed in 2002, would be BYU's future at quarterback. But after redshirting and serving a mission, he opted to transfer to UCLA, creating a major void — evidenced by the pair of seniors and the four freshmen on the roster.

It's a situation Mendenhall and his staff want to remedy. After all, back in the "glory days" of BYU football, when the program was generating an assembly line of top-flight, record-setting quarterbacks, it was able to stockpile talented players who usually had received at least a couple years of grooming and seasoning before becoming the starter.

"With the current recruiting class and returning missionaries that we'll have in the program, we expect to return to the tradition of producing quarterbacks, one right after the other," Mendenhall said. "We're gradually working to where we can stack the classes appropriately to where an understudy can have a quality player in front of him that he can learn from for one or two years before it's his opportunity rather than a freshman or redshirt freshman needing to play. We're closer to that than what we've been in the past."

John Beck was thrown into the mix as a true freshman in 2003, just months removed from his mission. His predecessor, Matt Berry, who completed his eligibility last year, went through a similar situation — becoming a starter months after returning from a mission.

Doman knows first-hand that tossing a young, unprepared quarterback into the fray is not an ideal scenario. He waited more than two years to become BYU's starter back in 2000 and he said he needed that time to step into the role.

"For a returned missionary to come home and be expected to play is not a reality," said Doman, who is the only returned missionary to guide BYU to a conference championship. "For him to come home and be successful, it's going to take him two or three years. It's no different for a high school kid. But for a returned missionary to come home, not only does he have to get physically into shape, which takes a long time, but he has to get his mind right and he's got to get all those intangibles that are innate to the quarterback (position). He doesn't have to develop them again, but he's got to find them and get them back.