Cautious Y. enters 'situational' mode

PROVO — Major physical operations are now complete for BYU's football team in spring drills as the Cougars will now focus on specific "situational" work heading into the Blue-White game scheduled a week from Saturday in LaVell Edwards Stadium.

Today, coach Bronco Mendenhall will take the team through a series of shortened situational 11-on-11 drills in shoulder pads and shorts before taking Easter weekend off. Next week's scrimmages will be minor in nature as the Cougars have entered into "protection" mode, limiting exposure of "proven" players to prevent injuries.

On Tuesday, in BYU's big scrimmage, at least 11 of 22 potential starters did not participate, including three starting offensive linemen.

On Thursday, the specific work included multiple series inside the blue zone wherein the offense scored three times, and the defense stopped the offense three times.

"We've addressed some needs we didn't think we've covered enough and will now take care of some on-field situations we've identified a need for better execution," said Mendenhall. The NCAA prohibits football teams from having more than three practices where more than 50 percent of the time is full-scrimmage contact.

Mendenhall said his original plan was to do more physical work today, but depth issues at linebacker and running back prevented more work in pads. "We'll try and get some people healthy," Mendenhall said. "Next week we'll have a half-padded day and nonpadded day, and hopefully we'll have enough depth to have a full scrimmage on Saturday.

Running backs Manase Tonga, Fui Vakapuna and Joe Semanoff have not participated in spring drill contact, and Harvey Unga's involvement has been without taking hits. Linebackers David Nixon and Markell Staffieri have been sidelined with injuries.

Mendenhall said his staff has come up with enough repetitions to produce an assessment of where strengths and weaknesses are on the roster. "The amount of team volume work going back to the first couple of days going back to nonpads is almost three times the amount we did last year in spring. And that's been by design to try and gain as much experience as possible in this window. But that came at a cost of some depth issues so we weren't able to sustain it for two more days as planned."

At the end of Thursday's drills, in team standoffs, Max Hall completed 6-of-11 passes for 39 yards; Cade Cooper was 4-of-8 for 62 yards, one touchdown and an interception.