BYU football: Cougars want end to their recent string of injuries

PROVO — A week into fall camp, the BYU coaching staff is straddling a fine line between giving the players enough work and avoiding injuries.

With that in mind, coach Bronco Mendenhall scaled back the number of plays during a windy, rainy Saturday morning scrimmage at LaVell Edwards Stadium. Instead of 70 plays, as originally planned, Mendenhall reduced the number of snaps to about 25 fewer than that.

The scrimmage capped the first week of fall camp.

"We've gotten a lot done. I think we have a good football team," Mendenhall said of his impressions of the past week. "The undercurrent is now managing injuries to continue to get this team prepared to play for the season without losing any more key players. That's really the big dilemma now — how much physical work, which we do need, against injury prevention."

The most glaring injury woes are at the offensive line, where two starters, left tackle Matt Reynolds (broken hand) and left guard Jason Speredon (torn rotator cuff) are out. While Reynolds is likely to be ready to play in the season-opener against Oklahoma on Sept. 5, Speredon will be sidelined for the season.

Those personnel losses may have contributed to mistakes on the offensive line on Saturday, as holding and false start penalties piled up.

"I thought we did a lot of good things and a lot of bad things," said quarterback Max Hall, who completed 18-of-21 passes for 189 yards and an 11-yard touchdown pass to McKay Jacobson, which was the only TD by the first-team offense on the day.

"We had a lot of penalties — holding, offsides, things like that," Hall continued. "But what I was proud of was we stayed with it, we managed it and we were still able to get into the end zone. There's a lot of things we have to iron out and work on. All in all, I thought it was a pretty good day for the offense."

On the O-line, depth is a major concern, as the Cougars are down to 11 healthy offensive linemen in camp. The coaching staff is making the necessary adjustments.

"Almost every player now on our offensive line will be cross-trained," Mendenhall said. "Centers will be playing guard, guards will be playing tackle, tackles, in one case, could be playing center. That's how we're going to have to establish our depth."

What does Hall think of his line, which has two redshirt freshmen — Braden Hansen at left tackle and Marco Thorson at left guard — starting at this point?