Bear Bachmeier’s deep ball has become one of the quiet reasons BYU looks so dangerous early in the season.
It showed up in a big way against Arizona last week, when Bachmeier used play-action and then dropped back to hit Legend Glasker for 61 yards, a throw that helped put the game away in the fourth quarter. That kind of strike changes how defenses have to play the Cougars. Suddenly, Glasker isn’t just another freshman receiver - he’s the kind of weapon that forces opponents to respect the back end of the field.
BYU takes that new layer into Saturday’s trip to Colorado State, where the No. 11 Cougars are 2-0 and favored over the 2-0 Rams in Fort Collins.
Kickoff is set for 5:30 p.m. MDT at Canvas Stadium, with CBS televising the game and radio coverage on 102.7 FM/1160 AM.
The Cougars already have plenty going for them. LJ Martain is a run threat, the receiving group is unusually tall, and the tight end room is loaded. Add in Glasker’s ability to stretch the field, and offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick suddenly has more ways to stress a defense.
So how did Bachmeier add that shot to his game?
According to John Beck, one of the instructors at 3DQB in Southern California, the answer came down to summer work, repetition and getting the mechanics right.
“I would just say he recognized it was an area that he wanted to be able to improve on, and that was just driving the ball downfield. And so, it’s not a capacity thing,” said Beck in a Thursday telephone chat with the Deseret News.
“It is being able to kind of harness what’s there and really get it in sequence. He’s a very powerful kid, you know.
That’s easy to see.
“He wanted to be able to drive the ball down the field easier and not have some of his balls downfield kind of hang on him and float, so that was a bit of an emphasis in some of our training things.”
Beck said the goal was not to create a new quarterback, but to help Bachmeier deliver the ball with better sequence and timing. On that 61-yard connection to Glasker, Bachmeier didn’t need to do anything dramatic.
“He just was able to set his feet and send a ball down that field that he was really happy about.”
That’s the key with Bachmeier’s development. It’s less about raw arm strength than finding the right launch point.
Beck described how quarterbacks spend so much of their lives making the shorter throws - behind the line of scrimmage, near it, or 15 to 20 yards downfield - that those mechanics become second nature. The deep ball asks for something different.
“Bear is a very twitchy individual, and he can get the ball out really fast, and he can change arm angles. He has all those things.
“And sometimes what happens is you build so much of your pattern based off of the throws that you make the majority of the time. And so for today’s offenses, there’re a lot of balls that are at the line of scrimmage, barely beyond the line of scrimmage.
You know, you play a lot of your game within 15 to 20 yards and in. So what can happen sometimes is a quarterback just builds his positions and his sequence in something like, ‘Oh, I can make that throw really quick.’
“They can build a body position where, because their upper body alone can just get the ball out there, it works. So for Bear, it was more of getting him to feel the right position and the right timing to be able to utilize his full capacity in delivering those balls downfield.”
Beck also pointed to Bachmeier’s baseball background and the way that can let a quarterback survive in less-than-perfect posture. Bachmeier can still get the ball out quickly and accurately because of his arm talent and twitchiness.
“Bear can do that. He doesn’t always have to be in the best platform to make a lot of the throws that he makes, and he gets the ball out very quickly when he does that.
“But the tough part is, when your body starts to learn that pattern and it starts to utilize that pattern the majority of the time, then when you go to find the position that you need to deliver a ball downfield, that’s less familiar, right? And so you’re utilizing a position and a platform that is built for the short to intermediate throws when trying to deliver a downfield throw.”
Through two games, Bachmeier has been sharp: 32 of 46 passing, 69.6% completions, 9.0 yards per completion, six touchdowns, no interceptions and a 188 pass efficiency rating.
And if the deep ball keeps showing up, BYU’s offense only gets harder to handle. The Cougars head to Colorado State with a new wrinkle that could keep defenses on their heels.
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