With LJ Martin sidelined, BYU’s offense has turned into the Bear Bachmeier show.
And that’s not just a catchy label. In last week’s 24-10 win over Iowa State, Bachmeier threw for 329 yards and two touchdowns and added 109 rushing yards on only nine carries, accounting for 438 of BYU’s 506 total yards. He was the engine, the playmaker and, at times, the entire attack.
That kind of workload has become the central issue as BYU heads into Saturday night’s matchup with No. 2 Notre Dame.
Martin, the Cougars’ all-conference running back, was injured the previous week in the rain against TCU after coming off a 332-yard rushing performance against Colorado State. He is expected to miss four to six weeks, and without him, the Cougars have leaned hard on their sophomore quarterback.
The result has been obvious. Against Iowa State, BYU’s offense looked like Bachmeier and a long list of empty spaces. When he got moving, the Cyclones couldn’t stop him.
“When you get (Bachmeier) on the move, you’ve got to be able to tackle him,” said ISU coach Jimmy Rogers. “He had 109 yards rushing on nine attempts.
We knew that he could use his legs. We expected him to run the ball, we just didn’t stop them.”
Bachmeier was the fix a week earlier, too, after Martin left the TCU game in the first quarter. Early in the third quarter, he powered through multiple defenders on a designed quarterback draw for a 21-yard touchdown. TCU couldn’t bring him down then, either.
He’s no longer just the unusual freshman novelty who arrived last season with the burly frame, the odd jersey number and the physical style that had an opposing coach calling him a “centaur.” Bachmeier is starting to look like one of the major names in BYU’s Quarterback U lineage.
Last week’s outing put him in rare company. He became only the third BYU quarterback to throw for 300 yards and rush for 100 yards in a game, joining eventual NFL stars Steve Young and Taysom Hill.
There aren’t many quarterbacks who play like this. Bachmeier is a football player first, a mobile 6-foot-2, 230-pound sophomore who seems to look for contact.
He’s the kind of player who could fit at linebacker, tight end, running back, defensive end or strong safety. He’s also proved to be a more polished passer than the Tebow-or-Taysom comparison usually suggests.
Through five games, Bachmeier has thrown for 1,033 yards and eight touchdowns and run for 239 yards and four scores. He’s averaging 8.9 yards per pass attempt and has thrown just one interception.
The load has been heavy all season. Bachmeier ran and passed for four touchdowns against Utah Tech and Arizona to open the year, then handed things over to Martin against Colorado State. In the last two games, though, he has led BYU in both passing and rushing.
That dependence can cut both ways. Saturday night against Notre Dame, everyone will be watching the same thing: whether BYU can keep riding Bachmeier this hard, or whether the Irish can force the Cougars to show something else.
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Sitake knows this version of Notre Dame brings far more than reputation, pointing to its depth and its recent run of wins while also showing clear respect for the staff and the standard the program has built. The matchup also carries some history for BYU beyond the nostalgia, with previous meetings giving the Cougars reasons to believe and Sitakes coaching record against the Irish adding another layer to a game that already feels bigger than a typical nonconference date. [Read more 🡒]