After one last scrimmage, BYU turns attention to Navy, defending the triple option

PROVO — As with most years of fall training camp, BYU has been focused on itself for nearly three weeks.

Drills have become crisper. Throws have become tighter. Routes have become more precise.

The only opponent the Cougars were worried about was themselves, in the form of some end-of-day 7-on-7 work or a week-ending scrimmage between the offense and defense.

After Thursday, that will change.

After one final scrimmage of fall camp Thursday, BYU will set sails to prepare for Navy, the Cougars’ season-opening opponent Sept. 7 in Annapolis, Maryland (6 p.m. MT, ESPN). The Labor Day showdown will be among the most-watched in college football, with a national television audience on the Worldwide Leader in Sports before Monday Night Football pushes the NFL to a football-starved audience in the fall.

And all that is, of course, assuming the coronavirus pandemic hasn’t canceled the remainder of the season for the roughly half of FBS teams that remain in the sport. Halfway across the country, programs like North Carolina and Notre Dame pressed "pause" on fall camp as their campuses struggled to deal with a high number of positive test results for COVID-19 just a week after welcoming students back.

But BYU can’t worry about that last part. All it can worry about is Navy. And after Thursday, the Cougars will need to ramp up their preparations for the Midshipmen.

“I think going after the scrimmage, we’ll make that switch and do a lot of scout team work,” BYU coach Kalani Sitake said. “But we’ve been doing a lot of Navy prep since we knew about that game.

“That’s been a little bit of the delay on our defense not performing their best — we’re splitting our time on different schemes.”

The Cougars haven’t faced the U.S. Naval Academy since 1989, and the Midshipmen are 1-1 against BYU before the rubber match.

But one player will be plenty familiar with the other sideline.

BYU linebacker Pepe Tanuvasa originally signed with head coach Ken Niumatalolo’s program out of high school. He played in 13 games for the Mids in 2018, amassing 32 tackles as a freshman. But Tanuvasa, a high school rugby player who also served a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Florida, expects to be full-go against his former team by the time Sept. 7 rolls around.

“When I heard the game first announced, it was a mix of emotions — I was excited to play against my friends still playing for Navy,” said Tanuvasa, a junior. “I know the caliber of team they are, and I know coach Ken runs a very tight ship. I’m looking forward to this game; I know it’s going to be a really good one.”

The Navy game was a last-minute adjustment, only brought on by the Cougars’ furious scrambling for a schedule after as many as eight games were canceled.

The Mids, too, were in a tight place. Originally scheduled to open the season against Notre Dame in Dublin, Ireland, that historic rivalry was eventually moved stateside to Annapolis due to the pandemic, and then canceled when the Fighting Irish temporarily joined the ACC and adopted a conference schedule.

Through all the changes, however, Tanuvasa said the Cougars are striving to stay focused on the positive. Among them: they’re still playing. Plenty of college football players have opted out of the season, either by choice or by conference decisions such as those made by the Big Ten, Pac-12 and Mountain West conferences (among others).

“The team is definitely still having a positive attitude,” Tanuvasa said. “I know we are doing everything within our realm of influence to be prepared for a full season.”

Navy’s patented triple-option represents a unique challenge for the Cougars, who have scarcely seen the offensive scheme in its foray into independence — certainly not since departing the Mountain West in 2011, when BYU annually faced the Air Force Academy.

When asked after Thursday's scrimmage what experience he has coaching against the option, BYU defensive coordinator Ilaisa Tuiaki was quick with a response.

“I’ve had zero,” he said, before jokingly adding, “Next question?”

In fairness to Tuiaki, the Cougars haven’t faced an option opponent since the Falcons in those Mountain West days — a span that predates the entire coaching staff.

Prior to his time at BYU, Tuiaki spent a season as linebackers and special teams coach at Oregon State for one season, and coached the defensive line at Utah from 2012-14 — after the Utes had been elevated to the Pac-12. Prior to then, he was an offensive coach, including three years managing the running backs at Utah State from 2009-11.

Despite its historic roots, the option is an uncommon offense in modern college football. Plenty of coaches and players have never faced it or tried to run it — which makes BYU’s back-to-back (as currently scheduled) games against Navy and Army on Sept. 7 and Sept. 19 something of an anomaly.

Still, two things stand out about the scheme, Sitake was quick to say.

“Discipline and toughness are the two big things, I think, when you look at these teams (that run the option),” Sitake said. “I’ve had experience with it in the past; I’ve seen it. There’s a lot of different ways to defend it. When it comes down to it, that option is based on taking advantage of someone being undisciplined and trying to do too much instead of their 1/11th on the field.”

Navy will be the first of at least two teams on the Cougars’ schedule that runs the option; BYU recently confirmed a two-game series with fellow military academy Army, beginning Sept. 19 on the military base in West Point, New York, another road trip to the eastern seaboard to face a service academy for what could become a well-traveled FBS independent team in search of games.

And while the two run a similar base package, the nuances of the triple option include many unique wrinkles from the Midshipmen.

In many ways, Niumatalolo and his staff have perfected the scheme that feels more like a throwback to the old glory days of college football, when it resembled contemporary rugby as much as the pass-heavy spread systems and pro-style schemes popular in the NFL now.

Navy’s triple option demands respect.

“They’re going to test your toughness,” Sitake said. “I think both those things (discipline and toughness) should fit our culture really well. But they’re experts at it, so we’ll see how it goes. They finished ranked last year with a really talented team … This team is talented and well-coached. I know they’ll have these guys ready, and they will test us.”

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