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The 4 Lessons We Learned About BYU During the 2025 Season

Casey Lundquist|
BYU quarterback Bear Bachmeier in the Pop-Tarts Bowl against Georgia Tech
BYU quarterback Bear Bachmeier in the Pop-Tarts Bowl against Georgia Tech | BYU Photo

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BYU Cougars

The 2025 BYU football season is in the rearview mirror. While the preparation for the 2026 season is well underway, we're looking back at 2025 to recap the four biggest lessons we learned.

Lesson 1: Bear Bachmeier Can Be the Long-Term Answer at Quarterback

When Bear Bachmeier made his first career start against Portland State, he became the fourth different quarterback to start a season opener for BYU in the last four years. For as much continuity as BYU has had across the roster (more on that in a moment), there has not been continuity at quarterback.

Well Bear Bachmeier certainly looks like the long-term soluation at quarterback. Bachmeier got better and better seemingly every week as a true freshman. He was slowly brought along by Aaron Roderick and by the end of the season, he carried BYU to a bowl win over Georgia Tech.

Bachmeier has both the tangibles and intangibles needed to succeed at the highest levels in college football. BYU hit a home run in Bear Bachmeier - now they just need to keep him in Provo for many years.

Lesson 2: Kalani Sitake Has Found a Winning Formula in This Era of College Football

This is an unprecedented era of college football. Some of college football's best coaches have struggled to make the transition to this new era. Look no further than Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State. Gundy struggled to adapt to the new era of college football, and Oklahoma State fired Gundy after a legendary run as Oklahoma State's head coach.

Kalani Sitake has found a winning formula, and he has done it with culture. The 2025 season proved that BYU's 2024 success was not a flash in the pan. The Cougars are now 23-4 in their last 27 games. And that is with the least talented rosters that BYU will have for the forseeable future. The way that BYU's recruiting has trended, the talent will get better and better over the next few years. BYU looks poised to become one of the perennial powers in the Big 12.

Lesson 3: There is a Higher Tier That BYU Can Only Reach with More Talent

BYU beat everyone on its schedule in 2025 with the exception of Texas Tech. And both games against the Red Raiders were not competitive. Texas Tech would go on to get shutout in the College Football Playoff against Oregon.

There is a higher tier of college football that BYU will only be able to reach with more high-end talent.

For example, in Alabama's win over Oklahoma, Alabama wide receiver Germie Bernard made one of the best catches of the college football season. Bernard went up and caught a ball that 98% of receivers would not have caught. That catch setup Alabama's game-sealing touchdown.

In games against Texas Tech, BYU just didn't have enough high-level skill players to beat Tech's athletes. In games against elite teams in the playoffs, sometimes it just comes down to one-on-one matchups. Germie Bernard won the one-on-one matchup and helped Alabama beat Oklahoma. BYU needs more game-breaking players. That's much easier said than done.

Where BYU struggled the most against Texas Tech was along the offensive line. BYU couldn't contain the Texas Tech pass rush without adding a tight end, a running back, or both to the backfield. The good news for BYU fans is this need is already being addressed. BYU has recruited some elite offensive linemen in the last few classes.

Bott Mulitalo, Jax Tanner, Ethan Thomason, Alai Kalaniuvalu, and Austin Pay picked BYU over some of the biggest brands in the sport. Then there are players like Andrew Williams and Siosua Latu-Finau that had a host of P4 schools recruiting them as well.

Missions will complicate the matriculation of all the young talent. BYU might need to continue to use the transfer portal for a few more years to build out the offensive line.

Lesson 4: Roster Retention Has Been the Secret Ingredient to BYU's Success

The last two years, BYU has prioritized retaining its roster instead of pushing players out and backfilling them with transfers. That decision has paid off.

BYU needs to continue to be a program that relies on roster retention instead of playing the year-to-year transfer portal game like Texas Tech. To be clear, BYU will still need to use the transfer portal to bring in quality players. But the volume of transfers will be in the ballpark of 8-12 instead of 20-30.

Rosters built through the transfer portal can be boom or bust. The 2025 season was perhaps the greatest example of that in recent memory. Texas Tech has become the face for programs that build through the transfer portal. Obviously, it worked out for Texas Tech in 2025. All the pieces came together, particularly on defense, and they had a top three defense in the country.

Texas Tech finished second nationally in the transfer portal rankings last year. The team that finished first? LSU. The same LSU that fired its head coach and never clicked as a team. Here were the 10 teams that finished in the top 10 of the transfer portal rankings last year.

  1. LSU
  2. Texas Tech
  3. Miami
  4. Ole Miss
  5. Oregon
  6. Florida State
  7. Missouri
  8. Auburn
  9. UNC
  10. Kentucky

In the top 10 are three of the four national semifinalists: Oregon, Miami, and Ole Miss. Obviously, pairing talented transfers with already talented rosters worked out well for those schools.

Then there are schools like Florida State who finished 5-7, Missouri who didn't beat a team above .500, Auburn who fired its head coach and missed a bowl game, Kentucky who fired its head coach, and UNC who was one of the worst P4 teams in the country.

BYU finished 83rd in last year's transfer portal rankings which was dead last in the Big 12. That didn't matter in the end as BYU beat everyone in the league not named Texas Tech.

Bringing in a top 10 transfer class is very expensive, and history suggests the hit rate is around 50%. The key to long-term success will be building a program with high-level high school talent and retaining that talent. That is the model that BYU is working towards.

As of this writing, BYU has only lost nine players to the transfer portal. That is the second lowest in the league ahead of only TCU. However, TCU has lost some notable starters, headlined by quarterback Josh Hoover. As of Tuesday morning, BYU has not lost any starters to the transfer portal.

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Casey Lundquist
CASEY LUNDQUIST

Casey Lundquist is the publisher and lead editor of Cougs Daily. He has covered BYU athletics for the last four years. During that time, he has published over 2,000 stories that have reached more than three million people.

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