Aaron Roderick is 'Not in a Hurry' to Decide on the BYU Starting Quarterback

There is no end in sight for the BYU quarterback competition

BYU quarterbacks Gerry Bohanon and Jake Retzlaff during the first week of Fall camp / BYU Photo

On Saturday, BYU kicked off the first scrimmage of 2024 Fall camp. The scrimmage consisted of 102 plays, most of which were live. The starting quarterback job is still up for grabs after the first scrimmage and there is no specific end in sight.

"We're getting there but I'm not in a hurry," BYU offensive coordiantor Aaron Roderick said on Monday. "We're going to just keep playing for a little bit...my experience with these things is usually the decision gets made on the field. It gets to a point where everyone on the team knows. Then when we say who the starter is everyone says 'yeah duh'. That's what we're looking for. We're not quite there. It's a good battle. We'll keep going for a while. There's no rush."

Last week, Gerry Bohanon had a really good week and, in the opinion of this author, started to create some separation from Jake Retzlaff. After a solid performance from Retzlaff in the scrimmage and a crisp performance on Monday, however, Retzlaff has showed that he's capable of winning the job as well.

"It's starting to form," Kalani Sitake said on the quarterback competition. "When we get there and we're ready to announce something then we'll do that. But right now I'm really happy with the way the two guys are competing and I'm looking forward to seeing them progress. I think all the quarterbacks have gotten better."

Both Roderick and Sitake have emphasized that these decisions happen naturally throughout the course of camp. "Those [decisions] have to happen naturally," Sitake said. "It's not anything we can force feed or create a deadline on...when it's right then we'll be able to announce it, but now is not the time."

Sitake told the media that he'd like to have a decision announced by game week, if possible.

Roderick would like to have a decision sooner rather than later, but doubled down on the idea that there is no deadline. "When Zach and Jaren were here we made the decision like three days before the first game," Roderick said. "I would like it to be sooner than that but there's no deadline."

He even left the door open to a dual-quarterback system to start the season, although he said that's "not how [he] wants it to go". "I don't want to do that, but I would never say never," Roderick said. "That's not how I want it to go."

BYU kicks off the 2024 season in 18 days against Southern Illinois.