How BYU Quarterback Jake Retzlaff Stacked Up Against Big 12 Peers in 2024

Casey Lundquist | 2 Hours Ago

BYU quarterback Jake Retzlaff against Houston / BYU Photo

The quarterback battle was the primary storyline of the BYU offseason. Jake Retzlaff and Gerry Bohanon battled it out for the starting job until the end of Fall camp. In fact, BYU didn't announce the starting quarterback externally until the afternoon of week one. Midway through the 2024 season, Jake had silenced all doubters as he continued to improve and lead BYU to wins. Today, we're taking a look back at the 2024 season to evaluate Jake Retzlaff compared to his Big 12 peers (minimum 200 attempts).

Passing Yards

Starting off with the most basic metric: passing yards. Retzlaff threw for 2,745 yards in the regular season. How did that compare to other Big 12 quarterbacks? Here is the top 10:

Big 12 passing leaders in 2024 / BYU On S

Retzlaff ranked seventh in the conference just behind Brendan Sorsby. Retzlaff is on pace to throw for 2,975 yards in 2024 if you factor in the bowl game.

Quarterback Yards Per Attempt

Jake Retzlaff didn't throw as many passes as a handful of quarterbacks in the league. In terms of yards per attempt, Retzlaff ranked fourth behind only Sam Leavitt, Sawyer Robertson, and Jalon Daniels. Retzlaff was one of the most efficient quarterbacks when he dropped back to throw.

Big 12 passing leaders in yards per attempt / BYU On SI

Passing Touchdowns

One strength for Jake Retzlaff early in the season was passing in the redzone. Retzlaff's redzone production dipped in November, but in general, Retzlaff was pretty good in the redzone.

Big 12 passing touchdown leaders in 2024 / BYU On SI

PFF Offense Grades

PFF grades are one of the best ways to split out the impact a quarterback had on a game versus the pure statistical output. PFF strips out the noise and compares how a quarterback performed relative to the situations that they were put in. Were they making the right reads? How did they perform under pressure or when they were blitzed? Were they throwing receivers open or throwing to wide open receivers? All those things go into PFF grades.

In terms of PFF grades, Jake Retzlaff ranked third behind only Shedeur Sanders and Sam Leavitt.

1. Shedeur Sanders - 91.3
2. Sam Leavitt - 88.8
3. Jake Retzlaff - 83.9
4. Josh Hoover - 82.3
5. Sawyer Robertson - 81.6
6. Avery Johnson - 81.6
7. Garrett Greene - 81.1
8. Behren Morton - 77.7
9. Brendan Sorsby - 76.1
10. Noah Fifita - 76.0
11. Jalon Daniels - 75.2
12. Rocco Becht - 74.1
13. Alan Bowman - 71.0
14. Isaac Wilson - 49.3

By most measures, Jake Retzlaff was in the top half of Big 12 quarterbacks. He was opportunistic and he showed tons of growth in 2024 compared to 2023. Retzlaff has tons of potential, but he also has tons of room to improve - and that's probably the most intriguiging thing about this BYU football team going in to 2025. It's important to remember that he has only started 16 games for BYU. It's fair to expect a better version of Jake Retzlaff with another full offseason.

If Retzlaff can take another step forward, the Cougars could find themselves in conference title contention once again.