Lofty goals: BYU football locked in on even more success in 2025 | News, Sports, Jobs

By Pune Media On Apr 2, 2025

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BYU senior quarterback Jake Retzlaff smiles after a good play during a spring camp practice at the indoor practice facility in Provo on Saturday, March 15, 2025.

Jaren Wilkey, BYU Photo

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BYU football players run a play during a scrimmage at LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo on Monday, March 17, 2025.

Jaren Wikley, BYU Photo

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: BYU senior quarterback Jake Retzlaff smiles after a good play during a spring camp practice at the indoor practice facility in Provo on Saturday, March 15, 2025.

: BYU football players run a play during a scrimmage at LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo on Monday, March 17, 2025.

Spring football has ended for BYU, and the goals for 2025 couldn’t be any loftier.

There is no reason for the Cougars to talk down their chances, even though it gives keyboard warriors on the internet plenty to pounce on if things don’t go as planned.

This team wants it all.

“We’re talking about winning big games, of course, and we’re talking about winning a Big 12 championship,” BYU quarterback Jake Retzlaff said. “We want to go to the college football playoffs and compete for a national championship.”

But Retzlaff said the team is more focused on competing and improving on a daily basis.

“When it comes to talking about the standard, the best process is not about the results,” he said. “The best process is about the process. For us, it’s about the daily things. It’s the small things. Our locker room, if I go down there right now, it should be clean. If not, then we’re having conversations. Everything from your locker to the way your stuff is kept in order to the school work, all that stuff. It is the standard, which means it’s how you live. It’s how you do things and what you get on top of that is great. It’s gravy.”

Safety Tanner Wall said the Cougars are approaching the 2025 season in the right way.

“I feel strongly that last season was huge for us in building our confidence and giving us an understanding of our ceiling, right?” he said. “What we’re capable of. We know that we’re a championship caliber team, right? We have the talent, we have the scheme, we have the coaching and all of the resources. Everything in the equation is there for us.

“It’s just our job now to go execute and make that happen. I think we’ve got a great sense of urgency and responsibility, especially as the veteran leaders on the team. We’ve got to make this happen and make sure everyone expects and believes that it is possible for us. We want to do that.”

The Cougars are well aware of last year’s Big 12 predictions vs. the actual outcome, where the teams expected to finish on top were at the bottom of the standings and the teams expected to finish at the bottom were at the top, including BYU.

“That was kind of the story of last off-season for us was, ‘OK, don’t pay attention to the noise, don’t listen to what other people expect of us,’” Wall said. “Really, all that matters is what we expect in this room, amongst our 123 guys and our coaches. So coming into this next off-season, it’s going to be kind of the same message. Like, ‘The preseason poll, you’re picked in the Top 20.’ We can’t let that distract us from being motivated to go out and accomplish what we need to.

“We can’t be ‘everyone thinks we’re good now, so we can kind of just chill and put it in cruise control.’ We’ve got to keep our foot on the gas and go accomplish what we know we can. Complacency is a huge part of that, staying humble and not just thinking that winning just comes. We have to go build that into everything that we do.”

BYU won its first nine games in 2024 and essentially came within nine points and a convoluted tiebreaker of making the Big 12 Championship Game.

Offensive lineman Bruce Mitchell said the accomplishments of 2024 revealed to the players their potential for 2025.

“We haven’t sat down as a team and made some goals, but I think a lot of us are on the same page in terms of what we want to do,” Mitchell said. “We want to win the Big 12 and we want to dominate the Big 12, and hopefully we can do that. We came a little short of that goal last year. I think the main goal of spring was everyone to get better. We accomplished that. Offense, defense … I’m not on special teams much but I’m sure they did it. If you could watch spring practice 1 to our last practice, you’d see everybody got better.”

Carson Ryan is a newcomer at tight end who transferred from the University of Utah.

“We’ve got to get to the playoffs,” Ryan said. “They’re talking about how they regretted not being able to make the playoffs last year, how close we were as a team. With our talent level, with the guys coming back and replace the spots that we lost guys, we can press forward and win the Big 12 championship, make the playoffs and get into the national championship.

“We’ve got a lot of high expectations for ourselves and we know as a team with high expectations, you’ve got to work hard for it. We’ve been holding ourselves to a high standard this offseason conditioning-wise, football-wise and mentally. We can’t be taking days off, or skipping extra workouts or film sessions. We need those because every little bit counts.”

Linebacker Isaiah Glasker put the team’s goals even more simply.

“Just to get to the tournament, basically, and then to win a national championship,” he said. “But first you’ve got to win the Big 12 championship. So if we could get there, that would really be great.”

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