Great Moments from 2016: Jake the Make

In the 2016-17 season, the BYU Cougars produced many sports gems worthy of review. The first of a series looking back on the iconic moments that made the season memorable.

For fans of the BYU Cougars, the summer is hot and dry.  Any stray drop of Cougar sports news will have them on their hands and knees with a straw.

Transfers, commits, and media day make up the dribbles that sustain when the heat is high.

But these sips are seldom (never) enough. To help tide you over, I present a series of stories that defined Cougar sports in 2016.

Jake the Make

BYU football was embarking on a new era.

The Y makes coaching changes at a glacial pace compared to most of college football. They’ve only had four head coaches since 1972. Even assistants tend to linger for decades.

But to kick off 2016, the Cougars were one coach shy of a clean sweep. Kalani Sitake returned to his alma mater as the new head coach, bringing with him legendary Heisman winner Ty Detmer as offensive coordinator, and Ilaisa Tuiaki as DC.

All three men had never been in that position at the D1 level before. And with new staff, the offensive and defensive schemes received a complete flip. Gone was Robert Anae’s “Go fast, go hard” system, and in came Detmer’s pro-style set.

The linebacker-strong 3-4 defense Bronco Mendenhall had championed so well went out the window, and Tuiaki and Sitake plotted to inject the 4-3 scheme they’d had so much success with in the Pac-12.

To test it, the season’s first opponent was the Pac-12’s Arizona Wildcats. The promise of this catfight in the new Y football age drew tens of thousands of Cougar faithful far from home to Glendale, AZ.  It should have been a neutral site game favoring the ‘Cats, but blue-and-white-decked fans made University of Phoenix Stadium BYU football’s home ground.

It was no barn burner. Despite 162 yards from Jamaal Williams, exploding into his senior season after a year away, overall offensive firepower was in short supply.

The Cougar defense looked particularly poised, and helped bottle up Arizona to a 15-3 lead. But two crisp drives and a failed 2-point conversion put the Wildcats in front 16-15 with 1:26 left on the clock.

Contributing to this low scoring was a truly shaky maiden voyage for the Cougar’s starting kicker, Rhett Almond. He’d whiffed on both a field goal and (possibly more damning) a PAT after his first two kicks barely tumbled through the uprights.

So after Taysom Hill drove the offence into field goal range, and the playcalling became conservative, Cougar fans across the nation felt the dark hand of doubt clutch their throats.

Sure enough, coach Sitake chose to go for the 33 yard field goal attempt instead of try for a long conversion. After the unhappy adventure that was the kicking game thus far in the game, there wasn’t a lot of faith going around.

Up stepped freshman kicker Jake Oldroyd.

Oldroyd, for his first career Division-I attempt. Oldroyd, whose bright green cleats still had grass stuck in them from high school, probably. Jake Oldroyd, with one kick to usher in the new era of BYU football. With 8 seconds to go, for the game. 

And like a cold-blooded killer, he nailed it. Right down the middle.

Oldroyd didn’t kick another field goal for BYU football. Injury dogged him the rest of the season, and Almond stepped back up admirably to do the work. With a mission plans already laid, Jake won’t be seen again in the blue and white until 2019.

But for his first (and only) career kick, in a momentous game for the new era of BYU football, he was magical.

Check back for more great BYU Cougars moments from 2016.