BYU football: Francis Bernard to redshirt 2017 season

BYU football announced on Thursday that Francis Bernard will be redshirting for the 2017 season.

Just before BYU football scrimmaged at LaVell Edwards Stadium, the Cougars announced Francis Bernard is redshirting the season.

The announcement comes after plenty of rumor and speculation regarding his status.

Bernard hadn’t been participating in practice this week and missed the scrimmage last Friday.

With Bernard out, expect to see plenty of Adam Pulsipher and Isaiah Kaufusi on the field for BYU football.

Bernard will continue to practice with the team all season and he’ll be involved in all other team activities.

The 6-foot-1, 240-pound linebacker was an important piece of BYU football’s defensive unit a season ago. He posted 80 total tackles and had two sacks and three interceptions.

BYU football said he is redshirting for personal reasons.

Bernard also missed the Poinsettia Bowl victory over Wyoming last season.

The Cougar defense has plenty of talent, but the linebacking group wasn’t particularly deep. At the same time, Pulsipher has played well throughout the fall.

A blow like this isn’t a critical one for the Cougars, but he will certainly be missed. It will be particularly difficult to replace Bernard’s athleticism on the field.

It will, however, put more pressure on Fred Warner and Butch Pau’u – but if you had to pick two players to heap pressure on, it would be them.

BYU football will host Portland State on August 26. It’s unlikely the Cougars will miss Bernard too much against the Vikings. But the next week against LSU might be an entirely different story.

At this point, we hope that Bernard can work through whatever he’s dealing with. It’s easy to forget players are human, but this is something bigger than football. The Cougars will roll on, and we hope Bernard does the same.