For the last three seasons, Connor Pay and Brayden Keim have been mainstays on the BYU offensive line. Oklahoma State transfer Caleb Etienne joined those two in 2023 and also vaulted to a leadership role in the offensive line room.
What happens now, with those three stalwarts from the 11-2 season heading off to take a shot at making an NFL roster? Offensive line coach TJ Woods said there is a leadership void to fill, and how that pans out will go a long way in determining whether this 2025 group is as productive as the 2024 group.
“Losing Brayden, losing Connor, losing Caleb will be tough,” Woods said midway through spring camp. “I don’t know if I can overstate the impact of those guys not being here. They had a big presence to them, all of them.”
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Two candidates to fill the void are senior left guard Weylin Lapuaho and junior center Bruce Mitchell, perhaps the two most dynamic guys coming back in 2025. Other probable starters in Woods’ second season running BYU’s O line are tackles — Colorado transfer Isaiah Jatta and Michigan transfer Andrew Gentry.
The starting right guard is up for grabs, currently, with juniors Sonny Makasini, Austin Leausa and Kyle Sfarcioc, a transfer from SUU, in the running.
While Pay, who never had trouble coming up with some quotable content for reporters, will be sorely missed as one of the bigger personalities to come through Provo in awhile, Lapuaho isn’t bad in front of a microphone, either.
“Weylin has a way of keeping everybody loose,” Mitchell said.
Lapuaho had surgery on his ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) on the inner side of his elbow and missed spring camp while recovering. However, he was at practice almost every day,…
Source link : https://www.deseret.com/sports/2025/04/27/byu-football-cougars-offensive-line-2025-woods-lapuaho-jatta-mitchell/
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Publish date : 2025-04-28 02:52:00
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