LaVell's Last Stand

Football Digest, Dec, 2000 by Steve Richardson

LaVell Edwards is putting the final touches on his remarkable coaching career at BYU

LAVELL EDWARDS' DIZZYING, 29-YEAR RIDE TO the mountaintop in Provo, Utah, will end after the 2000 season. But the legacy of one of the greatest coaches the college game has ever seen promises to live on.

The 70-year-old Edwards figures to rank sixth in Division I-A, in career victories at the end of this season. The Brigham Young coach will be best remembered, however, for his knack for developing quaterbacks, such as Gary Sheide, Gilford Nielsen, Marc Wilson, Jim McMahon, Steve Young, Robbie Bosco, Ty Detmer, and Steve Sarkisian. As a collective group, these signalcallers have made BYU college football's most exciting offensive team during the last quarter of a century.

Edwards has produced nine first-round NFL draft picks. 31 All-Americans, a Heisman Trophy Winner, four Davey O'Brien National Quarterback of the Year winners, two Outland Trophy winners, and a long list of assistants who have gone on to jobs in the NFL or other schools. But all of that soon will be history. And Edwards, who actually had signed a five-year contract extension in 1999 before deciding to retire, is in the midst of his swan song this season and is picking up all the gold watches and accolades he so richly deserves.

"Last winter I made the decision to coach for only one more season," Edwards said last August. "I have been wrestling with the timing of announcing the decision. After seeing the outstanding attitude and work ethic of this team, I came to the conclusion that it's best to get the announcement out of the way now so we can focus on the season and avoid the repeated distractions that come from questions about my retirement."

Edwards says his career "turned out a whole lot better than I ever dreamed." BYU has paced Division I-A in passing seven times under Edwards, who, in his 28 full seasons, has led the Cougars to 27 winning records. 20 conference titles, and 20 bowl games. Entering 2000, his BYU quarterbacks had thrown more than 11,000 passes for more than 100,000 yards and 635 touchdowns.

"He is the one who made the decision to pass the ball and be exciting," says Nielsen, a BYU quarterback from 1975 to 1977. "I remember also playing basketball at BYU. I was recruited for both. He hired Doug Scovil as an assistant coach from the pros and helped make this happen for us. We put the passing game together, and we started getting recognition and won like BYU had never won before."

In 1972, Edwards inherited a Brigham Young University football program that couldn't even claim bragging rights in its own state. The Cougars had won only five of 47 previous meetings against Utah, and the previous six head coaches all had posted losing overall records. BYU was hardly synonymous with college football success.

That would change, though. "LaVell Edwards brought the passing game to college football," says Gil Brandt, former player personnel director of the Dallas Cowboys and a current consultant for several NFL teams. "And by bringing it into college football, he made it possible for teams with lesser ability like BYU to compete for a championship on all levels, whether it be the Mountain West or the Big Sky. That's what he has done. Before he was there, they tried to run it, and they won two or three games a year."

BYU had the nation's leading rusher during the 1972 season, Pete Van Valkenburg, who averaged 138.6 yards per game. It also led the Western Athletic Conference in rushing defense that season. The result? The Cougars lost four games. In 1973, BYU posted Edwards' only losing record at the school (5-6) before the passing game started to develop under Dewey Warren, a former Tennessee quarterback whom Edwards hired to help the team go airborne.

Then came Scovil, who eventually left, came back, and left again. A number of other notable coaches flocked to BYU, including Dave Kragthorpe, Norm Chow, Ted Tollner, Mike Holmgren, and Wally English. Holmgren, now the coach and general manager of the Seattle Seahawks, was quarterbacks coach under Edwards. Current NFL head coaches Brian Billick of the Baltimore Ravens and Andy Reid of the Philadelphia Eagles played for Edwards, and University of California head coach Tom Holmoe played and coached for him. San Diego State coach Ted Tollner and Alabama quarterbacks coach Charlie Stubbs also were assistants at BYU.

Edwards' assistant coaches and quarterbacks were disciples of a disciplined passing game, not a fire-at-will attack. "Even though these coaches kept leaving, the passing game kept getting better," Nielsen says. "The constant was LaVell--he kept things going the way he wanted. He was brilliant The way we thought of the passing game, it was a conservative offense, like LaVell. And the more conservative we were with our decisions, the better we got.

"This wasn't all about throwing it down field as far as we could--it was a very disciplined passing game. People tend to look at this as a wide-open offense where we are throwing it all over the field. It was conservative. If we made the proper decisions, we were telling the defenders: `No matter what decision you make, it is wrong.' We didn't have world-class sprinters, but we had good, solid players who knew the passing game. If the deep pass wasn't there, we would go to the intermediate pass. If it was not there, we would check off to another receiver."