When 6-foot-6 BYU receiver Kyler Kasper told his teammates and coaches he could throw a pretty good long pass a few weeks ago, they didn't really believe him.
But all it took was one toss by the Oregon transfer to convince gadget-play designer and offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick that he had found his man.
"I told them I could throw, and they were like, 'Yeah, yeah, whatever, we will see,'" Kasper told the Deseret News Tuesday about the preparations for what eventually became a 15-yard touchdown pass to quarterback Bear Bachmeier in the Cougars' 28-24 win over Notre Dame last week.
"We just had a tryout at practice, and I went out there first and threw a good ball, and then that was that," Kasper said. "They were like, 'All right, yup, you're doing it.'"
In the second quarter at LaVell Edwards Stadium, with BYU trailing 10-7 and the Cougars looking at first down after a 9-yard Preston Rex run on third-and-6, Roderick dialed up the exact same play BYU ran in 2022 in an eventual 26-20 double-overtime win over Baylor.
In that one, receiver Chase Roberts threw a 22-yard touchdown pass to quarterback Jaren Hall.
Roderick's version of how Kasper won the job: "We literally did have a tryout, and he nailed it on the first throw, and I didn't even let the other guys throw. I just said, 'OK, tryout's over. He's got it.' So he won it on the first throw, and he threw it perfectly all week in practice. We went in the game with a lot of confidence that that play was going to work."
Neither Roderick nor Kasper would divulge the name of the play Tuesday as the No. 2 Cougars prepared to take on UCF in Orlando this Saturday (1:30 p.m. MDT, Fox), but back then a few players referred to it as the "Philly Special" because the Eagles had run a version of it in the Super Bowl in 2018.
For his part, Kasper said he figured it was going to be successful the second he let it fly from across the field.
"I saw the one player near Bear, but I saw no one else around there," Kasper said. "So I was like, 'Yeah, as long as that guy gets blocked, it is a touchdown.'"
Center Bruce Mitchell made the block, and Bachmeier waltzed into the end zone. Roderick said Kasper is already asking for more throws down the road.
"Yeah, I had a good amount of text messages and stuff like that," Kasper said. "A lot of them were calling me quarterback, things like that, and laughing about it. But yeah, it was cool."
BYU Cougars quarterback Bear Bachmeier (47), right, celebrates after scoring a touchdown during a football game against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026. | Tess Crowley, Deseret News
