Obviously the practices are run diffrent from one coach to the next. It is difficult to determine the readiness or success of a team by looking at the way they run practices. Example, John Gagliardi has the most collegiate wins of any football coach in history. His techniques and practice sessions were very unique. No whistles were used, very little to no yelling, no blocking or tackling sleds were used and the practices were usually only 60-90 minutes. I have seen successful teams that scrimmage 80% of their practice session and other teams that scrimmage very little.

I think Bronco is a good football coach but not good coach of coaches. The issue, I think, is that Bronco was not good at hiring or developing assistant coaches, which for the most part teach technique and run home the prwcrices. I am trying to think of any coaches that left the BYU program for head coaching or coordinator jobs that Bronco hired attend were sucessful.
Lavelle was not a great x and o guy but he knew how to hire assitance and develop the program. Look at how many ex coaches left to become head coaches, look at his coaching tree, look at how many offensive coordinators BYU went through in Lavelle first 10-15 years.