Arizona Football: High Snaps and Quarterbacks

This season’s Arizona football team has had it’s struggles both on offense and defense. Has the team finally figured out solutions to their high snap and quarterback problems?

Each game this season has had its share of excitement and disappointment, but recently two things have caught our eye as remaining questions going into this weekend’s Home Coming game against the Washington State Cougars, high snaps, and quarterbacks.

How have things changed since the start of Pac-12 play from the beginning of the season?

Things have changed since the start of the season. Anu Solomon was pegged as the starting quarterback and proved early on that he is seriously talented. Solomon had made it onto some award watch lists early on such as the Manning and the Polynesian Award watch list. Wildcats fans were excited!

Anu Solomon’s stats are nothing to sneeze at so far in the season given that he has not played entirely in the last several games. Anu has earned a 62.6% pass completion percentage, passing 114 times for 1,404 yards, 13 touchdowns, and no interceptions. Add to that 29 carries for 89 yards and he has earned almost 1,500 total offensive yards thus far.

Jerrard Randall’s stats look a little different, the emphasis for Randall is on his rushing yards. As far as rushing, Randall has rushed 48 times for 548 total yards and five touchdowns. That’s six times as many yards as Solomon. You have to consider that, for the first couple of games, Randall was playing as a running back. On passing, he has completed 24 passes for a total of 278 yards, two touchdowns, and one interception. Randall’s pass completion percentage is 48%.

What was the turning point?

UCLA came to Tucson for College GameDay in late September, and the hype for the game was off the charts. Someone in UCLA’s program decided it would be a great idea for the Bruins to run out of the locker room with their flags at the SAME TIME as the home team, our Wildcats, ran onto the field flags flying high.

It was rude and disrespectful, but it worked for the Bruins who worked on making things difficult for Solomon. That worked too.

Jason Scheer was right.

Sep 3, 2015; Tucson, AZ, USA; Arizona Wildcats quarterback Anu Solomon (12) warms up before the first quarter against the Texas-San Antonio Roadrunners at Arizona Stadium. Arizona won 42-32. Mandatory Credit: Casey Sapio-USA TODAY Sports

The Bruins did not start the game with a roar of boo’s and was able to leverage the love given to the Wildcats to lift up their Bruin team. The Wildcats fans were cheated out of being able to cheer for their team and not being able to boo their opponent, UCLA.  In the UCLA game, we lost Anu to a concussion early on as he was attempting and succeeding at running the ball. We haven’t seen Anu run with the football much at all since he returned from his concussion.

Solomon started out strong in the first quarter, and then the play connection between him and his brand new center Cayman Bundage, bless his heart, went downhill fast. Bundage was unable to snap the ball the way Solomon was used to from Carter Wood, who suffered a season-ending injury prior to the start of the season. Bundage snapped high repetitively, ultimately resulting in a Solomon loss of yards and a fumble.

The game was a struggle from that moment on for the Wildcats. Backup quarterback Jerrard Randall replaced Solomon and had success running the ball, but struggled with his passing game throwing short on most passes. What Randall was able to do that Solomon was not was to handle Bundage’s high snaps, and has been able to handle the high snaps ever since including during the Colorado game last week.

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When Solomon came back, after a miserable loss to Stanford, he had a great game against Oregon State, it was good for both Solomon and his center.

That brings us to last week. Last week Solomon struggled again against Colorado with the Bundage high snaps that seemed return sporadically. He seemingly at times looked like he wasn’t ready to get the football in his hands maybe due to an early snap or a late count, who knows.

Since Anu couldn’t make anything happen on offense, Coach Rich Rod subbed in Randall who rushed for 45 yards before getting hurt. It’s a pattern. Rich Rod sent Solomon Back into the game for what was to be only one fantastic play that was a pass for a touchdown. He then promptly gave his spot back to Randall, who finished out the win with confidence.

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Which quarterback will start this weekend or will head coach Rich Rodriguez play both quarterbacks? 

Coach Rod, as his players call him, is not giving up his quarterback strategy to the media for the upcoming game against the Washington State Cougars. The Arizona head coach was asked on the Pac-12 Coaches Teleconference about his quarterback situation and if both quarterbacks will play:

"“Yeah, pretty much. I think Jerrard has shown enough that we wouldn’t hesitate to put him in at any time. And yet we still think Anu is a really good quarterback and that he can make plays and be effective. So we have two guys that we have complete confidence in. And I think Brandon Dawkins, we are going to eventually get there with him too. But you know Jerrard and Anu have been there in crunch time and have played well for us.”"

Then came a follow-up question regarding when he would play which quarterback and if it was dependent on the team Arizona was playing.

"“I don’t think its a particular team. Sometimes the way they play scheme-wise, their quarterback skill sets might be available. But we have them all do all of it. But evenually they have certain things they do better than others and we try to feature that when we go in there. But I’m a little different, I don’t worry about we have one quarterback and we need to stick with a quarterback. We have played two in the past, and have success with it and we don’t treat that position a whole lot differently than any other.”"

Final thoughts

Coach Rodriguez does not seem absolutely sold on Anu as his starter at this point in the season. He let everyone know he is planning on playing both quarterbacks at any time he wants. Rodriguez is leaving everyone, including the Cougar coaching staff, guessing on who the starting quarterback will be on Saturday.

Don’t think for one minute that is not a very smart strategy, it’s brilliant! Colorado’s defense was totally thrown off-guard with the QB switch, and that decision seemed to be the one that turned the game around and found Arizona with one more tick in the win column.

In other news, Ohio State Coach Urban Meyers has released his starter for this weekend, and it’s only Tuesday. If the No. 1 team in the nation can change their starting quarterback, why not Arizona?

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At this point, what’s the harm in trying to play both quarterbacks. It’s not as if the team hasn’t gotten used to it, and it keeps the opposing offense guessing. If I was to put my prediction hat on, I think Rich will go with Jerrard Randall, and then if it doesn’t work out, he can always sub in Solomon. Solomon seems skittish since he had suffered the concussion against UCLA, he doesn’t run the ball when he runs out of passing options. One thing is for sure, Solomon still has not thrown an interception, knock on wood.