Arizona Football: Tips for coaching staff from the peanut gallery

Arizona Football coaches were not able to lead the Wildcats to a win against BYU on Saturday night on ESPN. All is not lost, but we thought we would make some suggestions.

To be fair, none of us know what struggles the Arizona Football team had as a whole. We don’t know what the coaches were dealing with, what mistakes were made by any player on the team that broken plays or what the effect of having key players missing had (Jace Whittaker – injury, Nathan Eldrige – injury, Scottie Young – suspension, Layth Friekh – redshirt suspension). Hydration was a problem on a defense that didn’t get to rest much at all. They will learn what works, but they don’t have much time. We can help!

There were things that went well like the defense shining in spots if you look at the stats (Colin Schooler -16 tackles, Isaiah Hayes -13, Tony Fields II-11). Lorenzo Burns came up a few great plays as well as Isaiah Hayes. Also, the offensive line did not allow any sacks and scored 23 points which could have easily been 26 points but for a blocked field goal.

But as you know, Wildcats fans want results now, or they will assume the worst season is on the horizon. That cannot happen if you want the stands to be full all season long.

Everything that happened last season was not bad and needs fixing.

Since it’s early in the season, we thought we would offer tips from the ZZ peanut gallery.

Arizona Wildcats Football

Coach Sumlin seemed to be saying in his post-game press conference that he didn’t know what he had as a team until they played.  “All is not lost, we have a lot more football to play. You really don’t know what the make-up or who your guys really are until your first game.” But he should know his players though. He has an entire season of tape to watch to know what players he has, what their strengths are, and what they need to work on. Plus, they spent the spring, summer, and fall with the team.

We would like to suggest that coach Sumlin and his crew review last years successes if they haven’t spent much time doing that. What worked last season? The Arizona Football team, as it was before the new crew got to Tucson, was not far off from what fans wanted. Fans just wanted more wins, they were hopeful. So why not take what had been and make it better. Starting from scratch and implementing your way takes seasons, a little at a time, but maybe a clean slate of all plays or all that worked last season is not what fruitful.

Also, the Arizona Football program needs to recognize that this is the first time in many years that the national media and fans are interested in Arizona Football. The BYU game was nationally televised, and Tate’s hype had reached the east coast. Winning this first game was extremely important to gain the confidence of fans and media across the country to continue their interest and coverage of the Wildcats. So losing the game hurt the program, and fingers were pointing at the program, and it’s possible the Wildcats lost some east coast media interest.

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Several east coast media friends of mine stayed up until the early hours of Sunday morning to see Khalil Tate and Sumlin win their first game. They were even pulling for the Wildcats. Every college football writer in the nation has had to write “Khalil Tate” or “Kevin Sumlin” in at least one post this past year. The nation is kind of pulling for the two to produce the most exciting football possible. These east coast media guys were bummed out, and for the first time, I can remember, they wanted Arizona to win.

Let Tate be Tate. Coaches across the country would be dying for a player like Tate. We all want Khalil to be an all-around pocket-passing quarterback, and he needs to be to become an NFL quarterback. But don’t take his legs away from him, don’t take away his ability to mend a broken play, encourage him to get the team to feel like they can win. We suggest that the coaches need to do what they said they were going to do, and that is to cater to what the quarterback does the best. Again, let Tate be Tate.

Sumlin seems to be coming around to this more as he answered questions from national media on Tuesdays Pac-12 Coaches Teleconference call and here are some of his responses:

"“We certainly have to do a better job of schematically to get him [Khalil Tate] more involved with his legs — it’s something we have taken a really hard look at — It can only help us to get his legs more involved in the offense — Throughout the offense, we take advantage of all of our player’s skill sets and as a coaches we can be more creative to do that — we threw it to get back in the game — he can throw it and he can run it — Obviously last year he was primarily a runner and had some success doing that. We know he can do that and I think the combination of both can really help us.”"

Yes, the keyword is ‘creative,’ we would add the words ‘fresh and imaginative’ when it comes to the offensive game plan designed keep their opponent off-kilter and disrupted. It seemed the BYU game plan was predictable and the gameplan wasn’t adjusted enough to win the game. Arizona won’t be winning games if the offense or defense is predictable. BYU head coach Kalani Sitake and his staff, for example, was thinking out of the box and forced the referees to call pass interference instead of properly defending the pass. This worked well against Arizona’s offense and the refs only called PI a few times.

Lastly, pay some attention to the energy of the team during the game, have a plan for when they look or feel defeated. When the camera finds your team looking glum, that is just the worst. And against BYU, the camera’s focused on the players on the sideline doing just that. Then the camera’s found the BYU coach getting everyone hyped on the other side of the field. Arizona needs to find a couple of hype guys, players or coaches, people the players listen too.

Fans want to see coaches aware of the player’s mood during the game and want to see leaders step up on the team to make sure they do not give up. The ESPN announcers and other media repeatedly reported the team looked flat and that it looked like the players gave up. That might not have been the case, but that is what the media led the audience on ESPN to believe.

This team is used to a fiery coach who wanted to win at any cost. Several fans tell us they are missing that right now. Yeah maybe Rich Rodriguez was over the top, but you could see how much he wanted to win. He reminded us over and over that winning is everything and when his team lost he took responsibility, leaving little room for anyone to blame his players. It just killed him to lose a game, tore him up inside.

When you are a cool as a cucumber coach, and that’s perfectly fine, you may have to tell fans how much you want to win if it doesn’t show up in your demeanor.

After a few days, some positive signs from coach Sumlin came out of Monday’s press conference. He conceded that his coaching staff has to help the players win the game and play to their strengths. He called out Shun Brown not getting many plays to help the team and that there were 43 plays that turned out one score. He liked Khalil’s comeback attempt and that the team kept playing. He is looking to rotate his defensive players and making sure the players are hydrated in the next game.

Take it or leave it, those are a few of our suggestions to the Arizona Football Coaching staff. I would be remiss to not, as I do every season, beg the coaching staff to utilize the tight ends. Bryce Wolma was instrumental from what I remember in making blocks for running backs, and he and Jamie Nunley made some exciting plays last season. One of the most famous and decorated TE in the NFL is Arizona Wildcat Rob Gronkowski, so why not show off our tight ends?