Arizona Football: Can the Wildcats Salvage the 2018 Football Season?

It has been a disastrous start to the 2018 Arizona Football season, but luckily it is still early in the year, so hopefully the Wildcats can turn it around!

Well, anyone hoping for the Arizona Football team to come racing out of the gates are still waiting for the Wildcats to even leave the starting block.

Blame the rough start on the myriad of injuries, average recruiting, or ineffectual offensive and defensive schemes, regardless, 2018 has certainly not gone the way many fans had hoped.

Arizona Wildcats

Already finding themselves between a rock and a hard place, the Wildcats need answers and fast. Sitting at 0-2, things certainly don’t get any easier either with USC around the corner, and Cal, ASU and Colorado all looking much better than initially anticipated.

So the biggest question moving forward is, can Arizona still salvage the season and make a bowl game? Well, the optimist in me tends to think it’s too early to call it, after all, we are just two games into a 12 game season.

However, from early indications and observations, I would have to say that this team probably doesn’t have enough to get it done. Just looking at the team offensively alone, and Arizona is a mess.

So where are Arizona’s biggest weaknesses?

Well first off, we knew coming in that the Cats would struggle along their offensive line. So far that has certainly been true, and the run blocking has been awful to say the least.

Perhaps that can be attributed to a mixture things; first off, Arizona is grossly undersized at running back to even be successful with the current level of run blocking they have. Additionally, the limited experience along their line makes things challenging when the group is still gaining experience and ‘gelling’ together. Nonetheless a team that has been predicated on the run and was very successful in years prior, is showing that this area is instead their Achilles heel in 2018.

Just for comparison, in 2017, the Wildcats averaged 309 yards rushing per game, with an NCAA high of 6.56 yards per carry. So far this year, Arizona ranks 96th overall in their rushing offense, averaging 139 yards per game and just 3.28 yards per carry. That’s a stark difference!

Additionally, the Wildcats have shown to have no serious deep threats in catching the ball outside of Shawn Poindexter, Shun Brown or Tony Ellison. Outside of those three, Arizona’s receivers have not really helped this offense much if at all, and this is an area that needs to be addressed quickly if the Wildcats are to turn around this season.

Defensively is where I have the most frustrations.

We can all cite the “average” recruiting here or even some of the injuries, but at the end of the day, it’s Arizona, it’s not USC and these are just excuses for a group that has failed to produce. Additionally, Tucson will always be one of the hardest places to coach at and recruit to, and unless we have the second coming of Lute Olson in football, Arizona’s limitations are always going to be there.

In years past, the Wildcats have made themselves known as a scrappy football team, filled with ‘blue-collar’ type players that out-worked and out-hustled opposing teams. You can blame the defense for being undersized or limited in talent, but again they’re just excuses for not producing.

Defense take supreme discipline and effort in addition to a bit of talent, but the fact that this program hasn’t been able to field a competent group in nearly a decade is becoming downright embarrassing. Tackling takes effort and when you see Arizona blow coverage’s and assignments time-after-time, you have to start thinking it’s scheme, coaching and a lack of that effort, rather than an overall lack of talent.

I don’t believe for one second that this program has been so inept for nearly eight years now at recruiting, that they couldn’t put together any semblance of a semi-competitive group that can at least string together more than one three-and-out in a row.

If Arizona is going to salvage the 2018 season, the entire team and staff needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror and figure out if they’re going to continue to trot out there and continue to play poorly, or are they going to start living up to the school mantra and ‘Bear Down’.