Spring Preview: Arizona Football is set to begin Spring Practices

As Spring Football approaches, we bring you a preview of the Arizona Football team with spring practices officially starting next week.

Arizona Football is almost back! After a rather underwhelming 2018 season, the Wildcats return with plenty of questions still to be answered just ahead of the 2019 season.

With under a week until the official start to Spring football, Arizona will begin practice March 18, and will finish April 13, when they host their annual, intra-squad scrimmage inside Arizona Football Stadium.

Arizona Wildcats

As we head into Spring, we will also bring a position by position breakdown, but for now, we must look at the team as a whole!

To recap, Arizona finished the 2018 season 5-7 (4-5). As you may recall, the Wildcats stumbled out of the gates to a 1-2 start, and were just 11 minutes away from becoming bowl eligible, only to implode against rival ASU in Tucson.

While the team is looking to leave last years’ results in the past and get better for 2019, you can’t help but reflect what went wrong from a hyped season, and what can be improved upon.

For the coming season, the Wildcats will return quite a few starters from last year, however, they do also lose some pretty crucial pieces as well.

The ones most notably either departing or moving on are; PJ Johnson, Shun Brown, Shawn Poindexter, Tony Ellison, Layth Friekh, Michael Eletise, Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles and Dereck Boles among others.

Luckily, Arizona will return Khalil Tate from a decent season, J.J. Taylor, Colin Schooler, Tony Fields and Jalen Harris among others. However, there are certainly a numbers of questions at virtually every position.

So what did we do well, and what areas can be improved upon for next year?

The good?

Well, believe it or not, the offense overall was pretty good. Last season, the Wildcats were ranked 24th overall in total offense, while also having a scoring offense that was ranked 42nd overall. Part of why it looked so different, was the pace of play being a bit slower than what we were used to seeing under Rich Rodriguez. Plus, Tate certainly ran it less which gave the offense a different look.

Also, worth noting, while the defense did struggle quite a bit, overall, they were much better than the year before. Keep in mind in 2017, the Cats finished the year ranked 118th in total defense, while in 2018, Arizona was 92nd. Quite the difference!

Plus, this was all done largely playing without a few, key contributors, most namely Jace Whittaker. Luckily, Whittaker will likely return from an extra year of eligibility and will have a crucial role in the secondary.

The ugly?

First off, it was definitely an adjustment at the beginning of the year, and there was at least a game or two Arizona could or should have ultimately won, but just couldn’t put it all together.

The offensive line certainly struggled at first, and a lot of that can be attributed to the injuries and attrition the group faced at the beginning of the year. While the group did get markedly better, heading into this next season, Arizona will need to fill some big holes again, and will have to replace Joe Gilbert as the position coach after one year.

Lastly, while the Cats did see some improvement on defense, they still ultimately struggled overall, and a lot of that was in the secondary. Last year, the Wildcats gave up nearly 270 yards per game, ranking 120th overall.

For 2019…

Arizona is going to need to be more comfortable in year two under head coach Kevin Sumlin. Tate will need to step up even more, and the defense is going to need to get better.

Use the spring to get more repetitions, get more guys some experience and be comfortable running Sumlin’s system better in year two!

At Zona Zealots, we are excited about the return of football and can’t wait to see how the Cats perform this season! Bear Down, Arizona!