Grading the performance from Arizona Football against Oregon State

Almost 24 hours after their game against Oregon State, we grade the performance of the Arizona Football team from that game.

There’s no doubt the past few weeks have been rough for the Arizona Football team, and a win against the Oregon State Beavers on Saturday would certainly help the program get over some recent woes.

It was supposed to be a happy day, after all it was homecoming, the Arizona Football team was honoring the late Dick Tomey, and the team was wearing throwbacks. What could go wrong?

Arizona Wildcats

Well, unfortunately things didn’t go quite as planned, as Arizona had quite the rough day. From the start the team looked disjointed and dejected, falling in a big 56-38 loss to the Beavers.

Coming in, Kevin Sumlin and the team made some changes to the staff, and some including us here at Zona Zealots were at least hoping that could give the Wildcats a bit of an edge to maybe salvage things and get the win.

It is worth noting that five days isn’t nearly enough time for the team to turn around four years of coaching, scheme and personnel decisions from previous defensive coordinator, Marcel Yates, and truthfully it was a bit fool-hearted to expect things to drastically change so quickly.

However, 24 hours after the loss, we will look at the game and grade Arizona Football’s performance against Oregon State.

I think this team has faced a lot of adversity so far this season, and going through a positional coaching change in the middle of the season is never easy, but nonetheless college athletics are a performance-driven industry and it makes sense to make staffing changes after four years of mediocrity.

On Saturday, there was a lot of bad in their loss to the Beavers, but there were definitely some shining moments, like J.J. Taylor not quitting, Grant Gunnell looking solid and the offense scoring 38 points.

Ultimately, when you score 38 points, it should be enough to win, but alas it was not, hence the C-.

The offense I think played pretty well, despite losing two linemen early on, and also being down another veteran lineman in Cody Creason prior to the game. That’s not an easy thing for any team to overcome, and if you’re Arizona, that’s incredibly difficult to overcome.

Aside from facing all that adversity, and the team settling for two field goals early and having failed on two, two-point conversions, this group played pretty well, accumulating 526 yards total and scoring 38 points.

There were a couple things that I think did hurt this group, like the holding early on that negated a touchdown, and a screen-play being called on 3rd and seven at the OSU 10 that went for one-yard, that if those plays went differently, I think would have produced a more positive result offensively

However, overall I think the offense did enough to win and it’s the reason why I’m giving this group a solid B.

I don’t like giving Arizona’s defense an F here, because I think the performance is somewhat circumstantial. However, there’s no doubt this group did not play well and there’s no getting around that.

I do think while looking at it under the lens of “Chuck Cecil only had five days to try and turn things around” is why I give this group a D- rather than anything lower.

Ultimately, I think there are schemes that Arizona has implemented that aren’t working, and again five days isn’t enough time to change things. Additionally, I think there are fundamentals lacking which are a larger concern of what’s been lacking the last four years.

Lastly, while I think while the secondary has played poorly of recent, I think part of the reason can be attributed to a lack of pass rush. When you are unable to make the opposing quarterback uncomfortable a little, or allow the offense seven seconds or more, it doesn’t matter how good your secondary is, eventually it’s going to breakdown with that much time.

This is a group that has suffered largely this season, and on Saturday, this group did not play well. I hate to throw any player under the bus, but kicker Lucas Havrisik did not have a good day, missing a field and a point-after-kick.

Granted, it appears the junior was not 100 percent, and may have been battling some injures, so there is at least some justification there.

Nonetheless, this group I don’t think had a particularly great day and is why they are getting just a D- here, because Lucas was not 100 percent. The bright side, is that Arizona didn’t fumble on a punt return this week.

Anyways, these are just our grades at Zona Zealots. What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Let us know! As always, Bear Down, Arizona!