Arizona Football and the current state of their linebackers

With Arizona Football severely impacted by a number of transfers, we take a closer look at the current state of the linebackers for the Wildcats.

With the linebacker position once being deemed as one of the few points of strengths for the Arizona Football team, my how things have changed and quickly. Fast forward a few months, and the Wildcats are now reeling after being hit hard by the transfer market.

If you have been paying attention, you would have seen that it has been a wild couple of weeks for Arizona. Lately, Covid has certainly has had its impact on the football season, which has led to the Pac-12 postponing the fall season. However it doesn’t stop there.

Arizona Wildcats

Tony Fields II announced just weeks ago his intent to transfer, which is leading him to West Virginia to join former Wildcat teammate Scottie Young, Jr. But now Colin Schooler and Brenden Schooler are leaving Arizona too.

The roster movement and attrition is not only a bad look, but it’s leaving a lot of questions for the future of Arizona Football.

Look, losing one key player to transfer is always tough to get over for any football program, but when you lose two, three or more key players it’s even harder to overcome, especially if you’re Arizona.

With the Wildcats transitioning to a 3-4 defense, and bringing in “guru” linebacker coaches like Paul Rhoads and Andy Buh, you couldn’t help but think players like Tony and Colin were about to have big seasons.

But hey, Arizona Football is Arizona Football, and anything that can go wrong, seemingly always goes wrong.

So now with Colin and Tony leaving, that leaves the Wildcats incredibly thin at linebacker, and I figured I’d break down who the Cats have at the position returning from last year, as well as who comes in.

Anthony Pandy

Senior 
6’0” 225 lbs.
2019 Stats: 12 games – 66 tackles (49 solo), 5.0 tackles for loss, 2.0 sacks, 1 Interception

Kylan Wilborn

Senior
6’2” 242 lbs.
2019 Stats: 5 games – 7 tackles (3 solo), 1.0 tackles for loss

Eddie Siaumau-Sanitoa

Redshirt Freshman
6’3” 235 lbs.
2019 Stats: Didn’t play due to redshirt

Derrion Clark

Sophomore
6’1” 211 lbs.
2019 Stats: 2 games – 2 tackles (2 solo)

Jalen Harris

Redshirt Junior
6’5″ 250 lbs.
2019 Stats: 11 games – 25 tackles (17 solo), 6.5 tackles for loss, 4.0 sacks

Incoming freshmen

Derick Mourning

Freshman
6’3” 210 lbs.

Jabar Triplett

Freshman
6’0″ 215 lbs.

From first glace, it’s a bit intimidating when you look at that group. Especially since Anthony Pandy and recently converted linebacker Jalen Harris are the only players returning with any sort of sizeable playing time on defense.

Additionally, Arizona will need more out of Kylan Wilborn who has had a significant drop off since his freshman season, and the rest are all players who either haven’t played or haven’t played much.

Arizona will be breaking in a lot of new players, and in a new defensive scheme, those are some tough obstacles to get over.

The bright side, is that I really like Eddie, Derick, Derrion and Jabar (who is getting over injury). I think the opportunity is there, and I think they bring a lot of talent, but when you haven’t really played a single down yet, that does make the learning curve extremely high.

Now, should Arizona not play until the fall of 2021, that’s going to bode well for them, especially as they’ll get more time to coach their kids and get them ready.

Plus by then, you could feasibly have linebackers like; Kolbe Cage, Jackson Bailey, KC Ossai, DJ Fryar, James Bohls and Matthew Weerts for the start of the 2021 season. The depth gets a lot better at the point, it’s just that you will instead have a lot of youth.

At Zona Zealots, we are intrigued to see how the Wildcats shape up at linebacker moving forward. As always, Bear Down, Arizona!