The signs of degradation are evident in the second half.
The past two weeks, the Arizona Wildcats have been right there against favored opponents. Arizona trailed UCLA 14-7 at halftime and led Utah 14-12 Saturday night in Salt Lake City.
After the break, the Wildcats broke.
The Bruins and Utes outscored them 55-26. Add in the Washington game, and Arizona has been outscored 76-40 in the second half and overtime of its three Pac-12 losses.
The exact cause of the Wildcats’ second-half decline is impossible to determine. Did Jim Mora and Kyle Whittingham make halftime adjustments that Rich Rodriguez and his staff failed to match? Or is injury-riddled Arizona simply running out of viable, healthy players?
“Our defense was fresh and active,” Rodriguez said, referring to the first half against Utah. “I don’t know if we got tired in the second half or worn down a little. We’re undersized — woefully undersized — defensively, but they’re trying hard.”
The opposition’s rushing splits strongly suggest that Arizona is wearing down. In the first halves of the first three Pac-12 games, UA opponents have 180 rushing yards on 48 carries (3.8 yards per carry). In the second halves (plus overtime against Washington), they have 507 yards on 80 carries (6.3).
Utah gained 186 of its 210 rushing yards after halftime.
“They just kept attacking,” Arizona linebacker Michael Barton said. “We tried to fight as much as we could. We had a lot of guys in today who haven’t played any snaps at all.”
With defensive linemen Parker Zellers and Luca Bruno out of the lineup, walk-on Larry Tharpe Jr. became part of the D-line rotation. The Wildcats barely had a rotation at linebacker with Jake Matthews out and Cody Ippolito getting hurt in the first half.
Despite the tide starting to turn in the second quarter, Barton believed Arizona was in good shape.
“I thought we had the momentum coming into the second half,” he said. “We still had the lead. I thought they just strained a little harder than we did in the second half.”
The Wildcats have to hope the second half of the season doesn’t follow the same pattern.
‘Disconcerting’ claims
Whittingham accused Arizona’s defensive front of making “disconcerting signals” that led to Utah’s abnormally high number of false-start penalties.
The Utes were whistled for nine or 10 false starts at their home stadium, depending on how you classify a “snap infraction” by the center. All but one occurred in the first half.
“A lot of those were caused by (Arizona) barking out commands on the defensive line,” Whittingham said. “Disconcerting signals, that’s what it’s called, and (the officials) were not calling it, so we have to handle that.
“It’s illegal. It’s not part of the game — unless our offensive linemen were lying. They all said they were getting disconcerting signals, and I believe them. The referees said they were not hearing it, and so they were not calling it. We didn’t handle it well until the second half.”
Arizona’s defensive front “stems,” or moves, just before the snap. The Wildcats use an audible call to put those players into position.
In Week 2 against Grambling, the officials twice flagged Arizona for defensive delay of game. An NCAA rule prohibits defensive players from simulating “the sound or cadence of offensive starting signals.”
Rodriguez talked to the Pac-12 the following week and was told the issue would be up to the officials’ discretion each game. It hadn’t come up again until Saturday.
Under-.500 underdogs
Arizona is in uncharted territory under Rodriguez.
The Wildcats (2-4, 0-3 Pac-12) are two games under .500 for the first time since 2011 — the year before Rodriguez arrived in Tucson. They hadn’t been under .500 at any point under Rodriguez until this season, when they started 0-1 and fell to 2-3 after losing to UCLA.
“These guys are going to fight,” Rodriguez said. “We’re not used to doing it, and nobody’s going to be happy. We ain’t going to be like, ‘Oh, woe is us.’ ”
Arizona hosts USC on Saturday, opening as seven-point underdogs.
