SALT LAKE CITY
In a UFC-type cage match among Pac-12 football coaches, Arizona’s Rich Rodriguez and Utah’s Kyle Whittingham would surely be the last two standing. Two tough SOBs.
There would be blood.
For 25 minutes Saturday night, RichRod landed most of the blows. Arizona led 14-3 and Wildcats quarterback Brandon Dawkins was the most dominant player on the field. You’d never heard such silence in a stadium populated by 45,917 people.
Whittingham’s Utes, much like their coach, don’t discourage talk of themselves as the Big D, one of the league’s stoutest defenses. But for 25 minutes, it was more like the Three D’s: disrupted, dispirited, dumbed-down.
Or is that four D’s?
Incredibly, the Utes were whistled for eight false-starts in the first half, maybe nine if a “snap infraction” counts. Whittingham was so agitated he started chewing on co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Jim Harding. It wasn’t a pleasant sight.
As Whittingham walked by Harding after the eighth false start, lip-readers watching Fox Sports 1 could see Harding say “then (bleeping) fire me.”
That fire, that fight, changed the game.
It was like the scene in the movie “M.A.S.H” when Spearchucker Jones is quietly inserted into the football game for the Korean war surgical unit team. He is so good that he changes the game.
Everybody asks, “Where’d they get that guy?”
In the final moments before the half, the Utes became the latter-day version of Spearchucker Jones. They had a lot of guys who started playing well, even their punter.
“He was phenomenal,” said RichRod.
Utah was a different team the final 35 minutes. Dawkins first appeared to be gassed, worn out after being hit 13 times in the first half. After two series in the second half, he was attended to by Arizona’s medical staff and didn’t return.
What didn’t get bruised?
The Utes won 36-23. They would probably beat Arizona 12 times if the teams met 12 times this season, but strangely it was a night of growth for the Wildcats. They were outmanned, as most predicted, but they led 14-12 at half, and for lack of an original verse, they left it all on the field.
RichRod was in character after the game, still punching, looking for a fight.
“What do you want me to do, quit?” he asked, bitingly.
“Maybe we should hitchhike home, feel sorry for ourselves. Cancel the season. We lost a couple of games. We had a couple of tough ones against some pretty good teams.”
It wasn’t exactly Washington 70, Oregon 21.
“I thought we had momentum coming into half,” said UA linebacker Michael Barton. “But I thought they just worked harder than we did in the second half. They just kept attacking. We had a lot of guys who hadn’t played many snaps at all.”
A lot was made of RichRod’s 4-0 streak against Utah, but those UA teams had personnel superior to the roster Arizona now puts on the field. The Wildcats averaged 491 yards and 37 points against Whittingham’s Utes in those games. Three times in that streak Arizona had players (Ka’Deem Carey twice, and Nick Wilson) rush for more than 200 yards against the Utes.
But with Dawkins limited in his first season as a starter, and with Wilson injured and his two backups no longer on the active roster, Arizona doesn’t have the firepower to beat a team like Utah, especially in Salt Lake City.
An upset? No. Since Utah joined the Pac-12, it is 42-27. Arizona is 39-32.
The thing to remember about Arizona is that it is rebuilding. It hasn’t been announced as such, but this is a significant reconstruction. In the first half, Arizona rotated in a defensive line that included first-year player Flinton Connolly, undersized Jack Banda and walk-on Larry Tharpe Jr., who was redshirting at Idaho State two years ago.
And for 25 minutes they carried the fight to Utah, getting in the first punch and following it up with a flurry of blows that had the Utes wondering what hit them.
“I don’t know if (the defense) got tired in the second half,” said RichRod. “We’re woefully undersized defensively, but they’re trying hard.”
Dawkins had 201 total yards with eight minutes to play in the second quarter; the entire Utah team had 101. Then it all changed. His ribs hurt. He got hit hard in the helmet, and seemed dazed.
After Dawkins effectively left the game, the Utes gained 354 yards and outscored the Wildcats 17-6.
Lose one player in this league, your best player, and you have almost no chance no matter how hard you play.
Reminded that his team is 2-4, and 0-3 in the Pac-12, RichRod didn’t respond favorably.
“Do you expect our players and coaches to quit?” he asked. “C’mon. We ain’t going to be ‘woe is us.’ We’re going to get back to work, try to win the next one.”
Or maybe the one after that. Or the one after that.
