About the best news to come out of Arizona Stadium on Saturday afternoon was that the Wildcats don’t have to play next week.
They’re beaten up, physically and mentally. Their quarterback situation remains murky. If ever a team needed a bye to regroup, it’s this one.
“We’d have liked to have had it two weeks ago,” UA coach Rich Rodriguez said after Arizona’s dispiriting 48-14 loss to USC. “But now better than ever.”
The Wildcats are reeling. They’re in the midst of their roughest stretch in Rodriguez’s four-plus seasons, having lost four in a row for the first time during his tenure.
The latest was their least competitive performance of the season. Arizona could have beaten Washington and hung with UCLA and Utah into the third quarter. The Wildcats never made the Trojans feel threatened.
“We’re 2-5,” Rodriguez said. “We’ve had some adversity. I think a lot of problems we can fix in the next year or two in recruiting, and some of them we’ll try to fix in the short term.”
The first order of business is figuring out what to do at quarterback. The situation went from desperate to last resort Saturday when, in the third quarter, Rodriguez pulled struggling freshman Khalil Tate in favor of senior Matt Morin — the Wildcats’ third-string tight end and holder.
Morin played quarterback in high school. He only recently started taking reps in practice with Brandon Dawkins (concussion) and Anu Solomon (knee) on the shelf.
“I don’t know what our quarterback situation is going forward,” Rodriguez said. “But we’ve got at least two weeks now to figure something out.”
With Dawkins and Solomon in street clothes, Tate made his first career start. He was enthused about the prospect of playing against nine of his former high school teammates. The reunion didn’t end happily for Tate.
The freshman struggled from the start and completed only 7 of 18 passes for 58 yards with one interception. Tate rushed for 72 yards but lost a fumble. He didn’t look like the cool customer who excelled in relief against UCLA and Utah.
“I think sometimes when you’re thrown in there maybe you’re not as — I don’t want to say nervous, because he’s not the nervous type — but maybe the enormity of it is not as impactful,” Rodriguez said. “He seemed OK during the week and at the beginning of the game.
“There are times a 17-year-old freshman looks like a 17-year-old freshman. He’s a competitive guy, and he competed. But it was a challenge. And a lot of the challenge was because they’ve got some pretty good dudes over there.”
After starting 1-3 against a brutally tough schedule, USC has won three in a row. The Trojans geared their defensive game plan toward stopping the run and forcing Tate to beat them with his arm. They presented a lot of six-man fronts that kept him bottled up.
“We knew we were going to be facing Kahlil Tate,” said USC safety Chris Hawkins, who forced Tate to fumble on a second-quarter run, setting up a Trojans touchdown.
“He’s a true freshman, so we wanted to rattle him a bit and get some hits on him. Watching film, we knew he liked to run; I feel like he’s a run-first quarterback. We put some blitzes on him to make sure he couldn’t really get out of the pocket.”
Tate’s fumble on the first play of the second quarter — at the end of a 23-yard dash — led to the second of Sam Darnold’s five touchdown passes. It gave USC a 21-7 lead.
The Wildcats responded with a 74-yard drive. They needed 75.
Buoyed by penalties and Nick Wilson’s 39-yard run, Arizona advanced to the USC 1-yard line and faced fourth-and-goal. Rodriguez went for it. Tate faked a handoff and rolled to his right, where he encountered three Trojans. With nowhere to run and seeing no one open, he had no choice but to throw the ball away.
“I should’ve called a better play,” Rodriguez said.
The situation and outcome were similar to a failed fourth-and-goal against Washington. Had Arizona scored, it would have been a 21-14 game early in the second quarter. Instead, USC gradually pulled away and the announced crowd of 55,463 dissipated.
The next Trojans touchdown came after Tate threw an interception deep in Wildcats territory. Even Michael Barton’s two-point return on the subsequent extra-point try got wiped out by a penalty. Barton later committed a personal-foul penalty that encapsulated Arizona’s collective frustration.
“It’s definitely tough,” senior defensive tackle Sani Fuimaono said. “But our coaches prepare us very well for a situation like this.”
The situation is unprecedented during Rodriguez’s regime. The Wildcats are 0-4 in the conference and have lost 11 of their past 14 league games if you include the 2014 Pac-12 Championship Game.
Rodriguez spoke afterward about maintaining a consistent approach. He hasn’t detected a drop in the Wildcats’ enthusiasm or work ethic, although it appeared the Trojans broke their will by the fourth quarter Saturday.
“We’re going through a little rough patch right now, but nobody’s going to give up or quit trying,” Rodriguez said. “We didn’t all of a sudden forget how we’re approaching things. The players’ attitude’s been really good. We’ll tighten the screws a little bit to make sure everybody’s all in.
“We’ll get it right. We’ve taken a few lumps in the first half of the season. I’m feeling pretty confident that our time will (come) and we’ll be where we want to be.”
