What’s the identity of Arizona’s football program under Kevin Sumlin? What’s the one thing the Wildcats consistently do well?
Editor’s note: Each week throughout the football season, we’ll take an in-depth look at the Arizona Wildcats from a statistical perspective.
Entering Game 4 of Year 3 — against Colorado at 5 p.m. Saturday — those answers remain elusive. Arizona has been wildly inconsistent under Sumlin, seldom putting together a complete game and losing more often than not. The Wildcats are 0-3 this season and have lost 10 in a row, a school record. Sumlin’s winning percentage here is .333; it was .667 at his previous stops.
But you knew all that already. Back to the original premise: What’s the go-to for UA football? When times are tough — which they undoubtedly are now — what can the Wildcats lean on?
Under predecessor Rich Rodriguez, the Cats always had one thing going for them, no matter what: They could run the ball.
Between 2012-17, Arizona never ranked lower than fifth in the Pac-12 in rushing yards. The only time the Wildcats averaged less than 200 yards on the ground came, ironically, during their best season — 2014. They averaged 181.9 yards that year, significantly more than their current rate.
That’s what we’re going to examine in this week’s “Cats Stats” — the erosion of the UA ground attack.
Before we proceed, some concessions:
- In comparing the current rushing totals to those of recent seasons, we’re dealing with a small sample size;
- Arizona isn’t facing nonconference opponents this year, so, again, it isn’t a pure apples-to-apples comparison;
- Rodriguez ran a different system that usually involved the quarterback in the run game;
- Game script typically has a significant influence on run/pass splits, and the Wildcats were playing from behind in two of their first three games.
Acknowledging all of that, the drop-off is still severe. Arizona is averaging 125.7 rushing yards per game, the second-lowest figure in the league. That’s nearly 50 yards less than last season and continues a downward trend that mirrors the Wildcats’ win-loss record. Here are Arizona’s rushing totals and records over the past four seasons:
2017: 309.3 ypg (7-6)
2018: 202.4 ypg (5-7)
2019: 174.0 ypg (4-8)
2020: 125.7 ypg (0-3)
The Wildcats’ average per carry of 3.6 yards is also a full yard lower than last year’s figure. The UA offensive line has struggled, and that has impacted that number in multiple ways.
Unlike the NFL, sacks count against rushing totals in college football. Arizona’s pass-protection issues have had a profound effect on its average per carry.
The Wildcats have allowed 11 sacks for a loss of 84 yards. If you take those figures out of the equation, their average per carry jumps to 4.9 yards — still lower than in recent seasons but much more respectable.
Offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone’s attack has trended more toward the pass than run in the last few seasons, in part because the Wildcats are often playing from behind.
The difference between Arizona’s overall average per carry (3.6) and its sack-adjusted average (4.9) of 1.3 yards is greater than in any of the nine seasons we analyzed. (We broke down the numbers from 2012, Rodriguez’s first season, through this year.) In every other year it was less than a yard, including 0.9 last year.
The Wildcats have lost an average of 28 yards per game because of sacks. Again, that’s easily the largest figure in our nine-year window, when that number ranged from 5.9 yards (2013) to 17.0 (2014).
(To put the current sack losses in perspective, Arizona already has lost more yards via sacks through three games than it did during the entire ’13 season. The Wildcats allowed 17 sacks that year, worth 76 yards in losses.)
If you remove the sack losses from this year’s rushing output, the average per game climbs to 153.7 yards. That’s still significantly lower than previous years.
Here are Arizona’s sack-adjusted rushing numbers over the past four seasons:
2017: 318.5 ypg
2018: 213.8 ypg
2019: 189.9 ypg
2020: 153.7 ypg
Although quarterbacks Grant Gunnell and Will Plummer scrambled often against USC and UCLA, respectively, the QB run game isn’t as prominent an element in the offense this year as it had been most of the previous eight.
Arizona’s most prolific rushing output — 309.3 yards per game — came in 2017, when QB Khalil Tate ran for 1,411 yards. The Wildcats’ leading rusher the previous season was QB Brandon Dawkins, who had 944 yards.
(Nothing better illustrates Rodriguez’s singular ability to conjure a productive rushing attack than what happened in 2016, when the Wildcats literally ran out of healthy running backs. They had to move receiver Samajie Grant to tailback for the final five games yet still led the Pac-12 in rushing.)
Sumlin and offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone didn’t get the full Tate experience in 2018, when he was slowed by injuries. He had just 224 yards on 74 attempts. Yet Arizona still paced the Pac-12 in rushing.
Tate was more inclined to run last year (90 carries for 413 yards), but his output was nowhere near his 2017 level. The Wildcats ranked third in rushing in the Pac-12.
Arizona’s offense became more pass oriented when Gunnell succeeded Tate. Whether that’s a wise course of action remains to be seen, and the game plan might look different if Gunnell can’t play against Colorado because of his injured shoulder.
To truly measure the change, we took the quarterbacks completely out of the equation. We isolated running back carries to determine how much — or how much less — Mazzone is relying on the ground game.
Arizona’s running backs — Gary Brightwell, Michael Wiley and Jalen John — are averaging 22.7 attempts per game. That’s down from 26.5 attempts last year and 32.6 in 2018.
It’s logical that the backs would get more work in games the Wildcats were winning. Running backs combined for exactly 43 carries that year against Oregon State (35-14 victory) and Oregon (44-15). J.J. Taylor alone had 40 attempts against Colorado (42 for the team; 42-34 victory).
Arizona hasn’t been in that position often, if at all, since its losing streak began last season. There’s a chicken-and-egg element to this, though: One could argue the run game fueled those 2018 wins.
Running backs had 23 first-half carries (more than half the final total) against the Beavers and Ducks. They had 20 (slightly less than half) against the Buffaloes.
Running the ball can become Arizona’s identity again. The Wildcats have the talent to do it. What they need is the commitment.
