Some guy named Squally Canada scored three touchdowns Saturday night at Arizona Stadium. Do you know what a “squal” is? It’s like the noise a kid makes when the doctor inserts a needle.
But Squally Canada plays for BYU, which beat Arizona 28-23 on a night the Wildcats and 51,002 fans presumed the home team would make all the noise.
Instead they just felt the pain.
The UA sold $6 beers at Arizona Stadium for the first time ever, the Wildcats added about 6,000 season ticket holders and warned those in the nearby Rincon Heights neighborhood they were going to shoot off fireworks every time the home team scored.
It didn’t feel like Christmas. Instead, it was mostly a silent night.
Kalani Sitake, left, and his Cougars lost to lowly UMass and East Carolina a season ago, but opened ’18 with a bang.
What in the world happened? BYU was dreadful a year ago, averaging just 17 points a game, ranked 124th nationally and lost to, among others, UMass and East Carolina. Head coach Kalani Sitake fired everybody but the waterboy and started over.
This is what happened: In the second half, BYU forgot it was 2018 and that Arizona led the Pac-12 in scoring and yards gained last year, and that it had a quarterback, Khalil Tate, who was going to be new coach Kevin Sumlin’s desert version of Johnny Manziel and Case Keenum.
After trailing 10-7 at half in a game so listless you’d have thought it was a Kent State-Minnesota game, BYU went back to the past and played like it was 1968. The Cougars huddled. They killed the clock. They took the ball out of Tate’s hands and won a football game the way it was played 50 years ago.
They overpowered Arizona’s size-challenged defense as Squally Canada and his massive offensive linemen, especially Tristian Hoge and Austin Hoyt, stomped the UA defense into the artificial turf.
Hoyt and Hoge.
It’s a combination that won’t win a Heisman or get on ESPN’s Game Day program, but on Saturday night Hoyt and Hoge were 620 pounds of trouble that Arizona didn’t see coming.
This is trouble, with a capital T for Tucson.
BYU isn’t anyone’s idea of a powerhouse, and quarterback Tanner Mangum, who clearly outplayed Tate, is not bound for the NFL or the cover of Sports Illustrated. But in the second half, Mangum completed 12 of 15 passes and controlled the game.
Arizona’s defense, which was rarely good in six seasons under Rich Rodriguez, has not changed much in Sumlin’s six months on the job. There were no game-changing plays by Arizona’s defense, no interceptions, no bone-rattling, fumble-causing tackles, no run-stuffing stops on third down. Last year Arizona was 10th in the Pac-12 in total defense, allowing 471 yards per game. It yielded much fewer yards against BYU, 392, but the Cougars aren’t exactly Oregon or USC.
It’s going to take Sumlin a while to recruit more size and skill defensively.
What wasn’t expected to take as long is the development of Tate. Since moving to Tucson, Sumlin’s oft-repeated goal was to help Tate evolve from an athlete who plays quarterback to a quarterback who is an athlete.
But Tate struggled mightily against an undistinguished BYU defense. He completed just half of his throws, 17 of 34, and threw far too many deep balls that were uncatchable, almost as if desperate. He opened the game with six consecutive completions, but thereafter was 11 for 28.
More disturbing, he didn’t make anything happen in the running game, which is what set him apart in four games as the Pac-12’s offensive player of the year in 2017.
Tate rushed just eight times for 14 yards Saturday. That’s like giving Willie Mays the take sign, asking him to take a walk if he can get it.
In RichRod’s system, Tate gained 1,411 yards in what was essentially half of the 2017 season.
Ordinarily, this would be time to be worried. Very, very worried. But Sumlin and his offensive coordinator, Noel Mazzone, have helped to develop some of college football’s leading dual-purpose QBs this century — from Manziel to UCLA’s Brett Hundley — and so you want to believe it’s just a work in progress.
The problem with that is BYU appeared to be one of the most beatable teams on Arizona’s 2018 schedule.
Tate is working with a group of possession-type receivers, which limits him in the passing game. There is no game-breaking receiver like a Juron Criner or Money Mike Thomas. There is, instead, a long road ahead, one that now looks more daunting that could’ve been imagined Saturday morning.
By the time Saturday’s game ended, just before 11:30 p.m., most of the 51,002 at Arizona Stadium had been long gone. BYU players took a victory lap around the stadium, and joined their small but noisy group of fans singing, “Rise and shout, the Cougars are out.”
It was the only thing that awakened the neighbors at Rincon Heights all night.
