CORVALLIS, Ore. —
It’s almost impossible to accurately describe the physical differences between Arizona running back J.J. Taylor and UA offensive tackle Layth Friekh, but when they walked into an interview room Saturday afternoon, side by side, it made you blink.
I almost said, “Do you guys play the same sport?” Or, “Are one of you guys in the wrong room?”
Taylor is 5-feet 6-inches and maybe 180 pounds. Friekh is 6-5 and 305, and on Saturday they were the tall and short of Arizona’s commanding 35-14 victory over Oregon State.
“Me and Layth are real tight,” said Taylor, who rushed for 284 yards with touchdown bursts of 62 and 40 yards. “We had a bond last year.”
Everyone on Arizona’s football team has a bond with Layth Friekh. Or they should. He is a difference-maker whose only documented statistic is that he is undefeated this year, 2-0.
On yet another Saturday afternoon when quarterback Khalil Tate’s injured left ankle kept him from turning on the jets and running for 206 yards the way he did against OSU a year ago, Arizona offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone and head coach Kevin Sumlin devised a Plan B that bowled over the Beavers.
This was the Mr. Tall and Short offense and it was so effective it was more like the Big and Beautiful offense. When was the last time the best player on the field was an offensive tackle?
The Wildcats ran the ball 51 times, and more than half of them were a not-so-subtle series of plays to the left, behind Friekh, a senior from Phoenix who was starting his 36th game at Arizona, far more than anyone on the roster.
It was brilliant in its simplicity.
Friekh called it a “stepping stone,” but in reality it was more like a game that bought the young and undersized Wildcats some time and confidence.
The value of a Pac-12 road victory is sometimes immeasurable, even if it’s against a down-on-its-luck Oregon State team that went 0-9 in the Pac-12 a year ago and appears likely to go 0-9 again this season. Beating the Beavers generates interest in next Saturday night’s home game against USC, gives the Wildcats a sense of worth and helps to ease the lingering sting of those unexpected losses to BYU and Houston, games in which Friekh was ineligible.
A month ago if anyone had said that Arizona’s best option wouldn’t be Khalil Tate but rather Layth Friekh, you’d have freaked out. Instead, it has become the UA’s best chance to win six or seven games and become bowl-eligible.
That’s how a football season often turns; you take Plan B and run with it, as Taylor did Saturday, gaining more yards than any running back in UA history with the exception of the sainted Ka’Deem Carey (366 yards in 2012) and Trung Canidate (288 yards in 1998).
You won’t get much more than a peep out of Taylor, a quiet and modest young man whose only hint at self-praise Saturday was to say “everything we put in at practice showed up today.”
You could tell the Wildcats were eager to blow off some steam. After Taylor sprinted 40 yards for a touchdown on the game’s first possession, he returned to the sideline as some type of conquering hero.
New UA offensive line coach Joe Gilbert was animated as he greeted Taylor and all but gave him a big smooch. Gilbert and Mazzone tapped knuckles and exchanged high-five’s. Even the usually steady-as-she-goes Kevin Sumlin smiled broadly and congratulated Taylor.
Arizona’s Shawn Poindexter celebrates his 16-yard touchdown catch with teammate J.J. Taylor.
They all knew the consequences of losing to Oregon State. Even after Saturday’s victory, it’s possible Arizona won’t be favored in a game again this season. Although to be sure, Arizona State and Cal don’t appear to be teams that will arrive in Tucson as sure-thing favorites.
When Sumlin reached the UA locker room at ancient Gill Coliseum, next door to Reser Stadium, he couldn’t have had any idea that seven of the last nine Arizona teams to inhabit that cramped old place were losers. Two of Dick Tomey’s bowl teams, in 1990 and 1992, failed to win in Corvallis against dreadful Beaver teams.
Mike Stoops essentially lost his job in Corvallis, on Oct. 8, 2011. He was fired a day later.
As the winning UA players gathered around Sumlin on Saturday afternoon, he spoke not with the caution he used minutes later in a small media interview, but with a tone of accomplishment, as he should.
“Everybody’s got to be proud of the way we competed today,” he said, loudly, words that carried through the old cinder block walls and into the media room.
“And guess what? We can be so much better, if you want to be. All of our goals are still out there. That was step No. 1.”
It’s not difficult for his players to buy into that message.
As star-level sophomore linebacker Colin Schooler said, “on paper, we have nine returning starters (on defense) and we were just not clicking like we should’ve. Today we started clicking as a unit.”
Saturday was a good day to be Colin Schooler and J.J. Taylor and Kevin Sumlin. It had been 50 days since the UA began training camp, and it was the school’s first real payoff for all the work.
It can worry about USC another day.
