Arizona’s second spring camp under Jedd Fisch has concluded. Mark it down as another offseason win.
The Wildcats integrated about 20 newcomers from the NCAA transfer portal and their top-25 recruiting class. They displayed playmaking ability on both sides of the ball rarely seen last season. And they avoided major injuries (although some players required surgeries for pre-existing injuries, including one we’ll discuss below).
But Fisch understands the reality of Arizona’s situation. The Wildcats are coming off a 1-11 campaign, their fourth losing season in a row. They have won only one of their past 24 games dating to October 2019.
“We have a long, long way to go,” Fisch said after Saturday’s spring game. “But we had some playmakers out there today, which was fun to see. And then we just have to get better here in the next four or five months.”
Arizona opens the 2022 season on Sept. 3 at San Diego State. More players will arrive between now and then as Fisch and his staff continue to retool the roster.
They won’t be able to fill every hole. Few teams can. Every program has lingering, unanswered questions.
As the Wildcats shift from spring ball to summer workouts, we’ll dig into three of them — starting with today’s first question:
Lingering question No. 1: How big is the gap between Jayden de Laura and Arizona’s other quarterbacks?
Based strictly on practice reps, de Laura is The Guy. The transfer from Washington State took almost every first-team snap during spring ball.
That was the plan all along. Fisch didn’t want to repeat the ambivalence of 2021, when the quarterbacks couldn’t separate from one another. Fisch named Gunner Cruz the starter for the opener but said Will Plummer also would play. The QB carousel spun for weeks and never really stopped until two of the three contenders were injured.
Fisch and his staff knew they had to add more talent to the QB room in the offseason beyond incoming freshman Noah Fifita. But they weren’t just going to bring in anybody. If they were going to add a transfer, it had to be a definitive upgrade.
De Laura fit that profile. He had 15 starts on his résumé. He was the reigning Pac-12 Offensive Freshman of the Year. He wasn’t looking to be a backup.
Starting with the second practice, after spring break, de Laura got his shot. He got every first-team rep he could handle.
Was he definitively the best quarterback in Arizona’s spring camp? That’s where things get interesting.
If you were to take the names and numbers off their backs — pretend you didn’t know anything about them — you would have thought Fifita was the most impressive QB on the field. That’s how we saw it anyway.
Quarterback Noah Fifita laughs with his teammates after running a drill during their April 7 practice.
Bear in mind: We don’t have access to the coaches’ film or grades. This is based strictly on our observations of 14 practices and the spring game. And context must be considered.
While de Laura got most of the first-team reps — and therefore faced, primarily, the first-team defense — Fifita mainly took second-and third-team reps against second-and third-team defenders. We also don’t know whether the coaches gave him the same volume of plays or responsibilities at the line of scrimmage.
But when it came to executing the plays they were asked to execute — boiling it down to that one thing — Fifita was the best quarterback we saw during spring ball.
Now, that doesn’t mean Fifita is the best candidate to start for Arizona in 2022. Nor is it any sort of indictment of de Laura.
Practice is practice. It’s all we have to go on for now. Games are a different animal.
De Laura strikes us as a “gamer” — the type of player whose best attributes aren’t necessarily revealed in a practice setting. De Laura has the innate ability to make plays amid chaotic situations — off script, off platform. He seemed more comfortable in 11-on-11 (with pass rushers flying at him) than 7-on-7 (no rush).
We’ve seen de Laura do this in games. So has the UA staff — first-hand last November. No quarterback had a more efficient game against the Wildcats than de Laura, who passed for 259 yards and four touchdowns in a 44-18 WSU victory in Pullman. De Laura averaged 19.9 yards per completion and 11.3 per attempt.
If you’re whittling the QB competition down to de Laura and Fifita — who both arrived in January — that experience and others like it undoubtedly give de Laura the upper hand. They both learned the offense on the same timeline.
“They did a really nice job of picking things up,” Fisch said. “We didn’t have to hold anything back.”
But a case could be made that de Laura, despite his veteran status, actually faced a greater challenge. He had more to unlearn after playing two seasons in a run-and-shoot system.
De Laura also had no background with any UA receiver. Fifita played with fellow freshmen Tetairoa McMillan and Keyan Burnett in high school. All that newness might have led to de Laura throwing more interceptions during spring ball than he would have preferred.
Regardless, we don’t see a scenario — barring an injury — where de Laura doesn’t start the opener. And Fifita might not even be the first one off the bench.
Veteran Jordan McCloud had a solid camp, and it makes sense to slot him as the No. 2. McCloud started and relieved for Arizona last year, and he appears to be healthy after sustaining season-ending leg injuries last October.
McCloud, at worst, is a viable short-term alternative. Fifita looks the part of a long-term solution. Again, that’s more about him than anyone else in the QB room. Fifita displayed excellent arm strength, downfield accuracy and unusual moxie for a true freshman.
“He’s got great command of the offense,” Fisch said. “He’s got great control of the huddle. The ball comes out of his hand – flies out of his hand. But the guy knows exactly where to go with the ball, and he does it with great rhythm and timing.”
The odd men out during spring were last year’s top competitors, Cruz and Plummer. We learned last week that Plummer was still feeling the effects of a shoulder injury sustained last season. He underwent surgery Friday and will miss several months.
Plummer’s future at Arizona is uncertain. The Wildcats’ QB hierarchy appears to be clear-cut. But maybe not to the extent the rep disbursement would lead you to believe.
