Arizona's Tetairoa McMillan taking next steps as elite wide receiver

Associated Press National Player of the Week Tetairoa McMillan can relate to the song “Big Yellow Taxi.” Sometimes, you don’t really know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

Football was briefly taken away from the Arizona standout, who suffered a leg injury in April and underwent surgery, forcing him to miss the final week of spring practices and the early stages of preseason training camp.

Even when McMillan wore his helmet and pads during training camp, he often worked on the side and performed a series of conditioning, footwork and balance drills with UA strength and conditioning coach Cullen Carroll.

In the time away from football, McMillan learned “just how blessed I am,” he said on Tuesday.

“Not too many people get to do what we do. There’s a lot of people that dream of being in the position we’re in. ... Football being taken away from me for a little bit of time really allowed me to be grateful for the whole situation and every opportunity I get,” McMillan said. “God has blessed me with amazing things and amazing opportunities. Hopefully I can go out there through his will.”

Arizona wide receivers coach Bobby Wade said, “The biggest thing, being away from the game like that, is the appreciation for it.”

“The understanding that every single rep is a precious rep,” said Wade. “You miss it so much when you’re not around it and question a lot of things given the injury. Will you be able to do it at a high level? How will you respond when you first come back and things don’t go right? There’s so much that goes through your mind, but I think he really sat back and watched the other kids play and how much fun they were having and the passion they were putting in the game. I think he was looking there and reflecting like, ‘I miss it and I’m really looking forward to that opportunity to coming back.’”

McMillan missed football so much, he set Arizona’s single-game receiving record with 304 yards on 10 catches and four touchdowns (tied for a record) in the Wildcats’ season-opening win over New Mexico. McMillan, who averaged 30.4 yards per catch, was 11 yards shy of breaking the Big 12 receiving record.

McMillan was named Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week on Monday and added the AP National Player of the Week honors Tuesday for his record-setting performance.

When Wade played for the Wildcats, his personal favorite performance was a 222-yard, one-touchdown outing against the Cal Golden Bears in 2002.

“It wasn’t 300,” Wade said with a smile.

The only other individual performance he would compare to McMillan’s record night was, well, McMillan’s 266-yard game two games ago against Arizona State in Tempe last season, when Wade was an offensive assistant at ASU. McMillan has 31 catches for 730 yards and five touchdowns going back to the last two games of last season.

“Obviously I was on the other side of that and it was bittersweet watching him perform,” Wade said of McMillan’s Territorial Cup performance, which ranks third in program history.

McMillan had 176 yards after catch on Saturday, which is 19 shy of matching his season total from his freshman season in 2022; he had 537 last year, according to Pro Football Focus. Although he’s only one game into likely his last season before he turns pro, McMillan’s YAC per reception average has increased from 5 yards to 6 yards to now 17.6 on PFF.

McMillan didn’t have any one-handed catches that he routinely makes on Saturday. He just maneuvered through New Mexico’s defense with ease, regardless of the variety of coverages the Lobos tried to limit him. According to Reel Analytics, the 6-5, 212-pound McMillan was clocked at running 20 miles per hour for one of his touchdown runs. McMillan said his “mindset is a lot different from last year.”

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“One of the major things I emphasized with him, was finishing with the football in his hands,” Wade said. “I think that was the next step for him, to be able show the guys on the next level that he has that capability to get the ball and make the guy miss and not only that, but trust his speed and run past people, and he was able to put that on film. ... The fact that he’s finishing with the ball in his hand and his intention to score is obvious. That was a big challenge for him this year and I’m glad he’s getting it done.”

McMillan’s longtime best friend, Arizona quarterback Noah Fifita, deserves some of the credit for McMillan’s historic. Although Fifita targeted McMillan 15 times — half of the Arizona quarterback’s total targets on Saturday — and connected on 10, none of the completed passes forced McMillan to lose his stride.

McMillan’s third touchdown of the night, where he evaded defenders down the New Mexico sideline to score a 78-yard touchdown, was a prime example of their bond. McMillan faked a curl route, which baited New Mexico defensive back Noah Avinger, his former teammate at Servite High School in Anaheim, California. McMillan bolted for the “next window” and Fifita connected with McMillan, who had a lane down the sideline for a touchdown.

“We were rewatching the play and I was like, ‘Is this one of our best chemistry moments right here?’ We speak about it a lot, our relationship off the field correlates to out relationship on the field,” McMillan said. “You see that on that play.”

To celebrate McMillan’s touchdowns, the Arizona receiver and Fifita have their signature handshake.

“There’s not an origin story, but we’ve been doing this since we were 14 years old,” McMillan said. “Every chance we get to do our little handshake after a touchdown, it’s a blessing. Not too many people get to do what we do.”

If entering the season as a preseason AP All-American and likely first-round draft pick didn’t alert defensive coaches about McMillan, Saturday night sure did. Moving forward, McMillan expects “getting double-coverage, but that opens everyone else’s opportunity.”

“At the end of the day, it’s not just me playing football out there, there’s three more receivers on the team,” he said. “It gives everyone a chance to be successful.”

As No. 20-ranked Arizona prepares for its final nonconference home game of the season against Northern Arizona, Wade has preached “humble and hungry” to McMillan. When McMillan was asked about his performance, he humbly redirected the attention to the team.

“I’m not really worried about what I did, just mostly looking at what the team did. We’ve got a lot of areas to fix. Obviously we’ve got NAU this week,” McMillan said. “Coaches have been preaching about teams making their biggest jumps from Week 1 to Week 2, so we’ve gotta prove to the world that we’re a ranked team, a good team, and go out there and prove it.”

McMillan’s goals for the Wildcats this season is to win a Big 12 championship and contend for a national title. As for his personal goals?

“Break every Arizona receiving record there is,” he said.

McMillan is 944 yards away from breaking Wade’s all-time receiving yards record at Arizona.

A hungry “T-Mac” could make him statistically the greatest pass-catching Wildcat — and arguably the best overall player in Arizona history.