Arizona's defense 'playing at an elite level' entering UA football's bye week

It’s almost too eye-opening and jarring.

As Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch put it earlier in the week as the Wildcats prepare for a bye, “defensively is where we’ve made enormous strides” through seven games of the 2023 college football season.

“I went back and really looked at our team from seven games a year ago to seven games now, and I can tell you the biggest difference is the defense,” Fisch said. “Our defense is playing at an elite level.”

He’s not kidding.

In a one-year turnaround under defensive coordinator Johnny Nansen, the Wildcats went from the second-to-last in the Pac-12 in total defense (467.7 yards per game) to the fourth-best (333.4 yards per game). Arizona is currently No. 33 in total defense nationally, after being the sixth-worst in college football a year ago.

Arizona’s rushing defense is also on pace to finish in the top half of the Pac-12 for the first time since 2010. The Wildcats have elevated their rushing defense from surrendering just over 209 yards per game to 96.6 yards this season; they’ve have held three opponents to under 100 yards rushing.

The Wildcats have allowed 144 total points this season, which includes two overtime games — a notable difference from last season’s points allowed (254) through seven games. In some cases this season, when the offense stalled early, like against Mississippi State, Stanford and Washington, the defense weathered the storm and kept the Wildcats within arm’s reach.

Last season, Arizona made similar progress on offense, when it coupled playmaking transfers with rising underclassmen and became one of the top passing offenses in college football.

“Now we’ve wanted to make the same commitment on defense and we’ve done that,” Fisch said.

During Arizona’s three-game stretch against ranked opponents between No. 7 Washington in Tucson, followed by No. 9 USC and No. 19 Washington State on the road, the Wildcats faced, statistically speaking, three of the top passing offenses in the country. USC’s defending Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Caleb Williams, Washington star and Heisman Trophy favorite Michael Penix Jr. and Washington State gunslinger Cameron Ward have all combined for 57 touchdown passes this season — and only one of them was against the UA.

“When you look at how we’re defending elite quarterbacks,” Fisch said, “I would really say that’s based upon the work that the defensive staff has done together.”

Arizona’s two hallmark defenses under Nansen are his base 4-2-5 scheme and the “dollar” package, a 3-1-7 scheme that mostly uses defensive backs in space to negate high-level passing attacks.

The versatility of Arizona’s defense was on full display in the Wildcats’ 44-6 win over Washington State on Saturday, when the Wildcats blanked the Cougars after the opening drive and forced three takeaways. The UA debuted the “Arizona flex defense,” which had three defensive linemen, three linebackers and five defensive backs. The third linebacker added to the base scheme was Jeremy Mercier, who played 16 snaps and “spied” WSU quarterback Cameron Ward. The defense was studied and mastered by UA defensive backs assistant Duane Akina, who helped coach Arizona’s “Desert Swarm” defense under head coach Dick Tomey, and is in his first season on Fisch’s staff.

“We went back to our roots a little bit, when Desert Swarm was Desert Swarm,” Fisch said. “Coach Akina put in a little bit of the flex defense this week with Coach Nansen and we thought it was going to be a great little add to what we’ve been doing, and continuing to get as many defensive linemen in the game as possible.”

Akina and former Arizona defensive assistant Rich Ellerson used the flex defense coaching in the Canadian Football League, which uses 12 players.

“Those years when we first started out running this defense, which came down from Canada — it really came down from (Edmonton) winning all those Grey Cups, and we married this defense into 11-man football,” Akina said at the start of the season.

In 1993, Arizona’s Desert Swarm defense under Akina, Ellerson and Tomey only allowed 30.1 rushing yards per game — 331 the entire season — and 13.4 points per contest.

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“That will never be touched again in rushing defense,” Akina said. “That’s phenomenal.”

Now 30 years since Arizona’s Fiesta Bowl team, Akina, along with first-year cornerbacks John Richardson, has “been enormous for our program,” and “those two guys have done an amazing job of coaching the corners and the secondary in total.”

“As a group, they’ve done a tremendous job,” Fisch said. “The collective group of 11 (coaches) that work together on the defense have really done a great job with our players.

“They game-plan together, they meet together, they try to figure out the best way to stop an offense.”

The collaborative effort has transformed Arizona’s defense. There’s one common theme for this year’s UA defense: “’Just keep swarming to the ball,’” said cornerback Ephesians Prysock, who recorded his first interception (and the team’s first) of the season against the Cougars. “I think that’s pretty much it. Just keep swarming and trying to take the ball away.”

Sound familiar?

“We had a system. Our whole thing with the Desert Swarm came because the effort drill we named the ‘swarm drill.’ Then Desert Storm hits and then it just kind of caught on. The players just swarmed the ball, swarmed the ball and then it took off,” Akina said. “It’s not the call, it’s how you play the call.

“There’s no magic defense to this thing, it’s how you play the game. We played hard, kept it simple so kids could play hard and we just had a lot of guys that weren’t highly recruited, but they were very loyal that we took a chance on them.”

Sound familiar again?

Linebacker Jacob Manu is fourth in the Pac-12 in tackles (58) and has ascended into Arizona’s ringleader on defense since the second half of last season. His only other offers to play college football out of Servite High School in California were Dartmouth and Pennsylvania.

Arizona took a chance on Manu and it paid off, like others who’ve come to the UA before him.

Now Manu and the Wildcats are a defensive unit with, as Fisch would say, “no flinch.”

“We’ve got five more games, we gotta see how good we can be,” Fisch said. “We gotta see if we can earn the right for six (wins) — seven games, whatever that might be. And we’re going to do everything we possibly can do to get there. We’re going to practice harder, work harder and see how good we can be.”

Extra points

Fisch called sophomore edge rusher Russell Davis II, who has 1.5 sacks this season, a “disruptor.” Said Fisch: “He can truly disrupt the passer, he can challenge tackles, he is extremely strong — like, on the high end of strong in terms of his weight. ... That Class of ’22 has really proven themselves what we hoped and thought they were going to be.”

Arizona nickel back Martell Irby has the UA defense’s highest overall grade (84.1) on Pro Football Focus. Irby has 18 tackles, a forced fumble, a fumble recovery and two pass breakups.