Offensive linemen Donovan Laie, left, and Bryson Cain are part of the Wildcats’ young offensive line. Their inexperience likely contributed to the play selection for quarterback Khalil Tate.

 Kelly Presnell / Arizona Daily Star

The Aug. 13 issue of Sports Illustrated that arrived in my mailbox had not Khalil Tate on the cover, but a faux cover of two guys dressed in football uniforms with the names “Jibber” and “Jabber” on their jerseys.

Once you removed Jibber and Jabber and the cleverly designed 8x11 life insurance advertisement, Tate came into full view.

“Big and Bad,” it said. “He’s the nation’s best QB.”

Today, given Arizona’s belly flop, a 28-23, sky-is-falling opening-night loss to BYU, Sports Illustrated and those positioning Tate into the Heisman Trophy race fit the Jibber-Jabber category.

It was just summertime talk. September changes everything.

In a baffling 3 hours and 34 minutes, Tate and Arizona were scrubbed from the college football landscape. Old news. There were new discoveries. Hey, how about LSU?

I can’t recall my email inbox as full and as condemning as it was over the weekend. One former UA football standout wrote that Arizona’s offensive game plan as designed by Kevin Sumlin and offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone reminded him of the way the 1973 San Diego Chargers used Johnny Unitas.

For the record, Unitas, at 40, holding on for a final season, did not carry the ball in the final five games of his Hall of Fame career.

Tate is 19. He carried eight times against BYU. It took me back to the day Lauri Markkanen didn’t attempt a shot in the final 14:19 of Arizona’s Sweet 16 loss to Xavier.

What would you pay to have the audio/video of the UA coaches’ meeting Sunday morning at the Lowell-Stevens compound?

“We had six months to plan for BYU and we came up with THAT?! What in the wide world of sports were we thinking?”

Or something with a few more exclamation marks.

But on Monday, Sumlin did something rarely seen at Arizona since the days of Dick Tomey. He walked into a media room and calmly discussed what went wrong against BYU.

He did not snap at anyone. He didn’t bite his lip, belittle his questioners or seem annoyed to be second-guessed. He handled himself like a pro.

“There are a lot of things we can do better as coaches,” he said. “We met as coaches (Sunday) and got a better feel for what we can do.”

This is part of the change in culture promised by UA athletic director Dave Heeke when he fired Rich Rodriguez and hired Sumlin. It doesn’t mean the sting of the BYU game will go away anytime soon — or that those mystified by the use of Khalil Tate feel any better — but calling people names and being mad at the world doesn’t fix a wobbling football program.

A lot of the issues that waylaid UA’s offense went unseen and unappreciated.

That’s because the average guy in the seats, or watching from the sofa, has great difficulty knowing if an offensive lineman is good, bad or barely breathing. To 99 percent of the fans, it is the most difficult position in sports to quantify and evaluate. Yet the value of the offensive line is such that former UA coach Larry Smith often said, “If you don’t have a good offensive line, you won’t have a good team.”

Arizona started four offensive linemen for the first time: freshman Donovan Laie; sophomore transfer Tshiyombu Lukusa; sophomore Bryson Cain, who had never played a college snap; and sophomore Josh McCauley, whose only college action had been in mop-up duty against UTEP, NAU and Oregon State.

Let’s just say none of the above were 4-star recruits sought by Top 25 schools.

That’s not playing with fire, it’s walking into a football conflagration.

It surely limited Mazzone’s play-calling and the time and space given to Tate.

Mazzone isn’t an offensive coordinator who runs scared. At UCLA from 2012-14, he coached quarterback Brett Hundley, who has a run-pass game similar to Tate’s. If nothing else, Mazzone was the most consistent play-caller in college football in the Hundley years.

Hundley ran the ball 160 times in 2012, 160 times in 2013 and 159 times in 2014. That’s about 12 times per game, which seems to be a sensible number for a run-pass quarterback. Tate averaged 14 carries last season.

The difference is that Hundley and Mazzone were blessed with first- and second-team All-Pac-12 offensive linemen Xavier Su’a-Filo, Jake Brendel, Conor McDermott and Jeff Baca. Arizona’s last first-team all-conference offensive lineman? Eben Britton, 2008.

Mazzone had so many resources at UCLA that when the Bruins arrived at Arizona Stadium in 2013, he was able to surprise the Wildcats by using linebacker Myles Jack as a running back. Jack was terrific. He won the game by rushing six times for 120 yards, including a 66-yard score.

So it’s not like those who assemble Arizona’s offensive plan don’t know what’s up.

But keep in mind that there’s no Myles Jack in Arizona’s bullpen, and that the current offensive line is probably the most inexperienced in the UA’s Pac-10/12 years.

That’s neither Jibber nor Jabber.

Become a #ThisIsTucson member! Your contribution helps our team bring you stories that keep you connected to the community. Become a member today.

Contact sports columnist Greg Hansen at 520-573-4362 or ghansen@tucson.com. On Twitter: @ghansen711