Dear Mr. Football: Is Jedd Fisch the kind of man who would fire a defensive coach midseason?
A: College football has become a quick-trigger, scapegoat profession, firing coaches in midseason at an unprecedented rate, something almost never seen until the last few years.
But Fisch this week preempted speculation that he’ll fire defensive coordinator Johnny Nansen without mentioning Nansen’s name. Instead, Fisch cited the success of ascending Kansas coach Lance Leipold, who has had the same offensive and defensive coordinators for a cumulative 16 years.
Leipold kept defensive coordinator Brian Borland and offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki after a 7-17 start at Buffalo and a 2-10 start at KU, whose stability has helped a climb into the Top 25.
Dear Mr. Football: How valuable are assistant coaches? Aren’t they interchangeable?
A: As Arizona rose from successive seasons of 3-8 and 3-8 in the early 2000s and became a Rose Bowl contender, Mike Stoops employed perhaps the league’s two leading coordinators: Sonny Dykes and Mark Stoops, his brother.
But when Dykes left in 2010 to become the head coach at Louisiana Tech and Stoops left the same year to become defensive coordinator at Florida State, the Wildcats fell apart. They went 1-10 over parts of two seasons, even though they had a career-type QB in Nick Foles. Stoops was fired in mid-season 2011.
Where is Arizona going to get a better defensive coordinator than Nansen? He has been an assistant coach in the Pac-12 — with Washington, USC and UCLA — since 2009, and is regarded as one of the league’s top recruiters.
Nansen needs time, a lot of time, to stock the UA defense with Pac-12 level players.
Spencer Larsen starred during the Wildcats’ 2007 win over Washington. It was the Wildcats’ last win in Seattle.
Dear Mr. Football: How long has it been since Arizona beat Washington at Husky Stadium?
A: Spencer Larsen was an All-Pac-10 linebacker at Arizona in 2007 when the Wildcats won 48-41 in Seattle. Full disclosure: the Huskies were bad that season, going 4-9 overall. A year later, they were 0-12.
Here’s some perspective on how long it has been since Arizona won in Seattle: Larsen went on to play six years in the NFL and now is married with five children. He is vice president of Morgan-Stanley’s regional operation in Billings, Montana.
Oh, how Arizona could use Spencer Larsen today. He made 26 tackles-for-losses in his junior and senior seasons in Tucson. No Wildcat this season has more than 6.5 TFLs.
Dear Mr. Football: Is it true Arizona did not have a tackle-for-loss last week against Oregon? Is that possible?
A: It happens once every 11 years. Arizona last failed to record a TFL against No. 6 Stanford in 2011, a day that Cardinal QB Andrew Luck picked the Wildcats apart in a 37-10 win.
I think Arizona’s two most humbling losses of the last 20 years were a 45-3 crushing at LSU in 2006 and a 33-0 blowout by Nebraska at the 2009 Holiday Bowl. But in both of those games Arizona had three TFLs.
The only other time this century that Arizona did not have a TFL was in a 45-0 loss to No. 2 USC in 2003, a day the Trojans gained 587 yards.
Dear Mr. Football: What has been the most predictable personnel transaction of Arizona’s 2022 season?
A: That third-team quarterback Jordan McCloud quit the team. In three brief appearances at Arizona last season, McCloud showed he was too short to be an effective passer, throwing five interceptions in 48 attempts. The transfer from South Florida probably should’ve stayed at South Florida.
Quarterbacks transfer so often that it’s a blur. Over the last 20 years, Arizona has watched QBs Ryan O’Hara, Richard Kovalcheck, Kris Heavner, Brandon Dawkins, John Rattay, Khari McGee, Kevin Doyle, Nic Costa, Donovan Tate, Rhett Rodriguez and Grant Gunnell, among others, leave the program.
Gunnell was one of the many — like O’Hara, Rattay and Kovalcheck — thought to be the next-big-thing in Arizona’s offense. But he struggled to be effective at Arizona, transferred to Memphis (he did not play a snap for the Tigers) and now is the No,. 2 QB at North Texas, of all places.
Dear Mr. Football: Is quarterback the most difficult position to accurately scout?
A: I would say that evaluating and signing a game-changing defensive linemen — or developing one — is the biggest challenge for a school that isn’t in the Top 25.
For example, Arizona has produced just one All-Pac-12 defensive lineman — Sabino High grad Brooks Reed — since 1998. That’s crazy. But recruiting-blessed USC has deployed 21 first-team all-conference defensive lineman in that period. Utah has had 12 since joining the league a decade ago.
I asked Fisch about the struggle to put a star defensive lineman on the field and he said: “I would say finding ‘big’ is hard. You have to find ‘big,’ I think creating ‘big’ once they get here is not very easy to do. So you need to find the body types, both up on the offensive line and defensive line, guys in the trenches, that are built a certain way in high school, like Big Jonah.”
Fisch was talking about freshman offensive lineman Jonah Savaiinaea, who is 6 feet 5 inches and about 335 pounds and an immediate starter. USC and Oregon have multiple players like Savaiinaea on their rosters every season.
“Big Jonah is Big Jonah, and he had that body type when he came out of high school,” said Fisch. “He gives us the best chance to have an elite offensive lineman. (Offensive tackle) Jordan Morgan is very similar to that.”
Fisch said that developing a useful linemen requires “size, flexibility, wiggle and athleticism — so it’s always gonna be a big challenge.”
Dear Mr. Football: Does Washington always sell out 70,000 seats against Arizona?
A: The Huskies sold out all seven UA-Washington games in Seattle from 1990-2002, with a minimum of 70,011 fans.
But the last six Arizona-UW games in Seattle have barely averaged 60,000. That’s typical of the Pac-12, which has witnessed a historic decline in league attendance the last decade.
Only seven of 42 Pac-12 home games this year have sold out, and three of them are Utah games. The others are BYU at Oregon, Oregon at WSU, Oregon at Arizona and Michigan State at Washington. (Games at Oregon State don’t count this year; due to ongoing stadium construction at Reser Stadium, capacity at OSU has been reduced to about 28,000).
The Pac-12 is averaging 43,989 per home game this year, the second-lowest total in modern league history (since 1977). The only lower total was 43,703 a year ago.
The Huskies don’t need a full house to beat Arizona. The 63,000 or so expected to attend will create a raucous home-field advantage Arizona hasn’t experienced in previous road games at Cal and San Diego State.
When you hit the road, the road hits back, even in the laid-back Pac-12.
Washington 43, Arizona 30.
