Arizona Offense & Arizona Defense
Arizona Offense & Arizona Defense
Chart reflect ranking percentile for Offense or Defense vs NCAA
0 is worst unit in NCAA 100 is best
0 is worst unit in NCAA 100 is best
Head Coach: Rich Rodriguez 6th Season (23-30) Pac-12
Offensive Coordinator: Rodriguez/Calvin Magee/Rod Smith 6th Season
Defensive Coordinator: Marcel Yates 2nd Season
2017 Record: 7-6 Overall, 6-6 FBS, 5-4 Pac-12
Predicted Record by Final 2017Model: 7-5 FBS
Predicted Record by Preseason Model: 3-8 FBS
Beta_Rank: #62, 8th in Pac-12
Predicted Preseason Beta_Rank: #66
2017 Returning Production: #23, 75% (Per Bill Connelly)
Whooh boy the Arizona Wildcats had an interesting ride in 2017. At the beginning of the season we were sure that Rich Rodriguez was coaching for his job and that, his prospects of keeping it, didn't look good. The first four games and one drive were pretty much to form: the offense was middling, the defense and special teams looked improved, they lost some close games that were predicted to be close games, then reality started outpacing what we knew at an alarming rate.
I went back and watched Khalil Tate from 2016, just to see if I totally missed something, and I still came away convinced he looked exactly like a 17 year old true freshman; and not in a good way. I also discounted what I heard about Tate from the Spring Game because his opponent was Arizona's defense and I knew how bad Arizona's defense was/is. I had this to say in the preview:
"The spring "game", or whatever, was a bit of a showcase for Khalil Tate who played well, but as Michael Lev astutely points out: had more of the ones while Dawkins had more of the walk-ons. I would hesitate to take much away in terms of offensive performance for anyone against Arizona's defense."
So maybe I just thought the Spring Game was a fluke against a bad defense. The rap on Tate is that he is not the most engaged participant at practice; so it isn't like we were hearing rumors of major growth at practice either. And yet he dramatically changed Arizona's season from the second drive in Boulder forward. So I will own it, I didn't see it coming, but I still don't get what some people saw either. Even as Arizona's defense and special teams turned out to be far worse than we expected; the offense became far better than we expected and, weirdly, smoothed out Arizona's team ranking so that the preseason prediction of #66 was fairly close to the final ranking of #62; which is not to say I feel especially vindicated because the overall ranking hides an insane amount of unit variability from the prediction; getting that close overall while being wildly off at the unit level is pure luck.
Arizona wasn't overwhelmingly lucky or unlucky except for the Utah game; where their 5 turnovers cost them a win over a Utah team that played very well down the stretch, but was middling early in the season as they broke in a lot of young players. In the Purdue game they played well enough for the model to have expected them to have put up a field goal more than they did. They got a little lucky in the WSU game where the model expected more from the Cougs against Arizona's porous defense. Yates's charges caused some turnovers in that game to pivot momentum at key times.
The Washington State game was the high point of the season for Arizona and the game that the model assessed the Wildcats as playing the best in all three phases. Some folks use an average college football team to compare how a team performed in a specific game. I don't find that as interesting because the model already does something quite close to that exercise. I like to see how a team played in a game relative to it's own abilities. I calculate this by looping the model to iterively drop games from Arizona's season from the sample, one at a time, and then measure how the model's score for Arizona changes. Good games are games where you score worse than if that game had been present, bad games are where you score better. I collect this information for all three phases of the game and I have rolled it up here. Since you likely watched much of Arizona's season you might be surprised to see such low team scores for the Colorado and Cal games, but what you are seeing is a team score; which includes the defense (playing terrible). Arizona's special team's were also awful, but they had one monster positive game this season vs. USC and they play a big role in that game looking better than it would if you only looked at the offense and defensive performance.
The Oregon game was just disaster all around and, if you watched it, that should not be a surprise. Oregon ran all over Arizona's not very good defense, special teams had a poor game, and Jim Leavitt (with two weeks to prepare and plenty of tape) utterly baffled the Arizona offensive players and staff in a way that I think did lead to some positive changes in the Purdue game down the road, but at the time made Arizona's offensive game planning and playcalling look woefully unprepared for making adjustments to adjustments.
But all of this is intrigue around the main issue, "Was Arizona good?"
If record is your only guide them Arizona was pretty middling, but exciting! 7-6 and 5-4 in the Pac-12 were probably good enough to get Rodriguez off the hot seat. They finished ranked pretty close to the middle of the country, which is really neither good nor bad in a very big picture. Khalil Tate inexplicably sat on the bench for three games to start the season and Arizona probably would have won against Houston with Tate.
But the record may be a little deceiving. The Pac-12 was bad and Arizona missed out on playing #12 Washington and #24 Stanford. This Arizona team might have just barely been bowl eligible playing last year's schedule against this year's teams. Finishing ranked #62 isn't a great accomplishment for a Power 5 team.
I think the answer itself is a bit complicated and I'll try to answer it more in the unit evaluations.
Arizona Offense
2017 Beta_Rank: #11, 1st in Pac-12
Returning Production: #47, 70%, +1.7 PPG (Per Bill Connelly)
So for the first time since Matt Scott suited up for Arizona, Rich Rod produced a very good offense nationally and they did it by doing something they had done only when BJ Denker was at QB, they ran the ball with the QB a lot.
This isn't to say that Khalil Tate isn't a good passer, and may even be a great passer some day, but Arizona has done some odd stuff under Rodriguez when you look at who his personnel has been year in and year out. Other than the BJ Denker year and this year Arizona has been a pass first offense under Rodriguez. This makes total sense when you inherit Matt Scott and a bunch of Air Raid WR's, it makes way less sense as these guys aged out of the program and you failed to replace them. I think you can see this with Anu Solomon's progression/regression at Arizona. His first year kind of worked as a pass first offense, but it just got worse every year after. Arizona's QB's really struggled to find open WR's in man coverage with 2 safeties in cover.
In stepped Brandon Dawkins who, along with Tate, are probably the only players on Arizona's roster who would not get caught from behind in a footrace to the endzone of more than 35 yards. At times last year Dawkins was great; like the Washington game. He used his legs to churn out big runs and then took advantage of defenses switching to zone to find soft spots; especially when the safeties started coming into the box to keep and eye on him. Dawkins isn't the thrower Tate is, but he also isn't the shot-putter of many angry Arizona fan's internet rants either. But the formula that worked so well against Washington seemed to disappear after Dawkins was hurt in the Utah game. Last year and this year he was a pass first QB that seemed gun shy when tucking and running. Dawkins held out for receivers to get open in ways that, frankly, made little sense when you consider that he was almost always the best athlete on the field and he should have gone North South instead of getting stung out East West so often. It should also be noted that Tate and Dawkins are both very fast humans, but Dawkins seems, at times, to relish delivering shots on defenders while Tate is both more elusive and, as Michael Lev has noted, rarely squares anybody up.
Arizona's season might have turned out a bit differently if it were not for the turnovers in the Utah game. Arizona was able to march up and down the field with Dawkins, against what turned out to be a pretty good Utah defense, but Utah's defensive line was able to get consistent pressure on Dawkins and pressure is about the only thing correlated with turnovers. Arizona was the better team that night, but they killed themselves by being unable to contain the Utes on the line and with Dawkins's errors; which is too bad because it was one of the better performances by the defense all year.
Then, following one ineffective series against Colorado, lightening struck in Boulder. Tate came in and ran for 327 yards and Arizona's season took a big turn. Tate did not sit around in the pocket like Dawkins or get strung out looking for WR's. He took off North-South out of pocket break downs, and when he took off, he usually scored. Colorado was blindsided by Tate. They prepared for a pass first attack led by Dawkins and they got Tate, in basically the same play calls, but now when things broke down, he was gone. Tate is also a better passer than Dawkins, so when Colorado switched to zone and brought up the safeties; he was able to make plays in the air to punish the defense and keep them more honest than it is likely Dawkins would have been able to do. Tate, in particular, throws a nice deep ball.
Though Tate, like Daxx Garman, likes to throw the deep ball way too often; especially given Arizona's roster at WR (foreshadowing).
That Colorado game proved an inflection point on the season though. The model, and any type of statistical analysis, isn't really designed to pick up on radical changes very quickly, so I picked most of the mid-season run of wins incorrectly as the model struggled to catch up with the reality of Tate. It is safe to say that UCLA didn't really have an effective game plan for him either, but the model doesn't think that was as impressive because UCLA was so bad on defense this year.
Arizona, and Tate, had a good game offensively at Cal, but it was a bit of a tale of two halves and a harbinger of how Tate might be slowed down the rest of the season. Wilcox and DeRuyter made some good half-time adjustments and held Arizona to 10 points in the second half. Cal used spies very effectively to force Tate to roll out and run more East-West than would be ideal. Tate also took too many deep shots that fell incomplete, but Arizona really turned it on in overtime.
The Washington State game was an odd game for the offense. The Cougars came in with a very good defense, and that ranking held up over the season. Alex Grinch is a very smart DC and playcaller and he clearly did his homework on what worked for Cal the week before, but he may have obssessed so much on stopping Tate on the hoof that his players forgot their coverages. The coverage breakdowns that Wazzu suffered in the game were inexplicable. Which isn't to say Tate didn't throw the ball with verve and accuracy, he did, but the Cougs didn't make it hard on him. It had to be maddening to watch the tape for the Cougar defense; basically eight huge plays cost you the game, on a night that you were otherwise pretty stout.
So if Arizona's season is a three act play, we are now at the final act; and it largely wasn't a good act.
Arizona rolled into Los Angeles to play USC on a high. At 6-2 and ranked #23 in the AP, Arizona was just surging, but it all unraveled in the Coliseum. USC was largely able to ride out Tate as a runner with the speed they had on the field and they disguised coverages in ways that seemed to mystify, and irritate, Tate. USC played man on the outside most of the night; relying on their corners to shut down Arizona's short, not super fast, WR's. USC's wrinkle was in how their safeties shifted around. USC was basically daring Tate to throw deep by containing him on the ground and putting single coverage on the outside, sometimes without safety help. From watching all season I don't get the sense that Tate needs much prodding to start uncorking lollipop throws that show off his arm and touch. USC baited him into throwing deep and then took advantage of Tate not reading the safeties very well for one very, very, bad interception. In the second half Arizona had a monster special teams game that helped the comeback, but it fell short in the end. USC had a good, but in no ways great, defense this season, so the performance against the Trojans left much to be desired.
Oregon State was bad, weird, and, up until January, had the most Bobby Petrino-esque coaching departure not starring Bobby Petrino that I thought possible.
You never want to give Jim Leavitt extra time to prepare, and while Arizona was getting back on track against a putrid Beavers team, Leavitt was in a dark room, with the shades down even though it was overcast and rainy, plotting and wearing a USF visor.
Side note: I am not a hat person so I get the impetus to wear a visor and go half-hat/half-hair, but I can't convince myself I am old enough to wear one. Yes this is me telling lies to myself.
Arizona got pummeled in Eugene and I think that the offensive staff deserves most of the blame. You could see the adjustment's being made to deal with Tate starting with the second half of the Cal game. Grinch had a good game plan, but 8 plays doomed him, USC showed up and executed most of the night, but USC has A LOT of talent and was a more mature defense than Oregon. Leavitt watched all the tape and took his two weeks to prepare and put on a coaching clinic. Oregon followed the game plan, putting man coverage on the outside WR's. They effectively kept contain on the pocket to not let Tate get loose with a head of steam heading North-South and they used a spy to string Tate out and gang tackle him as he tried to find an edge. Without any coverage breakdowns to exploit, Arizona's offense looked awful and Arizona's coaches had zero answers.
The ASU game was going pretty well until Tate got hurt, and then the wind went out of Arizona's offense. Without Tate's explosive running and accurate passing, the offense just folded in the second half. Rodriguez had, interesting, late in half decisions during his run in Tucson, but his decision to have Tate heave one at the end of the first half was pretty roundly disliked. I don't know what else to really say about the ASU game other than if you are wondering why I am not writing up the performance of the rest of the offense yet, the drives where Tate wasn't in the game should provide and answer.
I am less sure what to make of the Purdue game. It was not a great offensive game for Arizona, even though Tate lit it up passing. In the first half Purdue was a few blown plays away from putting Arizona in an even deeper hole than the 17 points Arizona was behind. The second half though, was much better. Purdue tightened up the major coverage errors and still held Tate and the RB's deeply in check, but Tate was able to be patient and find soft spots in the coverage, and resist the urge to throw bombs. Arizona has not been a terribly efficient team under Rodriguez in keeping drives going; the offense has always relied on explosive plays, but Tate looked better reading the field against the Boilermakers in the second half than he had all season and that is a very good sign for Arizona.
So now lets take a step back and talk about the seasons everyone else had in Tate's shadow. Football is more of a team sport in it's statistics than almost any other, and compared to baseball and now basketball with player position tracking; we are in the Dark Ages. Khalil Tate utterly defied that this season. Arizona would be a middling Power 5 offense without Tate, with him they are among the best offenses in the country and one mistake away from taking it to the house. If you take away Tate the roster really shows it's warts. The offensive line was good, but not great, and very lucky injury wise because it is not deep. They really struggled to keep Dawkins and Tate upright against some of the better DL's in the league, and this was not a vintage year for pass rusher's in the Pac-12. Yes they blocked for a prolific rushing attack, but a lot of those yards came way down field and after Tate blew past folks that would tackle a lesser runner. They had a very good year and were a little under-heralded, but I don't think we should overstate their contribution either. The three players moving on should feel very good about what they did this year and getting two back is a big help for next year.
Rodriguez and his staff utterly screwed up recruiting WR's and brought a mish mash of mildly talented guys into this season. If you love Shun Brown, fine, he had the best year of anyone, but imagine Tate with Criner or Hill to throw deep to. The roster management at WR and TE made the offense deeply limited in it's dimensions and left the unit unable to fully exploit the potential offered by Tate and the best deep ball on campus since Foles. The offense could have been even better with better players. Running back is actually a positition of stregnth on the roster and Taylor and Wilson had pretty good years. Taylor was probably the better complement to Tate at this point due to his burst and shiftiness. Taylor seemed better able to exploit a hole and get big yards when the linebackers or safeties crashed the wrong gap. A home run threat isn't necessary at RB, but it had been a long time since Arizona had a back that wasn't going to be caught from behind on a run of 35+
I am undoubtedly repeating myself, but any evaluation of Arizona's offense this year has to primarily focus on Tate and it is a very interesting question as to what to make of Arizona's offense going forward, but I'll do previews after I get some more data and recover from writing this Harry Potter novel.
Arizona Defense
2017 Beta_Rank: #116, 11th in Pac-12
Returning Production: #17, 79%, -2.6 PPG (Per Bill Connelly)
Arizona's defense was supposed to get better this season. I guess you could say they did. They were #125 last season, so #116 is an improvement, but some of what went into the preseason model as far as returning production turned out to be wrong. Arizona chose to play a lot of true freshmen instead of some of their returners and that contributed to some really bad defense for the third year in a row.
I think if you want to evaluate Arizona's defense you have to balance two competing data points; the youth of the players and the terribleness of the unit.
Freshman don't normally play a lot of snaps for a reason, so seeing them play can, very generally, mean one of two things depending on your depth chart: you have a normal-ish depth chart and an exceptional freshman or you have a crap depth chart and a normal-ish freshman. The evidence points much more to the latter for Arizona. That isn't to say you shouldn't be encouraged. For the third straight year Arizona has almost nowhere to go but up as a defense and young players should develop, but Arizona's players developing into a Pac-12 average unit in two years would be fantastic, but still not make them a very highly regarded defense. I think the skew of general freshman statistics is putting a bit of a shine on the unit that maybe isn't warranted yet though. It is pretty easy to stand out amongst freshman statistically if you start all season; can Arizona's young players still stand out in their cohort as their peers start to see the field? That isn't a sure thing, but again, plenty of reason to be optimistic from a very low base.
The defense had their ups and downs, as exhibited by the chart. Again this is relative to Arizona's defense's ranking rather than some average or great defense. If you only kept the good games Arizona would likely be about 10 spots better on defense; which would still be bad. Their best games were really the UCLA and WSU games where Yates was able to get pressure home and cause some turnovers. The late Tyler Hilinski had a tough game in Tucson with 4 interceptions. They still gave up yards, but they were able to keep points off the board. The worst game was Oregon, but we should talk about Colorado first.
Colorado traded shots with Arizona all night in that game where Tate broke out and it was the first sign that everybody's hopes for an improved defense in 2017 might be a mirage. Colorado spent a little too much time early trying to throw the ball, but they eventually just settled into a steady and remorseless diet of Philip Lindsay right down the gut and Arizona was powerless to stop it. There are few things more demoralizing than having the ball run down your throat. It was more than a little disappointing that Arizona couldn't come up with anything to stop the Buffs. The game basically came down to Arizona figuring out how to score at will just a hair before Colorado did. Colorado didn't have a great offense this year so get trucked by the #72 offense in the country was disappointing.
UCLA for reasons that I don't understand decided to throw the ball on Arizona and this allowed Yates to actually get some pressure home. UCLA's backs did not do a good job picking up pressure. The Cal game was another doozy of a bad game for the defense, but this time Cal showed that you could throw the ball effectively all over Arizona just as easily as you could run it if you effectively picked up Yate's pressure. Cal finished with an offense ranked #85. Bad offenses could run it on Arizona, bad offenses could throw it on Arizona.
The USC game was interesting because Arizona played just like the #116th ranked defense in the game' neither better or worse than expected really. The Trojans were mostly able to do what they wanted on offense; especially when they lined up and ran it to salt the game away late.
The Oregon game was just terrible. Oregon's offense might be a bit underrated in the model because Herbert was out for part of the season and I don't account for injuries in the model, but Oregon showed up and mauled Arizona's defense mercilessly. Herbert was pretty good throwing the ball, but Oregon put up 353 yards rushing and when you can run the ball with impunity; throwing the ball should be easy (unless you are post-Kevin Hogan Stanford).
The Purdue game was actually pretty good for Arizona and I realize that sounds bonkers, but Arizona's defense was utterly screwed by the offense and special teams in that game with some terrible field position holes. It was bad, but not as bad as it looked on paper. That said, the coverage was bad all game and Yates was largely unable to get home with blitzes.
Clearly we can't call Arizona's defense good and if we were to give Yates a grade for the season it would have to be an D- when you consider the impact many coordinators had in their first years with new teams in the league. Yates made minimal impact for the second year running. Other than his blitzing getting home in a few games; the defense seemed to have very few cards to play and in two years I have yet to see Yates execute any game plan near the level of the more highly regarded DC's in the conference. Now some fans will rush into say that Rich Rod was actually a deep state DC and didn't give Yates any freedom and to that I say fine, I guess. I haven't seen this reported by anyone credible and also I would still expect Yates to make SOME positive difference. Regardless, without getting into too much foreshadowing; next year has to be the year for the defense to make a jump or Yates needs to be replaced. That would be true with Rich Rod or Sumlin. Rich Rod being gone removes the "Shadow DC" from the picture so if Yates is really great we'll see it.
In regards to the individual units I really hesitate to call anyone out as having a great year. Individual stats in football can be a bit of inference soup; far worse than RBI's or pitcher wins for isolating individual performance. I think there is something to be excited about in the linebackers and some of the secondary, but Arizona has been in a major trough of D-Line recruiting and development for 7 years running. Arizona's defense isn't going to be good until you solve that, or get some bonkers rush backer like Scooby Wright to send downhill.
Arizona Special Teams
2016 Beta_Rank: #99, 10th in Pac-12
Returning Starters: Josh Pollack
The special teams were really really bad again. They did make the USC game a lot more fun though.
Arizona fans undoubtedly swore a blue streak in regards to punting and kicking this year. It was not at all pretty.
2017 In Conclusion
On the night of January 3rd Rich Rodriguez was fired by the University without cause. This came the same day as a notice of complaint was sent to the Arizona AG's office. I think for many fans this two items are inextricably linked and from a pure "post hoc ergo propter hoc" analysis; the causality seems clear. I am not quite so sure.
Both Heeke and the accuser were waiting on the internal investigation to wrap up before proceeding with their next moves so the timing is less of a key than it may appear. Heeke wanted to see if he could terminate Rodriguez with cause and the accuser wanted to see if her filing could be bolstered by the outcome of the investigation. I tend to believe Heeke that he had already made up his mind to fire Rodriguez. This was the second internal investigation into the program in a year, the first was into alleged verbal abuse of players. Heeke also had access to the full trove of information that is related to the Orlando Bradford suit, the other major lawsuit involving the department to arise from Rodriguez's program this year, and the Scottie Young situation. I believe the leaked reports that Heeke uncovered more than enough unseemly behavior in the investigations and seeing Rodriguez in the workplace to determine that the program needed a change.
Rodriguez won't be a good guy if his lawsuit is dismissed. He won't be vindicated as some fans will say. If the case goes to court and it is confirmed he made the statements alleged about Title IX; he should and will never work at another university again, but aside from this we should all have the moral fiber to have wanted him fired for the morass of lies and mincing dissimulation that was his public and private handling of the Bradford case. Good riddance to Rich Rod.
On the field, the season has to be considered a success, but that success has to feel pretty tenuous given that it all rests on the health of one player. Arizona punched above it's weight, given it's roster, in 2017 and was able to take advantage of an easy Pac-12 schedule and down year for the conference to rack up some wins and generate some excitement for the program. Hiring Kevin Sumlin will only amplify that. Having a Heisman contender in Khalil Tate will only make next year all the more interesting and raise expectations, but now comes the kicker. Like Mora with Rosen, Sumlin has to maximize the time he has with Tate. If a once in a decade talent comes through your doors and you can't get together a decent defense or special teams; folks are going to be pretty disappointed.
Offensive Coordinator: Rodriguez/Calvin Magee/Rod Smith 6th Season
Defensive Coordinator: Marcel Yates 2nd Season
2017 Record: 7-6 Overall, 6-6 FBS, 5-4 Pac-12
Predicted Record by Final 2017Model: 7-5 FBS
Predicted Record by Preseason Model: 3-8 FBS
Beta_Rank: #62, 8th in Pac-12
Predicted Preseason Beta_Rank: #66
2017 Returning Production: #23, 75% (Per Bill Connelly)
Final 2017 Pac-12 Beta_Rank |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | School | Act Record | Pred Record | Beta Rank | Rank | O Score | Rank | D Score | Rank | Spcl Tm Score | Rank | Sched Strength | Rank | Record Strength |
| 12 | Washington | 9 - 3 | 9 - 3 | 1.39 | 14 | 1.1612 | 26 | -0.055 | 19 | 0.1728 | 69 | 0.0434 | 70 | -1.738 |
| 24 | Stanford | 9 - 5 | 10 - 4 | 0.9104 | 19 | 1.0509 | 73 | 0.4825 | 2 | 0.3419 | 40 | 0.3437 | 36 | -0.157 |
| 32 | USC | 11 - 3 | 12 - 2 | 0.7537 | 33 | 0.7445 | 33 | 0.0197 | 64 | 0.0289 | 52 | 0.2571 | 27 | 0.4331 |
| 42 | Utah | 6 - 6 | 6 - 6 | 0.5343 | 63 | 0.4219 | 25 | -0.069 | 59 | 0.0425 | 71 | 0.0232 | 84 | -2.641 |
| 55 | Oregon | 6 - 6 | 7 - 5 | 0.2143 | 78 | 0.3089 | 41 | 0.1707 | 46 | 0.0761 | 68 | 0.047 | 76 | -2.121 |
| 57 | UCLA | 6 - 7 | 6 - 7 | 0.1541 | 34 | 0.7422 | 86 | 0.667 | 43 | 0.0788 | 58 | 0.1872 | 69 | -1.738 |
| 59 | Washington State | 8 - 4 | 6 - 6 | 0.1401 | 76 | 0.3107 | 30 | -0.03 | 119 | -0.201 | 62 | 0.1272 | 35 | -0.104 |
| 62 | Arizona | 6 - 6 | 7 - 5 | 0.0144 | 11 | 1.2485 | 116 | 1.1331 | 99 | -0.1 | 76 | -0.119 | 95 | -3.706 |
| 63 | Arizona State | 7 - 6 | 6 - 7 | 0.0118 | 39 | 0.6755 | 88 | 0.675 | 69 | 0.0112 | 56 | 0.2019 | 42 | -0.387 |
| 67 | California | 4 - 7 | 2 - 9 | -0.064 | 85 | 0.2622 | 75 | 0.505 | 17 | 0.1783 | 64 | 0.1105 | 59 | -1.076 |
| 82 | Colorado | 4 - 7 | 3 - 8 | -0.365 | 72 | 0.3254 | 95 | 0.761 | 49 | 0.0702 | 74 | -0.026 | 91 | -3.313 |
| 123 | Oregon State | 0 - 11 | 1 - 10 | -1.598 | 100 | 0.0739 | 126 | 1.5527 | 102 | -0.119 | 60 | 0.1539 | 32 | -5.0 |
Whooh boy the Arizona Wildcats had an interesting ride in 2017. At the beginning of the season we were sure that Rich Rodriguez was coaching for his job and that, his prospects of keeping it, didn't look good. The first four games and one drive were pretty much to form: the offense was middling, the defense and special teams looked improved, they lost some close games that were predicted to be close games, then reality started outpacing what we knew at an alarming rate.
I went back and watched Khalil Tate from 2016, just to see if I totally missed something, and I still came away convinced he looked exactly like a 17 year old true freshman; and not in a good way. I also discounted what I heard about Tate from the Spring Game because his opponent was Arizona's defense and I knew how bad Arizona's defense was/is. I had this to say in the preview:
"The spring "game", or whatever, was a bit of a showcase for Khalil Tate who played well, but as Michael Lev astutely points out: had more of the ones while Dawkins had more of the walk-ons. I would hesitate to take much away in terms of offensive performance for anyone against Arizona's defense."
So maybe I just thought the Spring Game was a fluke against a bad defense. The rap on Tate is that he is not the most engaged participant at practice; so it isn't like we were hearing rumors of major growth at practice either. And yet he dramatically changed Arizona's season from the second drive in Boulder forward. So I will own it, I didn't see it coming, but I still don't get what some people saw either. Even as Arizona's defense and special teams turned out to be far worse than we expected; the offense became far better than we expected and, weirdly, smoothed out Arizona's team ranking so that the preseason prediction of #66 was fairly close to the final ranking of #62; which is not to say I feel especially vindicated because the overall ranking hides an insane amount of unit variability from the prediction; getting that close overall while being wildly off at the unit level is pure luck.
Arizona Schedule |
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| Date | Team | Opponent | Win Prob | Team Beta | Opp Beta | Pts For | Pts Allow | Pred Pts For | Pred Pts Allow | O Points Diff | D Points Diff | |||
| 09/09/2017 | Arizona | Houston | 0.3654 | 0.0144 | 0.3631 | 16 | 19 | 20.078 | 28.435 | -4.078 | -9.435 | |||
| 09/15/2017 | Arizona | UTEP | 0.9854 | 0.0144 | -2.324 | 63 | 16 | 44.067 | 16.984 | 18.932 | -0.984 | |||
| 09/22/2017 | Arizona | Utah | 0.2835 | 0.0144 | 0.5343 | 24 | 30 | 34.119 | 26.449 | -10.11 | 3.5501 | |||
| 10/07/2017 | Arizona | Colorado | 0.6715 | 0.0144 | -0.365 | 45 | 42 | 47.817 | 29.696 | -2.817 | 12.303 | |||
| 10/14/2017 | Arizona | UCLA | 0.4721 | 0.0144 | 0.1541 | 47 | 30 | 43.186 | 29.083 | 3.8132 | 0.9168 | |||
| 10/21/2017 | Arizona | California | 0.5 | 0.0144 | -0.064 | 45 | 44 | 49.858 | 31.814 | -4.858 | 12.185 | |||
| 10/28/2017 | Arizona | Washington State | 0.4981 | 0.0144 | 0.1401 | 58 | 37 | 51.872 | 51.899 | 6.1276 | -14.89 | |||
| 11/04/2017 | Arizona | USC | 0.1633 | 0.0144 | 0.7537 | 35 | 49 | 30.127 | 47.536 | 4.8720 | 1.4637 | |||
| 11/11/2017 | Arizona | Oregon State | 0.9854 | 0.0144 | -1.598 | 49 | 28 | 48.298 | 23.383 | 0.7012 | 4.6160 | |||
| 11/18/2017 | Arizona | Oregon | 0.3654 | 0.0144 | 0.2143 | 28 | 48 | 26.704 | 50.839 | 1.2951 | -2.839 | |||
| 11/25/2017 | Arizona | Arizona State | 0.4981 | 0.0144 | 0.0118 | 30 | 42 | 27.690 | 38.802 | 2.3092 | 3.1974 | |||
| 12/27/2017 | Arizona | Purdue | 0.2734 | 0.0144 | 0.5816 | 35 | 38 | 38.803 | 37.947 | -3.803 | 0.0524 | |||
Arizona wasn't overwhelmingly lucky or unlucky except for the Utah game; where their 5 turnovers cost them a win over a Utah team that played very well down the stretch, but was middling early in the season as they broke in a lot of young players. In the Purdue game they played well enough for the model to have expected them to have put up a field goal more than they did. They got a little lucky in the WSU game where the model expected more from the Cougs against Arizona's porous defense. Yates's charges caused some turnovers in that game to pivot momentum at key times.
The Washington State game was the high point of the season for Arizona and the game that the model assessed the Wildcats as playing the best in all three phases. Some folks use an average college football team to compare how a team performed in a specific game. I don't find that as interesting because the model already does something quite close to that exercise. I like to see how a team played in a game relative to it's own abilities. I calculate this by looping the model to iterively drop games from Arizona's season from the sample, one at a time, and then measure how the model's score for Arizona changes. Good games are games where you score worse than if that game had been present, bad games are where you score better. I collect this information for all three phases of the game and I have rolled it up here. Since you likely watched much of Arizona's season you might be surprised to see such low team scores for the Colorado and Cal games, but what you are seeing is a team score; which includes the defense (playing terrible). Arizona's special team's were also awful, but they had one monster positive game this season vs. USC and they play a big role in that game looking better than it would if you only looked at the offense and defensive performance.
The Oregon game was just disaster all around and, if you watched it, that should not be a surprise. Oregon ran all over Arizona's not very good defense, special teams had a poor game, and Jim Leavitt (with two weeks to prepare and plenty of tape) utterly baffled the Arizona offensive players and staff in a way that I think did lead to some positive changes in the Purdue game down the road, but at the time made Arizona's offensive game planning and playcalling look woefully unprepared for making adjustments to adjustments.
#62 Arizona |
||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Offense | Rank | Defense | |||||||||||
| Unit Score | 11 | 1.2485 | 116 | 1.1331 | ||||||||||
| Drive Efficiency | 37 | 0.3656 | 125 | 0.7188 | ||||||||||
| Play Efficiency | 14 | 0.2232 | 86 | 0.1499 | ||||||||||
| Explosiveness | 4 | 0.8774 | 101 | 0.5132 | ||||||||||
| Negative Drives | 29 | -0.217 | 85 | -0.248 | ||||||||||
| Schedule Strength | 60 | 0.4249 | 89 | 0.3049 | ||||||||||
| Drives | 58 | 157 | 81 | 160 | ||||||||||
| Points / Drives | 8 | 2.8980 | 106 | 2.55 | ||||||||||
| Punts / Drives | 10 | 0.2929 | 104 | 0.3312 | ||||||||||
| Turnovers / Drives | 108 | 0.1401 | 37 | 0.1312 | ||||||||||
| Avg Field Pos | 42 | 30.286 | 89 | 30.487 | ||||||||||
But all of this is intrigue around the main issue, "Was Arizona good?"
If record is your only guide them Arizona was pretty middling, but exciting! 7-6 and 5-4 in the Pac-12 were probably good enough to get Rodriguez off the hot seat. They finished ranked pretty close to the middle of the country, which is really neither good nor bad in a very big picture. Khalil Tate inexplicably sat on the bench for three games to start the season and Arizona probably would have won against Houston with Tate.
But the record may be a little deceiving. The Pac-12 was bad and Arizona missed out on playing #12 Washington and #24 Stanford. This Arizona team might have just barely been bowl eligible playing last year's schedule against this year's teams. Finishing ranked #62 isn't a great accomplishment for a Power 5 team.
I think the answer itself is a bit complicated and I'll try to answer it more in the unit evaluations.
Arizona Offense
2017 Beta_Rank: #11, 1st in Pac-12
Returning Production: #47, 70%, +1.7 PPG (Per Bill Connelly)
Final 2017 Pac-12 Beta_Rank Offense |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | School | Unit Score | Rank | Drive Eff | Rank | Play Eff | Rank | Exp Drives | Rank | Neg Drives | Rank | Sched Strength |
| 11 | Arizona | 1.2485 | 37 | 0.3656 | 14 | 0.2232 | 4 | 0.8774 | 29 | -0.217 | 60 | 0.4249 |
| 14 | Washington | 1.1612 | 16 | 0.5033 | 30 | 0.1711 | 23 | 0.5637 | 5 | -0.077 | 62 | 0.4438 |
| 19 | Stanford | 1.0509 | 20 | 0.4842 | 33 | 0.165 | 13 | 0.6812 | 58 | -0.279 | 49 | 0.2894 |
| 33 | USC | 0.7445 | 125 | -0.113 | 40 | 0.1514 | 7 | 0.8028 | 8 | -0.096 | 59 | 0.4122 |
| 34 | UCLA | 0.7422 | 59 | 0.2788 | 54 | 0.1305 | 17 | 0.6316 | 63 | -0.298 | 64 | 0.455 |
| 39 | Arizona State | 0.6755 | 46 | 0.3324 | 95 | 0.0886 | 36 | 0.4998 | 42 | -0.245 | 68 | 0.4668 |
| 63 | Utah | 0.4219 | 45 | 0.3332 | 101 | 0.0841 | 70 | 0.2943 | 60 | -0.289 | 74 | 0.4932 |
| 72 | Colorado | 0.3254 | 76 | 0.2014 | 92 | 0.0906 | 69 | 0.3003 | 52 | -0.267 | 88 | 0.5903 |
| 76 | Washington State | 0.3107 | 110 | 0.0397 | 102 | 0.0838 | 42 | 0.4597 | 54 | -0.272 | 67 | 0.4638 |
| 78 | Oregon | 0.3089 | 101 | 0.0897 | 82 | 0.0995 | 33 | 0.5221 | 98 | -0.402 | 78 | 0.5241 |
| 85 | California | 0.2622 | 44 | 0.3411 | 121 | 0.053 | 107 | 0.1348 | 50 | -0.266 | 77 | 0.5129 |
| 100 | Oregon State | 0.0739 | 75 | 0.207 | 126 | 0.0234 | 68 | 0.3026 | 113 | -0.459 | 70 | 0.4751 |
So for the first time since Matt Scott suited up for Arizona, Rich Rod produced a very good offense nationally and they did it by doing something they had done only when BJ Denker was at QB, they ran the ball with the QB a lot.
This isn't to say that Khalil Tate isn't a good passer, and may even be a great passer some day, but Arizona has done some odd stuff under Rodriguez when you look at who his personnel has been year in and year out. Other than the BJ Denker year and this year Arizona has been a pass first offense under Rodriguez. This makes total sense when you inherit Matt Scott and a bunch of Air Raid WR's, it makes way less sense as these guys aged out of the program and you failed to replace them. I think you can see this with Anu Solomon's progression/regression at Arizona. His first year kind of worked as a pass first offense, but it just got worse every year after. Arizona's QB's really struggled to find open WR's in man coverage with 2 safeties in cover.
In stepped Brandon Dawkins who, along with Tate, are probably the only players on Arizona's roster who would not get caught from behind in a footrace to the endzone of more than 35 yards. At times last year Dawkins was great; like the Washington game. He used his legs to churn out big runs and then took advantage of defenses switching to zone to find soft spots; especially when the safeties started coming into the box to keep and eye on him. Dawkins isn't the thrower Tate is, but he also isn't the shot-putter of many angry Arizona fan's internet rants either. But the formula that worked so well against Washington seemed to disappear after Dawkins was hurt in the Utah game. Last year and this year he was a pass first QB that seemed gun shy when tucking and running. Dawkins held out for receivers to get open in ways that, frankly, made little sense when you consider that he was almost always the best athlete on the field and he should have gone North South instead of getting stung out East West so often. It should also be noted that Tate and Dawkins are both very fast humans, but Dawkins seems, at times, to relish delivering shots on defenders while Tate is both more elusive and, as Michael Lev has noted, rarely squares anybody up.
Arizona's season might have turned out a bit differently if it were not for the turnovers in the Utah game. Arizona was able to march up and down the field with Dawkins, against what turned out to be a pretty good Utah defense, but Utah's defensive line was able to get consistent pressure on Dawkins and pressure is about the only thing correlated with turnovers. Arizona was the better team that night, but they killed themselves by being unable to contain the Utes on the line and with Dawkins's errors; which is too bad because it was one of the better performances by the defense all year.
Then, following one ineffective series against Colorado, lightening struck in Boulder. Tate came in and ran for 327 yards and Arizona's season took a big turn. Tate did not sit around in the pocket like Dawkins or get strung out looking for WR's. He took off North-South out of pocket break downs, and when he took off, he usually scored. Colorado was blindsided by Tate. They prepared for a pass first attack led by Dawkins and they got Tate, in basically the same play calls, but now when things broke down, he was gone. Tate is also a better passer than Dawkins, so when Colorado switched to zone and brought up the safeties; he was able to make plays in the air to punish the defense and keep them more honest than it is likely Dawkins would have been able to do. Tate, in particular, throws a nice deep ball.
Though Tate, like Daxx Garman, likes to throw the deep ball way too often; especially given Arizona's roster at WR (foreshadowing).
That Colorado game proved an inflection point on the season though. The model, and any type of statistical analysis, isn't really designed to pick up on radical changes very quickly, so I picked most of the mid-season run of wins incorrectly as the model struggled to catch up with the reality of Tate. It is safe to say that UCLA didn't really have an effective game plan for him either, but the model doesn't think that was as impressive because UCLA was so bad on defense this year.
Arizona, and Tate, had a good game offensively at Cal, but it was a bit of a tale of two halves and a harbinger of how Tate might be slowed down the rest of the season. Wilcox and DeRuyter made some good half-time adjustments and held Arizona to 10 points in the second half. Cal used spies very effectively to force Tate to roll out and run more East-West than would be ideal. Tate also took too many deep shots that fell incomplete, but Arizona really turned it on in overtime.
The Washington State game was an odd game for the offense. The Cougars came in with a very good defense, and that ranking held up over the season. Alex Grinch is a very smart DC and playcaller and he clearly did his homework on what worked for Cal the week before, but he may have obssessed so much on stopping Tate on the hoof that his players forgot their coverages. The coverage breakdowns that Wazzu suffered in the game were inexplicable. Which isn't to say Tate didn't throw the ball with verve and accuracy, he did, but the Cougs didn't make it hard on him. It had to be maddening to watch the tape for the Cougar defense; basically eight huge plays cost you the game, on a night that you were otherwise pretty stout.
So if Arizona's season is a three act play, we are now at the final act; and it largely wasn't a good act.
Arizona rolled into Los Angeles to play USC on a high. At 6-2 and ranked #23 in the AP, Arizona was just surging, but it all unraveled in the Coliseum. USC was largely able to ride out Tate as a runner with the speed they had on the field and they disguised coverages in ways that seemed to mystify, and irritate, Tate. USC played man on the outside most of the night; relying on their corners to shut down Arizona's short, not super fast, WR's. USC's wrinkle was in how their safeties shifted around. USC was basically daring Tate to throw deep by containing him on the ground and putting single coverage on the outside, sometimes without safety help. From watching all season I don't get the sense that Tate needs much prodding to start uncorking lollipop throws that show off his arm and touch. USC baited him into throwing deep and then took advantage of Tate not reading the safeties very well for one very, very, bad interception. In the second half Arizona had a monster special teams game that helped the comeback, but it fell short in the end. USC had a good, but in no ways great, defense this season, so the performance against the Trojans left much to be desired.
Oregon State was bad, weird, and, up until January, had the most Bobby Petrino-esque coaching departure not starring Bobby Petrino that I thought possible.
You never want to give Jim Leavitt extra time to prepare, and while Arizona was getting back on track against a putrid Beavers team, Leavitt was in a dark room, with the shades down even though it was overcast and rainy, plotting and wearing a USF visor.
Side note: I am not a hat person so I get the impetus to wear a visor and go half-hat/half-hair, but I can't convince myself I am old enough to wear one. Yes this is me telling lies to myself.
Arizona got pummeled in Eugene and I think that the offensive staff deserves most of the blame. You could see the adjustment's being made to deal with Tate starting with the second half of the Cal game. Grinch had a good game plan, but 8 plays doomed him, USC showed up and executed most of the night, but USC has A LOT of talent and was a more mature defense than Oregon. Leavitt watched all the tape and took his two weeks to prepare and put on a coaching clinic. Oregon followed the game plan, putting man coverage on the outside WR's. They effectively kept contain on the pocket to not let Tate get loose with a head of steam heading North-South and they used a spy to string Tate out and gang tackle him as he tried to find an edge. Without any coverage breakdowns to exploit, Arizona's offense looked awful and Arizona's coaches had zero answers.
The ASU game was going pretty well until Tate got hurt, and then the wind went out of Arizona's offense. Without Tate's explosive running and accurate passing, the offense just folded in the second half. Rodriguez had, interesting, late in half decisions during his run in Tucson, but his decision to have Tate heave one at the end of the first half was pretty roundly disliked. I don't know what else to really say about the ASU game other than if you are wondering why I am not writing up the performance of the rest of the offense yet, the drives where Tate wasn't in the game should provide and answer.
I am less sure what to make of the Purdue game. It was not a great offensive game for Arizona, even though Tate lit it up passing. In the first half Purdue was a few blown plays away from putting Arizona in an even deeper hole than the 17 points Arizona was behind. The second half though, was much better. Purdue tightened up the major coverage errors and still held Tate and the RB's deeply in check, but Tate was able to be patient and find soft spots in the coverage, and resist the urge to throw bombs. Arizona has not been a terribly efficient team under Rodriguez in keeping drives going; the offense has always relied on explosive plays, but Tate looked better reading the field against the Boilermakers in the second half than he had all season and that is a very good sign for Arizona.
So now lets take a step back and talk about the seasons everyone else had in Tate's shadow. Football is more of a team sport in it's statistics than almost any other, and compared to baseball and now basketball with player position tracking; we are in the Dark Ages. Khalil Tate utterly defied that this season. Arizona would be a middling Power 5 offense without Tate, with him they are among the best offenses in the country and one mistake away from taking it to the house. If you take away Tate the roster really shows it's warts. The offensive line was good, but not great, and very lucky injury wise because it is not deep. They really struggled to keep Dawkins and Tate upright against some of the better DL's in the league, and this was not a vintage year for pass rusher's in the Pac-12. Yes they blocked for a prolific rushing attack, but a lot of those yards came way down field and after Tate blew past folks that would tackle a lesser runner. They had a very good year and were a little under-heralded, but I don't think we should overstate their contribution either. The three players moving on should feel very good about what they did this year and getting two back is a big help for next year.
Rodriguez and his staff utterly screwed up recruiting WR's and brought a mish mash of mildly talented guys into this season. If you love Shun Brown, fine, he had the best year of anyone, but imagine Tate with Criner or Hill to throw deep to. The roster management at WR and TE made the offense deeply limited in it's dimensions and left the unit unable to fully exploit the potential offered by Tate and the best deep ball on campus since Foles. The offense could have been even better with better players. Running back is actually a positition of stregnth on the roster and Taylor and Wilson had pretty good years. Taylor was probably the better complement to Tate at this point due to his burst and shiftiness. Taylor seemed better able to exploit a hole and get big yards when the linebackers or safeties crashed the wrong gap. A home run threat isn't necessary at RB, but it had been a long time since Arizona had a back that wasn't going to be caught from behind on a run of 35+
I am undoubtedly repeating myself, but any evaluation of Arizona's offense this year has to primarily focus on Tate and it is a very interesting question as to what to make of Arizona's offense going forward, but I'll do previews after I get some more data and recover from writing this Harry Potter novel.
Arizona Defense
2017 Beta_Rank: #116, 11th in Pac-12
Returning Production: #17, 79%, -2.6 PPG (Per Bill Connelly)
Final 2017 Pac-12 Beta_Rank Defense |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | School | Unit Score | Rank | Drive Eff | Rank | Play Eff | Rank | Exp Drives | Rank | Neg Drives | Rank | Sched Strength |
| 25 | Utah | -0.069 | 95 | 0.3959 | 21 | 0.0666 | 8 | 0.0056 | 8 | -0.538 | 60 | 0.5223 |
| 26 | Washington | -0.055 | 82 | 0.2913 | 31 | 0.0813 | 6 | -0.018 | 30 | -0.409 | 64 | 0.4872 |
| 30 | Washington State | -0.03 | 22 | 0.0441 | 73 | 0.1332 | 42 | 0.2427 | 20 | -0.45 | 43 | 0.6017 |
| 33 | USC | 0.0197 | 39 | 0.1169 | 59 | 0.1144 | 27 | 0.1559 | 40 | -0.367 | 25 | 0.6694 |
| 41 | Oregon | 0.1707 | 38 | 0.1134 | 92 | 0.1572 | 51 | 0.3122 | 28 | -0.412 | 50 | 0.5712 |
| 73 | Stanford | 0.4825 | 88 | 0.3435 | 110 | 0.186 | 44 | 0.2629 | 66 | -0.309 | 54 | 0.5472 |
| 75 | California | 0.505 | 109 | 0.53 | 81 | 0.143 | 17 | 0.1224 | 71 | -0.29 | 32 | 0.6336 |
| 86 | UCLA | 0.667 | 89 | 0.3531 | 105 | 0.1769 | 63 | 0.354 | 99 | -0.217 | 27 | 0.6566 |
| 88 | Arizona State | 0.675 | 91 | 0.3694 | 72 | 0.1306 | 81 | 0.4117 | 89 | -0.236 | 29 | 0.6532 |
| 95 | Colorado | 0.761 | 63 | 0.2325 | 115 | 0.2013 | 110 | 0.5541 | 93 | -0.226 | 53 | 0.5587 |
| 116 | Arizona | 1.1331 | 125 | 0.7188 | 86 | 0.1499 | 101 | 0.5132 | 85 | -0.248 | 89 | 0.3049 |
| 126 | Oregon State | 1.5527 | 130 | 0.9452 | 112 | 0.1925 | 108 | 0.553 | 121 | -0.138 | 31 | 0.6431 |
Arizona's defense was supposed to get better this season. I guess you could say they did. They were #125 last season, so #116 is an improvement, but some of what went into the preseason model as far as returning production turned out to be wrong. Arizona chose to play a lot of true freshmen instead of some of their returners and that contributed to some really bad defense for the third year in a row.
I think if you want to evaluate Arizona's defense you have to balance two competing data points; the youth of the players and the terribleness of the unit.
Freshman don't normally play a lot of snaps for a reason, so seeing them play can, very generally, mean one of two things depending on your depth chart: you have a normal-ish depth chart and an exceptional freshman or you have a crap depth chart and a normal-ish freshman. The evidence points much more to the latter for Arizona. That isn't to say you shouldn't be encouraged. For the third straight year Arizona has almost nowhere to go but up as a defense and young players should develop, but Arizona's players developing into a Pac-12 average unit in two years would be fantastic, but still not make them a very highly regarded defense. I think the skew of general freshman statistics is putting a bit of a shine on the unit that maybe isn't warranted yet though. It is pretty easy to stand out amongst freshman statistically if you start all season; can Arizona's young players still stand out in their cohort as their peers start to see the field? That isn't a sure thing, but again, plenty of reason to be optimistic from a very low base.
The defense had their ups and downs, as exhibited by the chart. Again this is relative to Arizona's defense's ranking rather than some average or great defense. If you only kept the good games Arizona would likely be about 10 spots better on defense; which would still be bad. Their best games were really the UCLA and WSU games where Yates was able to get pressure home and cause some turnovers. The late Tyler Hilinski had a tough game in Tucson with 4 interceptions. They still gave up yards, but they were able to keep points off the board. The worst game was Oregon, but we should talk about Colorado first.
Colorado traded shots with Arizona all night in that game where Tate broke out and it was the first sign that everybody's hopes for an improved defense in 2017 might be a mirage. Colorado spent a little too much time early trying to throw the ball, but they eventually just settled into a steady and remorseless diet of Philip Lindsay right down the gut and Arizona was powerless to stop it. There are few things more demoralizing than having the ball run down your throat. It was more than a little disappointing that Arizona couldn't come up with anything to stop the Buffs. The game basically came down to Arizona figuring out how to score at will just a hair before Colorado did. Colorado didn't have a great offense this year so get trucked by the #72 offense in the country was disappointing.
UCLA for reasons that I don't understand decided to throw the ball on Arizona and this allowed Yates to actually get some pressure home. UCLA's backs did not do a good job picking up pressure. The Cal game was another doozy of a bad game for the defense, but this time Cal showed that you could throw the ball effectively all over Arizona just as easily as you could run it if you effectively picked up Yate's pressure. Cal finished with an offense ranked #85. Bad offenses could run it on Arizona, bad offenses could throw it on Arizona.
The USC game was interesting because Arizona played just like the #116th ranked defense in the game' neither better or worse than expected really. The Trojans were mostly able to do what they wanted on offense; especially when they lined up and ran it to salt the game away late.
The Oregon game was just terrible. Oregon's offense might be a bit underrated in the model because Herbert was out for part of the season and I don't account for injuries in the model, but Oregon showed up and mauled Arizona's defense mercilessly. Herbert was pretty good throwing the ball, but Oregon put up 353 yards rushing and when you can run the ball with impunity; throwing the ball should be easy (unless you are post-Kevin Hogan Stanford).
The Purdue game was actually pretty good for Arizona and I realize that sounds bonkers, but Arizona's defense was utterly screwed by the offense and special teams in that game with some terrible field position holes. It was bad, but not as bad as it looked on paper. That said, the coverage was bad all game and Yates was largely unable to get home with blitzes.
Clearly we can't call Arizona's defense good and if we were to give Yates a grade for the season it would have to be an D- when you consider the impact many coordinators had in their first years with new teams in the league. Yates made minimal impact for the second year running. Other than his blitzing getting home in a few games; the defense seemed to have very few cards to play and in two years I have yet to see Yates execute any game plan near the level of the more highly regarded DC's in the conference. Now some fans will rush into say that Rich Rod was actually a deep state DC and didn't give Yates any freedom and to that I say fine, I guess. I haven't seen this reported by anyone credible and also I would still expect Yates to make SOME positive difference. Regardless, without getting into too much foreshadowing; next year has to be the year for the defense to make a jump or Yates needs to be replaced. That would be true with Rich Rod or Sumlin. Rich Rod being gone removes the "Shadow DC" from the picture so if Yates is really great we'll see it.
In regards to the individual units I really hesitate to call anyone out as having a great year. Individual stats in football can be a bit of inference soup; far worse than RBI's or pitcher wins for isolating individual performance. I think there is something to be excited about in the linebackers and some of the secondary, but Arizona has been in a major trough of D-Line recruiting and development for 7 years running. Arizona's defense isn't going to be good until you solve that, or get some bonkers rush backer like Scooby Wright to send downhill.
Arizona Special Teams
2016 Beta_Rank: #99, 10th in Pac-12
Returning Starters: Josh Pollack
The special teams were really really bad again. They did make the USC game a lot more fun though.
Arizona fans undoubtedly swore a blue streak in regards to punting and kicking this year. It was not at all pretty.
2017 In Conclusion
On the night of January 3rd Rich Rodriguez was fired by the University without cause. This came the same day as a notice of complaint was sent to the Arizona AG's office. I think for many fans this two items are inextricably linked and from a pure "post hoc ergo propter hoc" analysis; the causality seems clear. I am not quite so sure.
Both Heeke and the accuser were waiting on the internal investigation to wrap up before proceeding with their next moves so the timing is less of a key than it may appear. Heeke wanted to see if he could terminate Rodriguez with cause and the accuser wanted to see if her filing could be bolstered by the outcome of the investigation. I tend to believe Heeke that he had already made up his mind to fire Rodriguez. This was the second internal investigation into the program in a year, the first was into alleged verbal abuse of players. Heeke also had access to the full trove of information that is related to the Orlando Bradford suit, the other major lawsuit involving the department to arise from Rodriguez's program this year, and the Scottie Young situation. I believe the leaked reports that Heeke uncovered more than enough unseemly behavior in the investigations and seeing Rodriguez in the workplace to determine that the program needed a change.
Rodriguez won't be a good guy if his lawsuit is dismissed. He won't be vindicated as some fans will say. If the case goes to court and it is confirmed he made the statements alleged about Title IX; he should and will never work at another university again, but aside from this we should all have the moral fiber to have wanted him fired for the morass of lies and mincing dissimulation that was his public and private handling of the Bradford case. Good riddance to Rich Rod.
On the field, the season has to be considered a success, but that success has to feel pretty tenuous given that it all rests on the health of one player. Arizona punched above it's weight, given it's roster, in 2017 and was able to take advantage of an easy Pac-12 schedule and down year for the conference to rack up some wins and generate some excitement for the program. Hiring Kevin Sumlin will only amplify that. Having a Heisman contender in Khalil Tate will only make next year all the more interesting and raise expectations, but now comes the kicker. Like Mora with Rosen, Sumlin has to maximize the time he has with Tate. If a once in a decade talent comes through your doors and you can't get together a decent defense or special teams; folks are going to be pretty disappointed.
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