Arizona Wildcats

Arizona vs. BYU: Biggest plays, Who shined, What needs improvement

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Arizona Football lost their home opener, the first time in the head coach Rich Rodriguez era. He agrees with fans. There is room for improvement.

“We didn’t execute well; it starts with play calling,” Head Coach Rich Rodriguez taking partial blame his first season opener loss in his career at Arizona. Can’t say we would disagree, how many times can you run the ball up the middle? It worked when Anu Solomon read the blitz and Nick Wilson got a break and found a hole to run through to get a touchdown. But that wasn’t until the second half.

“This game’s on me, I gotta step it up; I have to lead better and play better,” Anu taking responsibility for the loss. Well, he’s right, if he had run on that crucial late game third down play or even just fell in place, it would have been better than losing 16 yards. Yes, you want the pass for a touchdown, but more importantly, you don’t want to give up any yardage for a field goal.

The loss of yardage resulted in Arizona’s Kicker Josh Pollack attempting a 52-yard field goal instead of a 36-yard field goal. It was Pollack’s first game for the Wildcats.

On the defense, most agree, the defense has improved under the new head coaches, and hopefully it’s all uphill from here. “I thought they [defense] played well enough for the majority of the game — a little undersized of course –gave us a chance to win the game — tackling was poor, I was concerned about that,” said Rodriguez, “They played hard, we played hard.”

Most importantly Coach Rod pointed out, “Our guys didn’t look wide-eyed and like totally confused, but there are a lot of reasons we didn’t execute.” Can’t say that about the Trojans this weekend, but then again they were playing the No. 1 2015 National Champs in an away game losing 52-6.

Coach Rod is not wavering on his starting quarterback, “I’ve got 100 percent confidence in Anu Solomon — he battles, he competes — all the way to the last whistle. And that’s why he is an outstanding player. Whatever we need to get fixed we’ll get fixed.”

Biggest Plays

Who Shined

What needs improvement

Rodriguez is standing firmly behind his decision to start and play Anu, but we haven’t seen too much improvement from last season; he won’t run the ball. Hopefully, both Rich Rodriguez and his quarterback are right, and all they need is some fine tuning. Fans were clamoring during the game for both Brandon Dawkins or Khalil Tate.

The natives are restless, and so we move on to Grambling State next Saturday where former Arizona football coach Larry Smith (posthumously) and others will be entered into the Arizona Hall of Fame. All of us here at ZZ have Tellas in our thoughts, we hope the injury wasn’t serious. BearDown and carry on!