Arizona’s Brent Brennan Believes Wildcats Have ‘A Lot of Stuff To Figure Out’

College football can be an interesting game sometimes. Top teams drop games to unranked teams frequently.

Arizona was almost the latest team to do so after they struggled against FCS Northern Arizona on Saturday night. Entering the contest, the expectation was for the Wildcats to come away with an easy win and have their starters sit for much of the second half.

Instead, Arizona was down 10-6 at half-time. They shut Northern Arizona out in the second half, winning 22-10, but it was far from an impressive performance.

Something must’ve been happening in college football in Week 2, as multiple high-level teams struggled and even lost against much lesser competition.

But at the end of the day, Arizona survived. If they hadn’t won this game and hadn’t won the Big 12 Championship Game when the time came, they likely would’ve been kept out of the College Football Playoff because of it.

Still, what happened? Why did Arizona struggle against a team they should’ve beaten by 40-plus points?

The clear answer was their offensive line struggled for much of the night. The line didn’t protect Noah Fifita, so he scrambled all game and rushed plays.

That’s an issue as the Wildcats head into Big 12 play next week, facing a top-20 Kansas State team.

“I think we need to evaluate on film and see how we looked, see if there’s anything we can do schematically or formationally to give us a better chance to find rhythm,” Head coach Brent Brennan said of Arizona’s offensive line, according to Justin Spears of Tuscon.com. “I also thought they did some good stuff and made some plays. We popped some runs when we needed to and had some good protection, hit some throws. But the consistency wasn’t what we liked it to be.”  

Arizona will also have a short week to figure things out. Their game against Kansas State will be on Friday.

However, while it was ugly, college football is perhaps the biggest sport in the world where an ugly win isn’t the be-all and end-all. The Wildcats’ focus was to go 2-0, and they accomplished that.

“We gotta go back to work,” Brennan said. “I’m happy as hell we’re 2-0 and we’ve got a big game on Friday night in a short week. We’ve got a lot of stuff to figure out in a short window.” 

It’s time to get to work as Arizona looks ahead.