Arizona’s New Offensive Coordinator Gives Reason for Struggles During Camp

Arizona is going to have a different look to their team this year after Jedd Fisch was poached away by previous Pac-12 conference foe Washington this offseason following their impressive 10-win showing.

The good news for the Wildcats is they are in good hands with Brent Brennan taking over.

As they entered camp with their opener now less than a month away, this was a great opportunity to see how his philosophy might be translating to this group of players that has plenty of stars who are returning and some transfers coming in from San Jose State who followed their head coach.

What was interesting about how the staff played out when Brennan came to Arizona was he didn’t bring his offensive coordinator Kevin McGiven with him, instead opting to hire recently fired Syracuse head coach Dino Babers to take over that role.

Babers first got into coaching on the offensive side of the ball as a running backs coach at Eastern Illinois in 1987. He shifted around a couple different schools as wide receivers coach before coming to Arizona in 1995 where he eventually became the offensive coordinator from 1998-2000.

After three stints as a head coach, he is now returning back to the Wildcats under Brennan.

Getting things operational under a new coordinator for everyone involved will present some growing pains, something that was evident in practice on Friday.

It was documented that their offensive line had some major struggles during that session, but even their star quarterback Noah Fifita was missing some easy throws he normally makes.

However, Babers doesn’t seem to be too concerned with what took place because he attributed the issues to their installation of new offensive plays as the reason why things were out of rhythm, per Jason Scheer of 247Sports.

When everyone is on the same page by the time Game 1 rolls around, Scheer notes that this offense should provide opposing defenses with multiple challenges. Although they are keeping much of the same terminology that Fisch had last season, the overall offense will be different.

All in all, issues caused from an install aren’t a cause for concern.

The only thing that could be a problem is if the players aren’t able to pick up on things at a rapid pace.

This would prevent them from hitting the ground running in the opener, but the expectation is that their all-world wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan should be back in the mix which will help them when they take the field.