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If one looks at the betting trends it’s easy to see that the Money views this as a Friday night Washington Huskies destruction of the Arizona Wildcats.
And before getting into specifics, it’s easy to see why. Washington, still has much higher rated players on both sides of the line and that generally doesn’t bode well for the opposing team.
What doesn’t make sense however is the struggles the Huskies have maintained running the football and stopping the opposition rushing attack.
This game, though, is about the quarterback situation for the Wildcats and Huskies.
Arizona sophomore signal caller Gunner Cruz is out for the season with a hand injury, which means Will Plummer gets another shot at the starting quarterback position.
By all accounts Cruz is a good kid and nobody wants to see an injury, but it was going to cause some turmoil if he started under center again as many on the offensive side of the ball were not looking for a return to the horizontal passing attack.
For sophomore Will Plummer, this is probably the last best chance to stake his claim as a power five quarterback.
He’s had time for reflection and has the arm talent and now he’s the undisputed guy. It will be interesting to see what he can do.
The other quarterback option is wide receiver Jamarye Joiner. The speedster came to Arizona as a quarterback and has been getting a quarter to a third of the quarterback reps in practice this past week. Joiner has impressed with his arm talent and, if his number is called he wouldn’t be going in to live fire with no reps.
By any statistical measure, the Don Brown defense has been significantly better than the Arizona defense of previous seasons, but the one aspect that the unit needs to improve upon is forced turnovers.
Washington’s quarterback situation has been odd, to put it mildly. Michigan transfer Dylan Morris has played uninspiring ball all season. But unlike Arizona, Washington has big time talent in the wings with five star freshman quarterback Sam Huard, who inexplicably hasn’t played.Whether it’s Morris or Huard, Arizona needs to win the turnover battle to stay close in this one.
Washington 34 Arizona 17
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