TUCSON – The Arizona Wildcats’ run game ranks last in the Big 12. After boasting one of the best defenses in the conference last season, that unit has struggled to force turnovers and get off the field on third down.

Those numbers were on the minds of both coordinators and coach Brent Brennan as Arizona (2-1, 0-1 Big 12) prepared for its final nonconference matchup on Saturday at Washington State at 4:30 p.m. MST.

“We should be better at running the football and it starts with me,” offensive coordinator Seth Doege said. “I don’t think  it has anything to do with our personnel. I don’t think it has anything to do with our game plan. I think I got to do a better job adjusting and calling better runs in games.”

Arizona has rushed for 123.3 yards per game and 370 total rushing yards through three games. That’s 117 yards fewer than the next lowest total in the Big 12, Baylor’s 487 yards.

On the other side of the ball, defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales stressed the importance of getting off the field.

“The difference right now where we were struggling and the issue we needed to fix at hand, we’re not good enough on third down,“ Gonzales said. “(We’re) 16 of 41 on third down at 39%. That’s not elite defense. Last year at this point, we were nine of 40 on third down.”

Although the Wildcats rank last in the Big 12 in rushing yards, Doege didn’t feel the need to run the ball much against a Northern Illinois defense last week that was stacking the line of scrimmage in a 42-17 Arizona win.

“We were getting pressured,” Doege said “They’re bringing six or seven to the box every play. Well, there’s people wide open … there’s tons of space. That’s why (QB) Noah (Fifita) was 31 of 34 and there were people just completely cut free. 

“So in my mind I’m like, ‘Okay, yeah,’ we can run it or we can just throw it every play because there’s going to be somebody open.”

Fifita threw for 325 yards and four touchdowns while rushing for another on the ground. He broke the all-time passing yards record by a quarterback at Arizona, reaching 10,017 career yards to eclipse Nick Foles’ record of 10,011 from 2009–11.

Despite those feats, the Wildcats know they will need a more consistent rushing attack as the Big 12 portion of the schedule looms. Fifita put some of the responsibility on himself for Arizona’s struggles in that area.

“We just gotta do our job and I didn’t help. I didn’t help our rushing yards, I took four sacks and at least three of them for my fault,” Fifita said. “Holding the ball too long so that for sure ruins the rushing yards in that aspect, but just doing our job, trusting our training and trusting our scheme and we will be good.”

Running back Kedrick Resscano is the Wildcats’ leading rusher with 127 yards and two touchdowns. Fifita trails Resscano with 66 rushing yards.

“I felt like some of that execution wasn’t where it needed to be in terms of the run game and some of that was just missed assignments,” coach Brent Brennan said. “Cleaning that up is an absolute priority for us this week, and I felt like the week before we ran the ball well against a really good BYU team so that’s something we’re aggressively attacking right now.”

The Wildcats have a chance to get well. The Washington State defense has allowed 181 rushing yards per game this season. Only 20 teams in the FBS are worse.

Brennan will be going up against his former colleague and now defensive coordinator for Washington State, Trent Bray, who coached alongside Brennan at Oregon State from 2012-14.

“Trent is a really good friend of mine,” Brennan said. “We spent a lot of time together when we were coaching Oregon State and we’ve spent a lot of time together since then as friends. 

“Trent is an outstanding football coach and he’s going to have that defense – that is physical, they are sound, they fly to football – he’s going to have those guys ready to play and I know that.”

Arizona has struggled when it is in third-and-long situations, giving up big plays which is something that did not happen last year.

“The ones that bother me are giving up 11 third downs of seven yards or greater,” Gonzales said. “That’s like the ultimate sin of defense in football. I mean we’ve really been good on third and short.”

If the Wildcats can get off the field on third down, their defense would improve substantially and return to some of the elite form it showed last year.

Forcing turnovers has been another area Gonzales is hoping to improve as the season continues.

“We haven’t taken the ball away,” Gonzales said. “The fact that we had eight at this point last year, we got one right now. Our ball skills aren’t good enough. We’re not attacking the football well enough and we’re not being physical enough at the point of contact to create fumbles. We got to play more violently there.”

This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.