Unpacking Arizona's Brutal Home Opener

Most times in college football you truly find out what your team’s real identity is in the second game of the season. Unfortunately, that was the case for Arizona Wildcat football fans last Saturday. 

There were signs that the game was going to be bad from the beginning as the Wildcat administration failed to plan for the home opener which resulted in a bottle neck of fans lined up 500 yards away from the entrance come game time.

Unless new quarterback Will Plummer takes the conference by storm, which I don’t totally discount, the impressive season opener against BYU was a mirage as the beat down dispensed by San Diego State was far more indicative of what we are going to see from this UA squad.

One thing that was easy to take away from the San Diego State game is that quarterback Gunner Cruz isn’t the guy. Some players just don’t look like quarterbacks and that is Cruz. 

From being timid to get rid of the ball to intentionally throwing it out of bounds at the first sign of pressure, Cruz doesn’t inspire much confidence which is a big reason why Jedd Fisch announced that sophomore signal caller Will Plummer will start the next game and third stringer Jordan McCloud might get some time.

Plummer is certainly turnover prone but he is a guy who has a big arm and isn’t afraid to let the ball go down field. He’s also tough and seems to have the respect of his teammates. Who knows if he is the guy or not but he certainly possesses more to work with than Cruz.

On the other side of the ball it’s hard to put a lot of blame on defensive coordinator Don Brown as the amount of missed tackles was startling. Every early San Diego State scoring drive generally culminated with a San Diego State ball carrier running past multiple feeble ankle tackle attempts

On a semi-bright note, it’s hard not to feel bad for wide receiver Stanley Berryhill III as he is the only guy on the roster who appears capable of starting for any team in the conference.
Jedd Fisch said that Berryhill needs to get at least ten targets a game and I agree with him as Stan is the only guy right now capable of stretching the field or taking a quick hitch to the house.

Stan is one of the very few bright spots on a bad football team.