Garic Wharton and the receivers made all the right moves on Saturday.
Photo by David Kadlubowski/The Arizona Republic

If you’re a fan of passing offenses, the Arizona spring football game was the place to be.

If you’re a fan of the 2011 Wildcats, passing is exactly what you want to see if you want the team to have a chance at success in the fall.

Ideally you want your offense to be balanced. In 2008 under Sonny Dykes, Arizona had a record-breaking passer, a 1,000-yard rusher, 33 rushing touchdowns and 24 passing touchdowns.

But life’s a lot easier when you have a future NFL starter at left tackle in Eben Britton and a future NFL starter at tight end in GRONK! Throw in NFL fullback Chris Gronk and you’ve got yourself a running game.

Last year’s offensive line had five seniors but no blue-chippers. Only Colin Baxter and Adam Grant are draft prospects and neither is projected to be drafted until the final round.

The run game suffered as a result. The Cats finished 8th in the Pac-10 in both rushing yards per game and yards per carry last year. And yet, Mike Stoops and his staff never seemed to let go of the dream of churning out first downs on the ground.

Keola Antolin carried the ball 25 times and the Wildcats attempted 43 total rushes in the frustrating-on-so-many-levels loss to Arizona State. It didn’t make sense.

There’s no reason to try and establish the run when you’ve established you can’t run.

Arizona is breaking in five new offensive linemen. The long-term potential is high for this next generation of hogs but they aren’t going to steamroll people out of the gate.

It also doesn’t help that, with Greg Nwoko’s injury, there isn’t a big bruising back on the two-deep. If the size requirements were 5-10 or 200 pounds, neither of the Cats’ top two running backs could go on the ride.

It adds up to three things: Throw, throw and throw.

And on Saturday, throw they did. The team ran 60 plays from scrimmage. Forty-two were passing plays, 13 were running plays, and the remaining five were passing plays that turned into quarterback runs. So 78% of the time the play-caller said, “Let’s put this thing in the air.”

It’s the right thing to do, and this time around Stoops knows it. He admits this year’s team is going to have to pass to set up the run. He’s more comfortable with the fact that the strength of his squad is its quarterback and wide receivers.

Texas transfer Dan Bucker was the guy most Cat fans wanted to see but the pass-catching star in the scrimmage was Richard Morrison. The former quarterback was last seen grabbing six passes in the Alamo Bowl and it looks like he’s ready to be the little speedy guy the UA has been looking for since Mike Thomas left.

What the Wildcats may be looking for next is anybody who can play defense. With linebacker Jake Fischer going down at the very end of the scrimmage the Cats appear to have lost a second starter on a unit that was already trying to plug some holes. Yet another reason to get used to having to throw the ball a bunch of times.

Nobody is calling for a return to the days of 46 pass attempts and only one touchdown like during the Mackovic era. But if you don’t have stars at every position you have to put the stars you have in the best position to succeed.

For the 2011 Arizona Wildcats that means Nick Foles going up-tempo out of the shotgun, Juron Criner on one side, Bucker on the other, and a combination of Morrison, David Roberts, Terrence Miller, David Douglas and Garic Wharton on the inside.

Huck it.

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Scott Terrell loves running backs but you gotta do what you gotta do. Go deep on Twitter and Facebook.

Can Juron Criner do a lot of this in 2010?
Photo by Brad Allis/WildcatSportsReport.com

We are just one work week away from the return of Arizona Wildcat football.

The goal is at least nine wins in 2010. Here are the questions that need to be answered in order to get there:

Can Mike Stoops find happiness in a stranger’s house?

Toledo isn’t expected to do much this year but a victory over the Rockets would be Mike Stoops’ best non-conference road win since, well…ever.

It’s true. Stoops and the Cats have gone oh-for-the-road in non-league match-ups. 2005 Utah, 2006 LSU, 2007 BYU, 2008 New Mexico and 2009 Iowa. Three of those teams went on to win 11 games. Four of them won bowl games. I’ll bet you can guess which one of these things is not like the others.

Toledo will be a lot closer to New Mexico than LSU so if Stoops is going to break through on the road, the time is now. (That’s a definite theme this year.)

Are four heads better than two?

It has been well-documented that the UA will be breaking in two sets of co-coordinators. On defense any changes may be hard to spot (especially with Mike Stoops still calling the shots) but the play-calling on offense will be out there for everyone to see. Will Seth Littrell (also the running backs coach) and Bill Bedenbaugh (O-line coach) emphasize the run game more than Sonny Dykes?

In the first couple games what gets called might not be as important as how quickly it gets called. Wildcat fans will painfully recall the rough start to the Mike Canales era at the beginning of Stoops’ tenure. Arizona seemed to spend more time calling timeouts and accepting delay of game penalties than running actual plays. How long will it take Littrell to adjust to the speed of the game as a rookie play-caller?

Can the offense beat a full-court press?

In Nick Foles’ first three starts last year he completed 75% of his passes with averages of 35 completions and 351 yards a game. Over his final seven starts those numbers dropped to a 57% completion rate with 21 completions and 190 yards per game. What happened? Starting with UCLA the opposing defenses said, “You know what, Mr. Accurate Long-Haired Guy? We’re not going to let you pick us apart with short passes.” Defensive backs played press coverage and Foles and the Arizona receivers never could completely adjust.

The big need for 2010 is the emergence of a legitimate deep threat. What made Mike Thomas so dangerous was he could beat you on a quick throw but we would blow by you on the outside if you played him too close. The Cats need to find a receiver with a little Money in him.

Juron Criner beat USC with a long-ball. Can he do it on a consistent basis? Is either Bug Wright or Travis Cobb ready to do something with their speed other than terrorize the WSU special teams? The difference between a good offense and an elite one could depend on it.

Will Arizona see red in the zone?

If you aren’t going to be able to hit a home run on every possession you have to be able to convert in the red zone. In 2008 the Wildcats had GRONK! through the air (10 touchdowns) and the Grigsby/Antolin combo on the ground (23 rushing TDs). All three of those guys were injured in ’09 and the offense took a step backwards.

What will be this year’s strategy inside the opponent’s 20? Pound it behind the big offensive line to see if Grigs and Ant can recapture their paydirt-finding glory (with some Nwoko mixed in)? Throw the fade in the corner to Criner? Establish a new threat over the middle? Taimi Tutogi as a one-man wrecking crew was an option but he’s been out all of camp with an injury. Whatever the plan, the goal is to put Alex Zendejas to work on extra points instead of field goals.

Are the new linebackers just inexperienced or are they really bad?

Shifting to the defensive side of the ball all eyes will be on JC transfers Derek Earls and Paul Vassallo, and true sophomore (and local kid) Jake Fischer. Can the brand new linebacking corp cut it?

The good news is the new LBs don’t have to be stars. The three seniors on the D-line need to be stars. Trevin Wade needs to be a star. The linebackers don’t have to Ricky Hunley, Byron Evans and Lance Briggs. They just need to know their assignments, be in position, and make tackles.

If they can’t? It might be the “Kish of Death” for this year’s team.

Will the secondary produce Golden Flowers?

If you get past the veteran line and the rookie ‘backers you end up with Wade and the Question Marks. Robert Golden is playing a new position. Seniors Anthony Wilcox and Joe Perkins are listed as the safety starters but they have nary a start between them. Their backups are true freshman Marquis Flowers and true sophomore Adam Hall.

It’s understandable if Wildcat fans are having nightmares of receivers running free downfield while the guys in red and blue point fingers at each other. And that brings us too…

Are we in for shootouts at the UA Corral?

The Stanford and Oregon games last year were the best of times and the worst of times for the Arizona faithful. The offense looked like an unstoppable force. The defense looked unable to a force a stop.

In 2007 the Cats broke the 45-point barrier in three different games for the first time since 1983. Dykes did it again in 2008. The last time Arizona scored 45+ four times in the same season? 1954, when Art Luppino was running wild for Coach Warren Woodson.

If that record falls in 2010 Wildcat fans are in for a wild ride. If that record needs to fall in order to keep the games close Wildcat fans will be sick.

The answers are coming and you only have to survive one more week of work before we get there.

No question about it.

They say time heals all wounds. It looks like four months was enough time for Arizona fans to forgive the Wildcats for the Holiday Bowl.

We won’t know for sure how many people jumped off the trolley until the 2010 ticket sales numbers are in, but a few thousand fans spent their Saturday showing they have moved past 33-0 and they’re ready to soak in the optimism again.

How do you say GRONK! in Samoan?
Photo by UAsports.net

It was a relaxed and positive atmosphere at Arizona Stadium as the UA football team took part in its final scrimmage of spring practice. The crowd (6,000 people according to one report) was treated to more than just a football practice.

I love that there were family-friendly events a full two and a half hours before the start of the spring game. Eat some barbeque, meet Max Zendejas and Lance Briggs, play some games with the kids, take in the scrimmage, and get autographs of the current players. You could plan an entire Saturday around the UA spring football game and that’s the way it should be.

Hopefully incoming A.D. Greg Byrne sees the potential of the spring game as a must-see event and makes it even bigger. Tailgating should be expanded and encouraged. Toss some t-shirts into the stands. Keep the drawing for a season of luxury suite tickets (I hear the guy who won last year really enjoyed himself).

The college football season is just too short to hold a grudge against your team. The spring game is the final oasis before the long desert summer and Wildcat fans drank it up. When you saw the size of the line waiting for Nick Foles’ autograph (he was the only one with a table and chair besides Mike Stoops) you never would have guessed you were looking at a guy who threw for a whole 28 yards in San Diego.

As for the scrimmage itself, it’s not about trying to dissect plays and stats and declare which parts of the team are going to be strong and which will struggle. I remember a few springs back watching Willie Tuitama throw horrible passes to receivers who couldn’t catch. There was nothing to show that Sonny Dykes knew what he was doing and the UA offense didn’t look like it was going anywhere. Where Tuitama and company went was into the record books with about every passing record in school history.

So don’t overreact to Foles only completing seven passes for 74 yards (that’s more than the Holiday Bowl!). The spring game is about looking for individuals showing the potential for greatness, and that’s how the crowd correctly responded.

Joe Perkins, the Tommy Frazier of defensive backs
Photo by UAsports.net

When Ricky Elmore broke through for two early sacks, the crowd cheered. When Juron Criner hauled in each of this two touchdown receptions, the crowd applauded. When Joe Perkins and Trevin Wade pulled off the rarely-successful interception-return-option the crowd issued its resounding approval. When Taimi Tutogi showed hands, speed and attitude on the same 73-yard play the crowd went wild.

As exciting as Tutogi was, Nic Grigsby is still Arizona’s best option at tailback. Keep the guy healthy and you’ve got a true game-breaker back there. Unfortunately keeping the guy healthy remained difficult as an aggravated hamstring limited Grigs to just one carry (and one self-tackle).

The half-full response to the sluggish offense is the intentional use of a vanilla playbook. The half-empty side says a veteran offense should be able to dominate an inexperienced defense no matter what flavor you use.

The reality is we weren’t going to see if the offense has improved until the regular season anyway. When the Cat receivers successfully beat press coverage we’ll know things are better. When more red zone trips result in touchdowns (Hello, Taimi!) we’ll know the right coaches and players are in place.

Until then we’ll have to settle for watching our guys make big plays on a beautiful spring day.

We forgive you for the Holiday Bowl.

(Just don’t let it happen again.)

More coverage of the spring game:
AG’s Observations and Opinions

Brad Allis’ Big Play breakdown

My Twitter page with live tweets from the game.

The good news is we lost a guy we didn’t have yet so we technically didn’t lose him.

Matt Brown, the only quarterback in Arizona’s 2010 recruiting class, recently announced that because Sonny Dykes left he will no longer be attending Arizona but will instead go to TCU. It’s all part of the fun in the circus that is college football recruiting.

If you don’t follow recruiting you might just be better off for it. It’s a world of deception and betrayal. It’s a system that leads to players who think they have scholarships being left out, and players who don’t have scholarships pretending they do.

As with anything involving sports they came up with a way to keep score so fans can brag when they win and sulk when they lose. There are more recruiting websites than you can shake a stopwatch at and they all come up with rankings based on a star system. If you’re a five-star player you’re supposed to be the next Tim Tebow. If you’re a one-star player you’d better get used to filling water bottles.

But how do you rank high school kids from around the country who attend schools of all sizes and play against varying competition? That’s the magic of recruiting rankings. Or, if you prefer, that’s the steaming pile of worthlessness of recruiting rankings.

Logic says the best indicator of a player’s potential is the level of programs recruiting him. If USC, Texas and Florida all want a guy he has to be really good, right? But it becomes a chicken-and-egg thing. Is the player rated highly because of the scholarship offers he’s getting, or is he getting scholarship offers because he’s rated highly?

Even after all that you’re still curious about college football recruiting. You’re interested in seeing what all the fuss is about. Besides, September is a long time from now.

So come on in. Fire up your search engine and see what’s going on with your favorite team. To assist you I proudly present the following Guide to College Football Recruiting, for the novice, by a novice.

1. “Commitment” doesn’t mean anything.
The way the system works is players can be recruited at a young age (nowadays I think it’s once they start crawling) but they can’t formally accept a scholarship offer until their senior year of high school, on National Signing Day which is the first Wednesday of every February. Any time up until Signing Day a player may “commit” to a school. In theory said student-athlete is announcing he has made his college decision and the recruiting process is over. In reality it means the coaching staffs at other schools begin recruiting even harder often leading the player to “de-commit” and say he’s going somewhere else.

In the modern world of college football a “commitment” simply means “the school I currently think I might attend…maybe.”

2. Everyone always likes their class.
No matter how fierce the recruiting battles, no matter how many recruits are gained or lost during the year, by the time Signing Day rolls around every team will claim victory. Official recruiting parties will be held across the country and all coaches will say they got the guys they wanted and there are future stars in the class. Hands will be shaken and backs will be patted and everyone goes home happy. Optimism is undefeated on Signing Day.

3. Highly rated players aren’t always great…unless they are.
If you’re going to follow recruiting you have to learn one thing: If your team’s class isn’t ranked very high you immediately shout, “Recruiting rankings don’t mean anything!” Then you list all the examples of highly rated players who failed and lowly rated guys who succeeded.

For example, in Arizona’s 2008 recruiting class Robert Golden was a five-star recruit and Juron Criner was a two-star recruit. Both are starters but who has had the better career thus far, and whose stock would you rather own? Doesn’t this make the star system meaningless?

But if you look at the Wildcats’ 2007 class you see The Man Who Would Become GRONK! listed as a four-star recruit. He certainly lived up to the hype even in two short seasons. In the same class you have QB Bryson Beirne as a two-star recruit. Not much was expected of him and, sure enough, he’s third string on the depth chart with little chance of moving up.

People who want to mock Arizona fans who follow recruiting will always point to the class of 2006. Perhaps the most exciting moment in the history of UA football recruiting was the day Louis Holmes announced he was coming the Tucson. The story was that even as Holmes was walking toward his press conference Pete Carroll was on his cell phone trying to get Holmes to come to USC. The all-world defensive end chose Arizona and we all thought we had the next Tedy Bruschi. After two full seasons Holmes barely had more sacks (six) than recruiting stars (5).

On the other hand Cat fans who live for recruiting can point to 2005 as a year it was all worth it. Willie Tuitama and Eben Britton were four-star recruits, Mike Thomas had three stars, Spencer Larsen had two stars, and all of them became stars. Sometimes you win all the way around.

There’s nothing wrong with keeping up with recruiting. It’s a great way to pass the time as you wait for spring practice. Just watch out for the roller coaster highs and lows and be sure to celebrate the student-athletes who ultimately decide to attend your favorite university.

Happy Signing Day!

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Basketball Note – In the last ten Pac-10 games the home team is 8-2. Guess who has the two? I’ll give you a hint: It rhymes with Barizona Date Fun Levels.

The Cats are alone in second place and the game on Sunday is a chance to move into first. If Sean Miller was a football recruit he would get eleven stars.

(If I have to write another one of these next week I’m going to be really upset.)

Wow. That came out of nowhere. I guess Sonny Dykes really got the head coaching bug when he expressed interest in the Texas Tech job. I worried when Jim Livengood went to UNLV and started looking for a football coach. I was concerned until Tuberville was hired at Tech and he had his offensive coordinator in place. Then I thought we were in the clear.

Louisiana Tech?

The Bulldogs have only had three winning seasons in the past decade. The last LA Tech coach to stay longer than four years and post a winning record retired in 1978. Yes, you can get to BCS bowl games from the WAC. But the league features a bully on blue turf that doesn’t look to be giving up its spot at the top of the heap any time soon.

Dykes will have to go great lengths to get his team a conference championship. Figuratively and literally. As the easternmost member of the Western Athletic Conference LA Tech has to travel 1,500 miles to Boise State, 1,700 miles to San Jose State, and 4,000 miles to Hawaii. Heck, they’re a full Texas away from their nearest conference foe (New Mexico State). At least Sonny will be killing it in the frequent flier miles department.

We did know this day was coming. Sonny has a head coach’s presence. If Mike Stoops took a job somewhere else Dykes was the guy I wanted to take over here. Whether in Tucson or elsewhere you knew Sonny Dykes was going to be following in his father’s footsteps. Eventually. We just didn’t want “eventually” to mean “right now.”

I thought Dykes would stick around at Arizona two or three more years, make a serious run at the Rose Bowl and then follow Mike Stoops’ example in taking over a rebuilding program in a BCS conference. He’s certainly shown he can rebuild an offense.

The Wildcat offense was dead when Sonny got here. Beyond dead. It had been buried, dug up, and killed again. In the first three years of Stoops’ tenure the Cats scored a measly 15, 23 and 17 points per game, ranking ninth in the Pac-10 each season. In Dykes’ three years the UA averaged 28, 37 and 27 points, and peaked as the third most potent Pac offense in 2008.

Sonny Dykes reintroduced the forward pass to Wildcat fans. Of the ten best games in terms of completions in Arizona history, eight of them happened under Dykes’ watch. Willie Tuitama owns every significant season and career passing record in the books, and he wasn’t even good enough to get an NFL tryout. Sonny knows offense.

And that’s what makes the timing of his departure so painful. Next year’s Wildcat offense is loaded, even without GRON… If we could get 2,400 yards from Nick Foles in Pac-10 play what could we get with a full season? If we scored enough to win eight games with a lot of new starters what could we do when the whole offense comes back?

Now we’re left with question marks. All the players are still here but their system might not be. Is there anyone on the staff capable to keeping everything in place? Is there anyone even left when Dykes finishes building his offensive staff at Louisiana Tech?

The good news is this is a fair more attractive job than when Sonny took over. Back to back bowl games and a head coach with four years left on his contract. A ton of experience on the offensive line and a quarterback in place. Whoever steps into the play-calling role will have every chance to succeed and build his own name.

Fare thee well, Sonny Dykes, and thanks for the memories. Three years weren’t enough but they sure were a great three years. Just leave our assistant coaches and recruits alone.

Goodbye, GRON…I mean, SONN…