Three former Wildcats and another player who wanted to play for Arizona are still alive in the NFL playoffs.

The Bears feature two former Wildcats, as well as offensive lineman J’Marcus Webb, who signed a Letter of Intent with the Wildcats but could not qualify academically and attended West Texas instead.

Former Wildcat great Lance Briggs is one of the keys for the Chicago defense.  Briggs had six tackles in last week’s win over Seattle and had 89 tackles, two interceptions and two forced fumbles on the season. He was named to the Pro Bowl but will not play in the game if the Bears beat Green Bay and go to the Super Bowl.

Also on the Bears roster is tight end Brandon Manumaleuna. Manumaleuna has been a blocking tight end for the Bears. He did not have a catch against Seattle and only had five catches on the season for 43 yards and one score.

The New York Jets have the only other former Wildcat left in the playoffs. Nick Folk is the team’s place kicker and had the game winning field goal in the Wildcard win over Indianapolis. Folk missed his lone field goal attempt against New England in the Divisional Round, but made all four extra points in the 28-21 win.

For the season folk connected on 30 of 39 field goals.

The only other former Arizona player in the postseason was New England rookie tight end Rob Gronkowski. He had four catches for 65 yards in the Patriots loss to the Jets.

In the past month the Wildcats have lost both coordinators and a tight end to the NFL draft. While Wildcat fans may be wondering “why us?”, they should be glad. Arizona fans got what they wanted.

Losing coordinators, losing players to the pros, welcome to “big boy football”.

Sonny Dykes/courtesy: WildcatSportsReport.com

Arizona brought in Mike Stoops to try to duplicate the success he had when he was a defensive coordinator at Oklahoma. While the rebuilding process has been slower than folks would like, and they have not had the successes as Stoops had at Oklahoma, it is clear the program is on the up swing.

The better the team plays, the more the coaches will be a hot commodity. The better players a team recruits, the more likely you are to lose them early to the draft.

Pete Carroll had three coaches get head coaching gigs. Bob Stoops has seen four of his coordinators leave for head coaching jobs (five if you count Bo Pelini who had a one-year stop at LSU before getting the Nebraska job).

Get the picture? While it would be great to have staff continuity, it just does not happen. It is a good thing. If coaches know you can move up from a place like Arizona, they will be drawn to the job. While some life-long coordinators have been great, don’t you want your coaches to be ambitious? While you don’t want to hire a bunch of mercenaries, you also don’t want coaches who no one else is interested in.

The same goes for players. Fans always lament that their teams can’t land five-star players, but then turn around and get mad when those talented players leave the program for the draft. You can’t have one, without the other.

Look at the programs that have the most players declaring for the draft, and I’ll show you programs that win football games. Washington State is not losing a ton of the guys early for the pros. Baylor does not see a rash of players declare for the draft. Duke coaches are not sweating out the declaration deadline.

The fact is, Arizona has had players declare early for the draft in three of the last four years and had to wait and see what Antoine Cason was going to do.

John Mackovic never lost a kid early. Dick Tomey lost just one.

Urban Meyer and Nick Sabin lose five a year.

Arizona is not in that elite level yet, but they are inching closer. They may never play for a national title, but a BCS bowl berth is not a possibility. The side effect to that success is that coaches and players move on.

Enjoy big boy football.