Arizona 30 UCLA 56
What did I watch last night? Some people might call it a comedy of errors, ass kicking, trouncing, rout, pummeling, roast, shellacking, smothering, drubbing, walloping or a total embarrassment on national television. I think you get you get the point.
Where to begin?
We looked great in the first couple of minutes, but after our center – Cayman Bundage snapped the ball over Anu Solomon’s head that caused a turnover, it was all downhill from there.
UCLA had no problem with our defense. If you cannot make basic tackles you will never beat a team like UCLA. In the last few years, Arizona football has had this problem. We make everybody on the opposing teams offense look like Heisman Trophy candidates.
I wasn’t sold on the 3-3-5 from the very beginning when Rich Rod first started. For this to work you need a huge defensive line that can put pressure on the QB. We do not get the high quality recruits for this to happen.
Don’t get me wrong – it works well when you play teams that run the spread, but when you go up against a team like Stanford, USC or UCLA it doesn’t work well. These teams simply get better recruits on their offensive and defensive lines than we do and it shows.
Scooby Wright was pretty much a non factor in this game. This was expected since he hasn’t really played in a real game setting in weeks. He also looked gassed every time he was on the field.
A major factor that crippled our offense was the quality of snaps from the center Cayman Bundage. To be fair, he was thrown into this position recently after Carter Wood couldn’t play anymore because of a season ending foot injury. In addition, he was probably amped up because this was a huge game. We had no other options and looking back – what if we were able to get Matt Hegarty?
The high snaps really affected the rhythm of plays that were called and it showed on many plays. This forced the QB’s to focus on the snaps more rather than focusing on the play.
Anu ran a lot in this game. He had some decent runs, but he got injured on one of them. If he doesn’t learn how to slide he is going to have a short career. As a result, he was taken out of the game in the second quarter – probably has a concussion…
In comes Jerrard Randall to take over as QB. He started off with a touchdown run. This kid is a freak of an athelete and should be on the field more. His big downside and the reason he doesn’t start as quarterback is that he can’t throw.
He has no touch on his throws and he’s not very accurate. He has a bullet of an arm, but when you pass it to somebody ten feet away you don’t throw it as hard as you can.
The run game with Randall, Wilson and Baker worked great until Randall tried to throw. They should have kept running it every single play. It was working well and the UCLA defense was reeling.
Overall, this game was really ugly and disappointing especially since it was a huge game on national television. Some positive things to take away is that it is still early in the season and we can make some adjustments.
Stanford is next week. The defense needs to step it up big time if we want to have any chance at winning this one.