It’s been eight months since Arizona limped to the finish of one of the most disappointing seasons in school history. A team that featured four future NFL draft picks, including a top-10 selection, went 4-8 overall and had won just twice in its first year of Big 12 play.
That was eight months ago. The next season is only a month away. Time to officially turn the page.
“We’re not looking in the rear view, we’re looking forward,” UA coach Brent Brennan said Tuesday, the day before preseason training
camp begins ahead of the 2025 opener at home against Hawaii on Aug. 30. “We’re moving forward as a football program, and today we get start keeping score. I think everybody’s just ready to get to work. From day one, when the season ended last year, it is all been all about attacking this offseason.”
A roster that includes 57 newcomers—and a couple of guys entering their second stint in Tucson—will spend the next four weeks working with a similarly retooled coaching staff that includes new offensive, defensive and special teams coordinators. It’s a whole lot of change, but all of it was necessary, Brennan said.
“When you go through a tough season like we did a year ago, you got to find a way to fix what was broken, fix the what wasn’t working, and then put those pieces together,” he said. “And part of those pieces are how we’re going to do things, in terms of how we’re going to coach, what we’re going to do schematically. And then the the other part of those things are, who are the players that are going to play those roles? So we’ve added more players to a roster than I’ve ever been a part of this offseason, and also more staff transition than I’ve ever been a part of.”
The UA returns quarterback Noah Fifita, who has started the last 21 games and is looking to bounce back after an uneven 2024. He’ll be doing so with a third different play caller, as Seth Doege has taken over the offense. At Big 12 Media Days in Texas, Fifita called Doege “one of the best offensive minds I’ve been around” and someone he is confident can fix an attack that averaged 21.8 points per game a year ago.
“His offense gives this team the best position to win,” Fifita said. “Coach Doege, from his scheme to his mentality and belief that he has in himself, he has in us. He just allows me to play free. He allows me to do what I do best, and that’s play the quarterback position, play free, get the ball out of my hands, be accurate.”
Almost everything else about Arizona’s offense is uncertain. The three best offensive linemen from an underachieving unit are gone, as is No. 8 overall pick Tetairoa McMillan at receiver. The Wildcats added eight transfers to the O-line and four to the receiver room, as well as two running backs who starred at their previous schools. Also back is tight end Keyan Burnett, who after spending the spring at Kansas returned to Tucson for a fourth season.
Burnett isn’t the only ex-Wildcat back in the fold. Defensive lineman Tia Savea, who played for the UA in 2022-23, has returned following a season at Texas. He’s part of a retooled front seven that new coordinator Danny Gonzales plans to aggressively mix and match in order to deceive offenses.
“We’ve done it at multiple places within this scheme,” said Gonzales, who has previously coached at New Mexico, San Diego State and ASU. “You don’t have to have the most talent. You have to have enough talent.”
Arizona was decimated by injuries on defense a year ago, contributing to poor overall numbers. The Wildcats allowed 31.8 points per game, a more than 50 percent increase from the 21.1 allowed in the 10-3 season in 2023, while giving up 174 rushing yards per contest.
“We will not allow people to run the football,” Gonzales said. “That’s a mentality, as much as it is schematics. And we will put enough bodies up front that people will not run the football. The only way that works and works successfully is if you have guys that can cover in the back. We know our starters can cover. We don’t know if our backups can cover. Nobody in this league knows if their backups can cover. But we’re going to be aggressive as hell up front.”
Brennan said he expects to jump right into general game planning in the first practice, splitting time between working on fundamentals and determining first teamers and backups. But starters won’t be made official for a while in hopes of keeping everyone at max effort.
“I think the most important thing you know with how we’re getting ready for fall camp is if there’s competition,” Brennan said. “So sometimes you might say, hey, this guy’s ahead of this guy (to) the staff, but we’re like, we need this guy to push this guy. So we’re not going to tell this guy that he’s the starter. Sometimes you don’t want to award a guy that, because will he stay motivated? Will he continue to attack the work in a way you need him to? So we’re trying to make sure that everybody, every position on the team, including quarterback, feels the pressure of competition in the practice environment.”
Arizona’s first three games, all at Arizona Stadium, have announced kickoffs of 6 p.m. or later. To prepare for that environment, every third preseason practice will be in the evening inside the stadium.
“We play all our games at night in that stadium, and so we want our players to be exposed to just playing in there, what that feels like, the lights, the heat, all of it,” Brennan said. “We didn’t do that a year ago.”
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