A year ago at this time, Arizona was coming off a humbling loss at Kansas State as the start of Big 12 Conference play loomed followed a week off. The Wildcats enter this season’s pre-Big 12 bye week off a big win over K-State, pushing their record to 3-0 for the first time in 10 years.
The time for celebrating isn’t now, not with No. 12 Iowa State looming after the break and the UA far from a finished product.
“We are a work in progress,” UA coach Brent Brennan said Monday. “We can feel good about
the first three (games), but they’re over now, and they don’t matter. And what matters is what we’re doing today and what matters what we’re doing tomorrow. This is a really, really important couple weeks for us in the football program.”
Though there’s no game on Saturday, Arizona plans to treat the lead up to the weekend like it would on a game week. The players had Monday off and will practice Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday before getting an extended break next week while the coaching staff hits the road to evaluate the 2026 recruiting class and beyond.
“We know we have work to do,” Brennan said. “This is a huge week for us, improving, getting healthy, getting a jump start on a game plan for Iowa State. We have tremendous respect for Coach (Matt) Campbell and that staff there. Those guys have built an outstanding program, and they’ve done it the right way. And so we know we’ve got a lot of work to do. And so everyone’s here ready to rock, and it’s going to be a great week.”
Here’s what else Brennan discussed as his weekly Monday presser:
On the defense: “I think Coach (Danny) Gonzales and his defensive staff has done an awesome job preparing those guys, building a mentality, the way they attack, the way you see red line show up with them every game we play. There’s still work to do there. There’s still some things that aren’t exactly what we want them to be, but in terms of those guys being 100-100 and seeing that effort on the field, it’s fun to watch.”
On special teams: “I think we’ve got work to do there. I think there’s some coaching that needs to be detailed up in some of those spaces. I think that Coach Naivar is an outstanding special teams coach in terms of the detail, the energy, the time, the effort he puts into it. And I think the part of that red line that hasn’t shown up is the total execution in the special team space. I think some of the challenges we’ve had there are fixable, and we need to get to fixing them.”
On the recruiting plan: “The coaches will go on the road recruiting Thursday, Thursday night or Friday and a little bit on Saturday. Not everybody. With the amount of evaluation opportunities changing, with the new rules this year, there’s a few less. So you don’t want to use them all this bye, we have another bye week when we also want to get out.
“We already had two guys get out on Saturday. They flew out early Saturday morning, so we hit California and Hawaii. This week we’ll be in Texas, Utah, California, Vegas, Washington. We’ll go hard. I’ll have a busy day in California with Coach (Seth) Doege. I can’t wait. It’s awesome I love getting out because I think the relationship with high school coaches is so important. And I think over time you build trust with those people if you do right by the players and you treat them the right way. And as a head coach it’s less and less that I’m allowed to go out by nature of the rules. And so the opportunities I do get to get out, it’s great for me to get to go to high schools where I’ve been recruiting for 25 years.”
On Ismail Mahdi winning Big 12 Co-Offensive Player of the Week: “I think we’re excited, because we’ve seen production from multiple guys. Obviously, Ish had a big time game, and our O-line got the beef, the beef award of the week, isn’t that what they’re calling it. I love it. What a great name for a bunch of big ass dudes, but those things go hand in hand. Ish isn’t doing those things if the offensive line and the tight end aren’t creating those opportunities. I think that was really, really special. It was exciting because he was a guy that got banged up a little bit in training camp we missed so he missed some reps.”
On the holding penalties called against the offensive line: “I think that’s obviously something that is a huge thing we need to fix, starting tomorrow in practice. The good news, I got faith in Coach (Josh) Oglesby. He’s an awesome coach, and those players are trying their hardest. That’s not an effort problem. Guys have to be smart about hand placement. They have to be smart about when a defender gets outside the frame of your body, to let go. That’s something that I know we’re going to drill the hell out of in the next couple weeks so that we can hopefully eliminate those things, because they stall drives for us, and they put us behind the sticks too many times. And it’s not just the line, too. We’ve also had some of those on the perimeter.”
On the decision to start Chubba Ma’ae at left guard over Michael Wooten: “Everything is the practice environment is about competition. And I think kind of went back and forth all week. And we had initially wanted to have them play two series and switch, and then we went with a hot hand.”
On the receivers having an off game vs. Kansas State: “I think they’re always going to think we can play better. In that game, we actually had a couple drops, which was not been part of us. And a couple of them were not hard. So I think there’s some technique stuff that we can clean up there. And Coach Wade, just with who he is and how he coaches, I got a lot of faith in that man. And so do our players. As we continue to play better and better our teams every week, right, like the separation is going to be more demanding to get, because you’re going to be going against better personnel.”
On Treydan Stukes getting a sack on his first series back after knee surgery: “It was awesome, because Treydan Stukes is a leader on this team. He’s been a very, very good player here for multiple years, and he went through a really hard thing. But to watch how he has continued to lead, has continued to carry himself, just the person he is for our football team, the person he is for the defensive back group. He was the guy that was recovering, but he never hit on the sideline. He was always in the mix, always encouraging his teammates, always challenging his teammates, always bringing energy to the practice environment and game day environment. He is a universally respected player on our team, and everyone loves him. And so I think that moment was just as exciting for the team, to see him make that play as it was for Stukes.”
On bringing back the paw print stickers on the helmets: “I do think it’s cool. It started because every day I walk into my office and I see that picture of Chuck (Cecil) on my wall right there, or on the wall in the hallway. His helmet looks so cool with all those Wildcat paw prints on it.”
On how players earn the stickers: “Explosive play, takeaway, if we get a win everyone gets one. Big pass, big run, stuff like that.”
On linebacker Chase Kennedy’s improvement: “I think he’s making a move as a player, I really do. Chase is one of those guys that was new to us last year, and kind of getting his sea legs, so to speak. But I think you see him starting to accelerate, which is what you hope for players that are in the program over time, that they’re developing and their process is getting sped up. Each week you can start to see them having more impact as they play.”
On Noah Fifita scoring on a run that didn’t look designed to score: “I will tell you this: every play that’s drawn up is designed to score, every single one. Obviously, it doesn’t always happen that way. Noah, he’s a really good football player, and really good football players find ways to make plays when it doesn’t look exactly perfect. And the truth is, with as good as Kansas State is, and with as good as Iowa State is, it doesn’t always look perfect. You need guys to rely on some instincts, some talent, some vision to make big plays. And he did.”
On the matchup with Iowa State: “I think it’s gonna be a monster. These guys are really, really good. They’re ranked 12th in the country. They run the ball extremely well. The quarterback is a stud. They’ve got good football players everywhere. We’re going into their place. It’s a 6 pm kick, I believe, so it’s gonna be rowdy. It’s gonna be hard to hear, all that stuff. So I think this is one of those awesome moments where you know you’re going to play extremely good football team, a nationally ranked football team, on the road in a hostile environment that has been there for a long time, a very established program with an excellent coaching staff. It’s an awesome challenge for us.”
On experiencing road environments last season in Big 12: “I thought it was great, you know. You realize how important football is in this new conference. Everywhere you go, the crowds, the atmosphere, what game day looks like, they are rocking and rolling, like it is an important thing in all these towns. It started off at Kansas State last year, that was the first one. We’re expecting a very similar rowdy environment in Ames.”
On Fifita giving Tre Spivey the ball after the final kneeldown: “I think sometimes those things get made to be too big of a deal. We’re playing against the school he transferred from. It’s every week, every team we play. It’s not like Joe Montana going to play for the Chiefs, that was a big deal. Now there’s like multiple players on every roster, all over the country, doing that now. So I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. I thought it was cool. I thought Tre played well in that game. I thought he made a great play in a big situation, and took a huge hit and came back ready to rock and play good football. So I thought that was just a cool gesture from our leader, Noah Fifita, just being respectful.”
On seeing 2 coaches get fired after 0-3 starts: “Anytime someone goes through that, my heart goes out to them and their families and the assistant coaches and players in the program, because those transitions are incredibly tough. I think college football has become big business. I think sometimes we try to act like it’s not, but it is, and that’s the harsh reality of it.”
On the recommendation to go to one transfer portal window: “I think that’s helpful. I think the more clarity we get on schedule, calendar, just a consistency where everyone’s kind of on the same page, is good for college football. I like the one portal, because I’m of the headspace where we’re going to build our program from January to August. So I think having the team intact for that whole time is important. You’re going to know who your players are. You’re not going to go through spring practice, then all sudden, lose a couple key pieces of your team.”
