Arizona Football Talk: Signs of Offensive Growth

Hutchison has been covering Arizona for the last seven years with his coverage spanning all-across UA’s campus from football and men’s basketball to Title IX sports. Plus, with so many former Wildcats playing at the next level in their prospective sports there will be moments where he will take a deep dive into the Cats excelling outside of Tucson.

Arizona wanted to get back on the right track after an underwhelming first season under Brent Brennan, where the team finished 4-8 and missed a bowl game despite preseason high expectations.

Well, after changes were made to the coaching staff and the roster, Brennan seems to have the Wildcats moving in the right direction with the team starting the year with 3-straight impressive wins over Hawaii, Weber State and Kansas State.

One of the major changes this past offseason was Brennan replacing former offensive coordinator Dino Babers with Seth Doege, who came into Tucson after one season in the same position at Marshall where he put together the No. 20 rushing offense and helped the Thundering Herd reach a 10-3 record.

It has been well documented that the background of Doege with ties to Mike Leach and the Texas Tech tree, and his being labeled as an Air Raid offensive mind. However, when looking at what he has done at Arizona and the one season with Marshall, it is clear that balance is what he is looking for.

Last season, Arizona struggled on the offensive side of the ball, averaging 21.8 PPG. However, if you take a deeper dive into the offense, the unit struggled to crack 20-plus points if you take out the New Mexico game, where the Wildcats dropped 61 points on the Lobos.

When you take that game out of the equation, Arizona averaged 18.2 PPG putting the unit near the bottom of the conference.

Now, through the first three games of the season, Arizona is averaging 37 PPG and sits at No. 37 nationally in scoring offense.

So far this season, Arizona has had a balanced attack that has favored the rushing game with 58% run plays and 42% passing plays from the Wildcats’ offense.

In three games, the Wildcats have seen two different running backs lead the way in Quincy Craig, who ripped off 125 yards against Hawaii and Ismail Mahdi with his 189-yard rushing performance against Kansas State.

Meanwhile, through the first three games of the season, we have seen a bag of mixed reviews for quarterback Noah Fifita. However, Fifita has improved under Doege compared to the underwhelming season he had in 2024 under Babers.

This season, Fifita has been able to protect the football with ZERO turnovers and has thrown six passing touchdowns and has run in for three other TDs. This is while passing for 712 yards with a completion percentage of 59%, thus far.

Now, Fifita hasn’t been perfect, but he is growing in the system each week and has started to use his legs as a weapon, which was one of the main things he focused on getting better at this offseason.

Every area of the Wildcats’ offense has improved from the previous season, and it is clear that Brennan nailed the hire when bringing in Doege to run the offensive unit.

Now, the team still has things to clean up with penalty issues and a lack of third-down conversions, but things are moving in the right direction for the Wildcats.