Five Takeaways: Brent Brennan Arizona Media Day Press Conference

Adjusting this fall camp compared to last fall camp

While last season certainly didn’t go as planned for Brennan and the entire Wildcats team, it does give them a chance to learn from it and make any necessary adjustments going into this year. That is something Brennan understands heading into his second season at Arizona, but his overall approach hasn’t changed wholeheartedly. 

“I still believe at the end of the day, football is about blocking tackling, having the right people in the right places, executing at a high level and playing harder than everybody that you compete against,” he said. “That being said, did I come at this offseason with a different mindset than last season? Absolutely. The circumstances were way different.”

The big focus this offseason by the coaching staff when attacking the transfer portal was finding the right players to fit the schemes they’re going to run and execute in.

The major concern heading into training camp

The saying in football is the games are won in the trenches and that is an area where Arizona struggled in last season, particularly on the offensive line as the unit dealt with numerous injuries all season and different lineman playing in new positions. 

Brennan noted that remains a focal point at the start of camp this week. 

He also added that where players are lining up on special teams is another big area the team needs to finalize during camp. There are a lot of new players that are part of the unit this year. 

“We’ve got to figure out who are going to be the guys that are going to run down on kickoffs,” Brennan said. “We’ve got to find out can we hit it out of the end zone every time like we did last year with Tyler Loop. We got a real benefit with that.”

The offensive line and special teams are two of the units to monitor over the next month into the season opener against Hawaii. 

Being too outcome focused last season

One area of emphasis Brenann noted more than once during his press conference was the idea of last year’s team being too “outcome focused” week-to-week after games and needing to change that identity heading into this year. 

“Even the games that we won, it didn’t feel good to the players,” Brennan said. “We didn’t win by enough, we didn’t play well enough on this side of the ball and that part of it was watching them go through that. When we did lose a game, it was incredibly devastating working with our team, talking with our team and trying to pull us out of the funk that that put us in just because we’ve been so focused on something so far down the road.”

The clear area of focus with the team this year as Brennan noted is “doing the work that is required right now.”

“The great thing about this team and this offseason has been how they attacked the work,” he said. “I’m not just talking about football. We had the highest team GPA in the history of Arizona football this last semester. They’re on it, all part of it and that’s what I’m talking about being focused on the process. That process of development.”

The structure of training camp

There is a clear pattern in how Arizona is practicing over the next month leading into the season with two morning practices, followed by a night practice at Arizona Stadium and a day off. Brennan talked about the clear reason for structuring practices that way. 

“The biggest thing is because we play all of our games at night in that stadium.”