What Brent Brennan Said Following Loss To Houston

The Wildcats now head into their second bye week of the season. They still need two more wins to qualify for a bowl game with five games left to play.

Here are some takeaways from what coach Brent Brennan had to say at his press conference on Monday.

Takeaways

Opening statement: "Obviously coming off a really hard day Saturday in Houston. I thought coach Fritz and that staff did a great job, but obviously a very disappointing ending for us. Now we're into this bye week and it's a really important time for us, an opportunity for us to get fresh and for us to dive into the fundamental parts of playing football.

The players came in yesterday and obviously everyone's hurting, but they're committed to doing this thing the right way. We have five games left, a lot of football left to play and we're excited about it."

On the success the team has had on fourth down plays

Brennan: "It has happen to pretty quickly when you've got the play clock burning, but lots of times it will happen on the previous play. We're 3rd-and-long or 3rd-and-medium, and I'll say you got two downs here so Seth (Doege) can make the play call before fourth down knowing that he's got another shot at it.

The other person that has been great with that is Danny (Gonzales) because sometimes when you do those things, if you don't get it, you're putting the defense in a tough situation. Danny is ready to play defense anywhere, so the conversations between the three of us have been really positive."

On assessing the recent run defense struggles

Brennan: "I think that's a huge point of emphasis for us just really because we were so good earlier in the season in our run defense. What we've seen is that people have been attacking us with a bunch of quarterback run the past two weeks, and that's obviously a big point of emphasis as we get going here.

I think if you look at that game last week, one of our reasons for returning to fundamentals in the practice environment this week is that we missed too many tackles. Those numbers shouldn't have been what they would have been if we would have made the tackle or gotten the guy down when we had a chance to."

Arizona's first game out of the bye is against Colorado and a quarterback in Kaidon Salter who will likely look to attack the Wildcats defense with the run as well. The transfer from Liberty had a rushing touchdown in each of the first five games he started this season, as well as at least 40 rushing yards on the ground in four of six games.

On the third down defense struggles

Brennan: "I think it's a combination of missing tackles or maybe us not executing the exact details of what we're supposed to get done. I think we're also playing against good football teams."

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