UA football kicks off vs. USC on national TV
It isn’t often these days that the Arizona Wildcats draw the “A team” on a TV broadcast.
But as you might have heard, 2020 isn’t typical in any way.
So it is that Fox Sports’ top announcing crew — Gus Johnson, Joel Klatt and Jenny Taft — will call the UA’s opener against No. 20 USC on Saturday afternoon at Arizona Stadium. The game was still on as of this writing, with the Trojans set to depart for Tucson on Friday.
Klatt, a former quarterback at Colorado, provided an extensive breakdown of the latest meeting between the Trojans and Wildcats. Topics included his thoughts on USC quarterback Kedon Slovis, the new-look Trojans defense and how to prepare — as an analyst and as a team — for a UA defense that no one has seen yet.
There were mixed reviews of USC’s performance against ASU. The Sun Devils were in control before the Trojans rallied late. What was your overall takeaway on USC?
A: “I thought Arizona State had a great plan. And I think that’s a really good team. I think these are the two best teams on this side of the conference.
“USC continued to struggle with the same things they struggled with last year, which was a soft zone coverage. That’s OK as long as you do some things to show that you’ve fixed it, and I felt like they (eventually) did. They ran the football a lot better.
Is it advantageous for Arizona and Grant Gunnell to have a game on film that they can look at?
A: “This is the classic, ‘do you view things as glass half full or glass half empty?’ If I’m Grant Gunnell and Noel Mazzone, I’m absolutely thinking to myself, telling myself all week long, ‘This is a huge advantage for us. We get to see them. We’ve seen what they do. We’ve seen the tendencies. We’ve seen the pressure cooker that they’ve been in.’ And by the way, that was a game that they had to empty the kitchen sink to win.
On the other side, Arizona has a new defensive coordinator in Paul Rhoads. USC hasn’t had that look. How big a deal is that, and how have you gone about studying what you might see defensively from the Wildcats?
A: “It just kind of changes the way that I watch film. When I put on last year’s film of Arizona, I do it from a personnel standpoint and not a schematic standpoint. I get my cues more from what I read. I think that this isn’t necessarily going to be Paul’s defense that he’s always run. I think this was a bit of a mixture of what Kevin (Sumlin) maybe wanted to do with the personnel and how he felt like Paul was a good fit for that. I don’t quite know what to expect.
“I will say this: Defensive structure — generally, not all the time — has to be reactive. They have to react to what they see; it’s just the nature of defense. So even when I was playing, and then now in this career, I feel like the defense kind of unfolds with what the offense does.
“I understand that they’re moving to a 3-4. I know what is effective, and what their problems will be, against the system that they see. So I’m expecting a lot of zone coverage. And I think that they’re going to try to move the defensive front seven in order to combat some of the run game that (was) successful, in particular late, against ASU.
“If they’re able to do that and get into those longer-yardage situations, then they can start getting creative with their blitz package. I’ve always thought that’s the most difficult part about facing an odd defense, or a 3-4 defense. They can just be so much more creative. They can disguise so much better who they’re bringing and from where.”
Kevin Sumlin and Clay Helton were both considered to be on the hot seat entering this season. Do you think we’re going to see as much movement on that front this offseason considering the economic difficulties that athletic departments are facing?
A: “I’m not saying this specifically about these two guys. I’m just saying in general: There is no way we will see the volume of movement that we’ve seen in previous years. The economics are just not there. There’ll be some exceptions, but (there is) virtually zero appetite to spend multiple millions of dollars for someone not to work.
“In the Pac-12, they’re losing 100% of their gate. That’s a giant hit.”