Arizona Football: Khalil Tate’s worst fears coming true

Arizona football earned their third loss of the year to a struggling USC. A Wildcat team with so much talent can’t seem to put it together.

In Week 5, the Arizona Wildcats looked helpless in their 24-20 loss against conference opponent, the USC Trojans. The loss brings the Wildcat’s record to 2-3, with their lone wins coming from Southern Utah and Oregon State.

During the offseason, many considered that Arizona may finally have the chance to compete for a Pac-12 title. However, scandal intervened with the accusation of Rich Rodriguez facilitating a hostile work environment and eventual sexual harassment claims. After Rodriguez was fired, the Wildcats were in the market for a new head coach.

Navy coach, Ken Niumatalolo came to the front of the line and was the leading candidate for the job. For years, Niumatalolo has successfully ran the triple option offense at Navy, beating teams like Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, and many other great football programs despite having players of much less size and speed.

However, after star quarterback Khalil Tate tweeted, “I didn’t come to Arizona to run the tripple option” (yes, spelled triple wrong), the chances of Niumatalolo becoming the new coach went to zero.

Eventually, Kevin Sumlin was hired as the head coach of the Wildcats. But by this point, it was too late. Sumlin never had any chance with this team. After the athletic department put the preferences of one player ahead of what was best for the team, it was clear who held the stick in the room.

Arizona’s offense has struggled significantly this year because of the lack of trust and buy in by the players. Maybe Khalil Tate doesn’t want to run a play action play on second down in the second quarter. If he tweets, “I don’t want to run this play”, will the administration tell Coach Sumlin not to call that play? If the Wildcat’s best cornerback, Lorenzo Burns, says he didn’t come to Arizona to play zone converge, will the administration force the staff to run man coverage? if every player didn’t come to Arizona to run sprints before practice, will the Wildcats simply not condition?

Khalil Tate has great speed and play making ability. Should Coach Ken Niumatalolo have brought the triple option to Arizona, Tate would have multiple games of over 200 yards rushing and would be a leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy. Additionally, with how bad the Pac-12 ended up being, and how well the triple option works against teams that have never seen it before (see Paul Johnson at Georgia Tech 2008 and 2009), Arizona would be likely be in contention for the Pac-12 championship.

But instead, power was given to a college football player and the team is at the bottom of their conference. The triple option was never going to be the silver bullet for Arizona, but the administration’s short-sightedness isn’t playing out well so far.