Arizona's Star Quarterback Makes Some Interesting Comments About His Struggles
The Arizona Wildcats had a great opportunity to put their disappointing performance against Texas Tech behind them and pull off another ranked upset on the road when facing BYU this past Saturday.
Unfortunately, that was anything but the result.
Arizona was dismantled, losing 41-19 in a game that saw them get completely overmatched on both sides of the ball which has been the storyline coming out of the majority of their contests this season.
Perhaps the most concerning development when looking at year over year results is the regression of their star quarterback Noah Fifita.
After replacing Jayden de Laura in Week 4 against Stanford following an injury to the starter, Fifita took over and never looked back.
He finished last season with 2,869 passing yards and a 72.4% completion percentage, throwing 25 touchdowns compared to six interceptions on his way to leading the Wildcats to a 10-3 record and an Alamo Bowl victory that earned him Pac-12 Freshman of the Year honors.
He's been a complete shell of that version so far.
Fifita is tied for second with the most interceptions across the FBS level with nine, throwing three against BYU that were all killers.
The first came when the game was tied 7-7, resulting in the Cougars scoring a touchdown. The second was on the first play out of halftime with a chance to go and things up, but after the pick, BYU extended their lead to 14. His last one was a pick-six that added insult to injury at the end of the fourth quarter.
This offense has really dropped off compared to when previous head coach Jedd Fisch was leading the program, and the struggles of the star quarterback has been one of the biggest reasons why.
He had an interesting statement about how he's performed so far this year, saying, "Just another week doing the same thing, so it's starting to get old. I have to fix a lot of things and get better individually. Not even close to where I want to be individually, not close to where we want to be offensively, and it's because of me," per Jason Scheer of 247Sports.
It's hard to argue with that unfortunately.
Fifita has not performed at the level it takes to compete in the Big 12 Conference, something the Wildcats and him are finding out the hard way.
There were a lot of expectations placed upon this group to follow up what they did last year and keep their momentum going with so many star players returning, but so far, Arizona has been one the most underwhelming teams in the country.
For the Wildcats to turn things around, they need their star quarterback to figure things out.
