Arizona Wildcats Wide Receiver Falls Out of Top 20 Players In College Football
The Arizona Wildcats under first-year head coach Brent Brennan had high hopes for the 2024 season, their first in the Big 12.
Now at the midway point of their year, things are not as bright as they once seemed.
With the tandem of quarterback Noah Fifita and wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan in their second season as starters together, the Wildcats expected their offense to lead them to contention for the conference championship.
Now with a 3-3 record, with a 1-2 conference record, Arizona is just trying to contend for a bowl game.
Fifita has struggled mightily to this point in the year, and while McMillan has still been one of the best receivers in college football, Fifita's struggles have put a dent in what McMillan could do with a top-tier quarterback at the other end of his highlight reel catches.
It has even seen McMillan drop out of Blake Brockermeyer's top 20 players in college football for CBS Sports, where he is now ranked 21st after previously being ranked 13th.
"He needs more touches," writes Brockermeyer, "if the Wildcats are going to make a bowl game."
McMillan enters Saturday with 42 catches, 742 yards, and four touchdowns, which may seem like a consistent amount of production for the season, but 10 of those catches, 304 yards, and all four touchdowns came in Arizona's week one contest with the New Mexico Lobos.
While the receiver has averaged seven catches, 124 yards, and 0.67 touchdowns per game this year, once you remove the one massive outlier, the rest of the season has seen him average just 6.4 catches, 88 yards, and no touchdowns across five games.
McMillan does have one other game with a reception total in the double digits, coming in the Wildcats' third game of the year against the Kansas State Wildcats, tallying 11 in that contest with 138 yards.
He has tallied no more than eight catches in any other game this year but does have one other game with 100+ yards, totaling 161 against the Texas Tech Red Raiders.
While it has not been the banner year that McMillan and Arizona may have been looking forward to, it has still been a productive year for the receiver, one that could end with a first-round draft selection in May, regardless of how late the team plays into December.
McMillan is a spectacular receiving talent who is bound to get his yards and touchdowns with enough touches.
It may just take a change at quarterback for McMillan to receive that consistent increase in touches.
