Brent Brennan is Confident Arizona Wildcats Can Bounce Back During Bye Week

The Arizona Wildcats performed extremely poorly against Kansas State, but their head coach is confident things can be turned around during the bye week.

Aryanna Frank-Imagn Images

There was a ton of excitement heading into the season for the Arizona Wildcats after losing their head coach but holding onto their star quarterback and star wide receiver.

While Brent Brennan was a relatively unknown commodity for most college football fans before Arizona hired him away from San Jose State, fans quickly bought in to what Brennan was selling as he entered into a very tough situation where Jedd Fisch left for Washington fairly late in the game. It was up to Brennan to build on what Fisch had started with a 10-win 2023 season that ended in an Alamo Bowl victory.

The excitement among the fanbase only grew after a week one victory over New Mexico where the Wildcats scored 61 points and the connection between the elite duo of Noah Fifita and Tetairoa McMillan looked as strong as ever. McMillan accounted for over 300 of Fifita's 422 passing yards and all four of his passing touchdowns in week one.

But after a shaky win against Northern Arizona in week two, the competition took a big step up and Arizona was destroyed by Kansas State 31-7, now heading into the bye week before officially beginning conference play the following week on the road at Utah. Brennan addressed on Monday what he felt like went wrong and why he confident that things can be turned around during the bye week.

"There were so many details in that game, just small things that are fixable, that I think we can address and attack aggressively," he said. "We would be feeling a lot better if we had just handled some of those details a little bit better. I need to coach this team better and make sure we get those things airtight before we take the field again...I think we have great young people in that room, and I think that those are the ones that we're going to lean on, because we're going to need their best when the best is needed."

The Wildcats' best will certainly be needed against Utah. Due to the fact that it was scheduled before re-alignment, the drubbing against Kansas State will not count towards conference standings and Arizona will enter Big 12 play with a completely clean slate. After Utah, it's a relatively manageable schedule within the conference for the Wildcats, and if they can somehow pull off what would be an upset on the road against the Utes, it could completely reset the season and put Arizona on the fast track to the Big 12 championship game.

First up for Brent Brennan comes the challenge and opportunity of the bye week in order to fix the things that have gone wrong thus far.