Arizona Wildcats Head coach: Kevin Sumlin (5-7, second year) 2018 record and S&P+ ranking: 5-7 (58th) Projected 2019 record and S&P+ ranking: 6-6 (52nd) Five key points: Sumlin’s first season in Tucson was up and down: a listless start, then a 5-3 run, followed by a total defensive collapse and 0-2 finish. QB Khalil Tate is back, and when healthy he showed signs of mastering Noel Mazzone’s up-tempo offense. He and RB J.J. Taylor are still crazy-dangerous in the backfield. In linebacker Colin Schooler and CB Jace Whittaker, back from injury, UA boasts two of the best defensive play-makers in the Pac-12 South. Of course, they were done in defensively by a horrid pass rush, and there’s no real reason to think that will change in 2019. The schedule features early wins and late tests. UA needs to get off to a 4-1 or 5-0 start to feel good about bowl hopes.

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A year ago, I said, “if Chip Kelly’s UCLA isn’t the most fascinating team in the Pac-12, Arizona is.” Kevin Sumlin came to town with a track record for first-year success and inherited both a quarterback who was by far the most exciting player in the conference in 2017 and a defense that might have been the conference’s worst.

Granted, it probably says something about the conference that these two “fascinating” teams went a combined 8-16. But Arizona was indeed fascinating in 2018, and for not too many great reasons.

They began projected 32nd in S&P+, thanks to a mid-2017 hot streak and extreme returning production.

Two weeks in, they had plummeted to 72nd — hard to do, considering the significance of preseason projections early in the season — after a tight loss to BYU and a 45-18 humiliation at Houston.

They responded by treating bad Southern Utah and Oregon State teams as a good team would, winning by a combined 52 points and bouncing back to 48th in S&P+.

Star quarterback Khalil Tate injured his ankle, and it would impact his performance for the next month or so. Still, the Wildcats stabilized a bit — after a wild first four games, five of their last eight results were within a touchdown of S&P+ projection. They let Utah and Washington State get away from them, but they unexpectedly blew out Oregon. And by the season finale, they had rallied to 5-6 with a shot at bowl eligibility.

Against rival Arizona State, they led by 19 points, 40-21, heading into the fourth quarter. A series of miscues allowed ASU to score 20 straight points, but the Wildcats responded in the final minute. They got inside the Sun Devil 35 with plenty of time left, but Sumlin decided he was fine with a long field goal. After a couple of short rushes, Josh Pollack tried a 45-yard FG. He missed it wide right, and ASU bowled instead of UA.

The number of ups and downs made it hard to figure out where to set the bar for 2019.

Tate was still a thriller. In the Wildcats’ first two wins and last four games, he completed 60 percent of his passes at 16.7 yards per completion, threw 19 touchdowns to four interceptions, and averaged 8.1 yards per non-sack carry. Arizona went 4-2 in these games, and the two losses were not really on the offense — they scored a combined 68 points (but allowed 110).

Tate also really struggled in the first two games, and combining that with the month in which he was dealing with a wonky ankle, he completed 52 percent of his passes at 12.5 yards per completion, with four touchdowns to four interceptions. He also averaged just 3.9 yards per carry. UA went 1-5 with this Khalil.

Tate’s back, as is J.J. Taylor, one of the nation’s more underrated running backs. A 5’6 junior, he already has 2,542 career rushing yards. Only 21 backs have ever rushed for 5,000 yards, and he’ll have a chance. Taylor and Tate will be lining up behind a line that returns four starters.

More good things: linebacker Colin Schooler is back after producing 21.5 tackles for loss, 23 run stuffs, and six passes defensed. Arizona has one of the more exciting linebacking corps in the conference, and an experienced secondary gets more exciting with the return of active corner Jace Whittaker, who missed all but one series of last year with injury.

Less good: The receiving corps is starting over. Three players caught more than 20 passes last year, and they’re all gone. Backups Cedric Peterson and Stanley Berryhill III thrived in small samples, but they’ll be asked to take on much more responsibility.

The defensive line also has to replace its two leading tacklers. The run defense was dreadfully inefficient with them, and it’s not guaranteed to improve without them.

That’s a lot of good and a lot of bad, and the schedule features even more of both: the Wildcats are projected favorites in their first five games and projected underdogs in six of their last seven.

Related The 2018 advanced college football stats glossary

Offense

There were plenty of reasons to be either intrigued or concerned about the marriage between Mazzone and Tate. Mazzone had worked with both statues (Philip Rivers, Brock Osweiler) and more mobile QBs (Brett Hundley) through the years, and while the results had been solid at times, it was clear that Tate wasn’t going to be running as much as he had in 2017, when his ratio of pass attempts to rush attempts was about 1.4-to-1.

In 2018, that ratio was 5.3-to-1. The ankle injury limited Tate’s mobility, sure, but even in those first two bad games, he rushed just 14 times for 34 yards.

When a QB is working to change his instincts, you can almost see him thinking during a play. Tate was miserable early on.

He made progress late, though. It’s easy enough to write off strong performances against SUU and OSU as dominance of bad competition, but in his last four games he completed 60 percent of his passes and averaged 8.6 yards per non-sack carry (albeit over only five carries per game). UA averaged 39 points per game in that span, too.

Even when Tate was rushing less, if he was playing well, Taylor was probably thriving. In the six-game Good Tate sample, Taylor rushed 153 times for 955 yards (6.2 per carry). In the other six: 102 for 479 (4.7).

As a fan of awesome things, I hate that Tate isn’t running as much. Part of the reason to rein your QB in a bit is for him to avoid too much wear and tear, but Tate was still banged up for half the season, which was a lose-lose.

(If Tate gets hurt again this year, the race for No. 2 QB is more interesting this time around — it again features former head coach Rich Rodriguez’s son Rhett, but it also includes three former high-three-star prospects: redshirt freshmen Jamarye Joiner and Kevin Doyle and true freshman Grant Gunnell.)

Still, Mazzone maintained a lot of Rodriguez’s offensive identity — Arizona was first in FBS in solo tackles created (a decent measure of how much they were spreading defenses out) and 16th in adjusted pace, and they ran more frequently than the national average on both standard and passing downs.

Taylor and backups Gary Brightwell, Bam Smith, and Nathan Tilford should give Mazzone plenty of backfield options even if Tate is still leashed to the pocket, and if Tate is healthy enough to punish a wrong-footed defender once or twice a quarter, that could work out quite well.

Still, Mazzone likes a hint of balance. Continuity in the passing game is typically a huge driver of improvement or regression in Off. S&P+, but I’m curious if that applies here. While Shun Brown, Shawn Poindexter, and Tony Ellison did combine for 59 percent of Arizona’s targets last year (and while Poindexter was the only proven receiver taller than 5’11), last year’s backups really did post pretty good numbers when given the opportunity.

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Defense

While I wasn’t sure what to think about the Mazzone hire, I knew I didn’t like Sumlin’s decisions to retain Marcel Yates, with whom he’d worked at Texas A&M, as defensive coordinator. Rodriguez had hired Yates in 2016 to bring energy to the defense and recruiting, but UA had ranked 88th and 101st in Def. S&P+ in his first two seasons.

With far greater continuity and experience than before (despite the loss of Whittaker to injury), Yates did upgrade the Wildcats’ ranking to 74th. That’s something.

Arizona’s biggest remaining problem: closing the deal. The Wildcats ranked 32nd in stuff rate (run stops at or behind the line), and 57 percent of opponents’ third downs were third-and-7 or longer (10th most in FBS). But they allowed a 32 percent success rate on said third-and-longs (120th in FBS). And in a slightly different category — blitz downs (second-and-super-long or third-and-5 or more) — they were 121st in success rate, 125th in big-play rate, and 123rd in sack rate. Bad.

Until the blitz improves, all other concerns are secondary. Schooler is unbelievable against the run, but his 3.5 sacks shouldn’t have tied for the team lead (with end JB Brown).

The good news, as it were, is that the rush probably won’t get worse. Derek Boles and PJ Johnson are both gone up front, but while they combined for 20 run stuffs, they also had only 4.5 sacks. Everybody else is back, but if JUCO tackles Myles Tapusoa or Trevon Mason were able to provide a push up the middle in pass rush situations, or if sophomore edge rusher Jalen Harris were able to find an extra gear or two, that would be immensely helpful.

If there’s at least a little pressure, everything else looks decent. Schooler will anchor a good linebacking corps, and Brown, Wilborn, end Jalen Harris, and tackle Finton Connolly all demonstrated decent run-stuffing ability.

I like the secondary to improve a good amount. Corner Lorenzo Burns was asked to cover a lot of really good receivers in Whittaker’s absence and finished the year with two TFLs and 11 breakups. With Whittaker back, he could get easier matchups. And while Jerrius Wallace is solid in big-play prevention, fellow safeties Scottie Young Jr. and Tristan Cooper are active (combined: four TFLs, three INTs, nine breakups, five run stuffs).

There’s an intriguing set of sophomores in the back, too, in safeties Xavier Bell and Christian Young and corner McKenzie Barnes.

Special Teams

Arizona was mostly forgettable in special teams, but that’s not always bad. The Wildcats were strong on kickoffs and ranked between 63rd and 74th in four of five efficiency categories. Kickoffs guy Lucas Havrisik was all over the place as a place-kicker — he missed two PATs but made three longer field goals, too — and he’s the only returning leg. J.J. Taylor’s got some upside in the return game.

2019 outlook

Despite an awkward transition and Tate playing on only one good leg for half the year, Arizona still ranked 43rd in Off. S&P+ and improved defensively. There were reasons to be encouraged by how the Wildcats played late in the year, at least until the fourth quarter against ASU.

Because of returning production, UA is projected to improve again defensively, this time to 55th. An offensive rebound will depend on both Tate’s health and how well intriguing young receivers play in bigger roles.

And yeah, the schedule’s weird. The Wildcats are projected favorites in each of their first five games, but they play five teams projected 32nd or better in their last seven. Bowl hopes could hinge on early home games against Texas Tech and UCLA (and I really wouldn’t recommend losing at Hawaii in Week 0).

Team preview stats

All 2019 preview data to date.