What a difference a year makes for Arizona football under Brent Brennan

Last season Arizona State twisted the knife into Arizona.

This season, the Wildcats turned the tables on the Sun Devils.

When the clock finally hit all zeroes late Friday night in Tempe the scoreboard was more or less as it should have been. Arizona won the game by a score of 23-7 but the truth is the final score was hardly indicative of how much of a mismatch this was. The visitors dominated their opponent from the beginning, largely only being slowed by their own miscues.

Were the Sun Devils banged up? Absolutely, and it’s unfair to say the players they were missing going into the game and those they lost during it didn’t impact their ability to play competent football, at least offensively.

But do you care? I don’t.

ASU and their fans never cared much when they were beating beat up and lacking Arizona teams, and nor should they have. We can all wonder how every rivalry game would have been played had each roster been complete and firing on all cylinders, but this is football and that will rarely — if ever — be the case by the final week of the regular season.

The team that shows up and plays for 60 minutes is the one you’ve got to win with, and this season that was Arizona. It wasn’t necessarily pretty, but it was an impressive performance nonetheless.

To wit: Arizona possessed the ball for 40 minutes of game time and ran nearly twice as many plays as their opponent. The Cats won the turnover battle by four, picking off three passes and recovering two fumbles. They succeeded on 10 of their 20 third down attempts and both of their fourth down tries.

If not for the occasional missed block or dropped pass, a fumble after the play should have been blown dead or struggles with field goals, the final score would have reflected even more so the gap that was between the teams. Anyone who watched that game saw a blowout, even if the final score wasn’t similar to that of the last two years which were also outcomes that were never in doubt.

What’s funny is at least on paper, the Arizona team that took it to ASU was not necessarily a more talented group. Many of Arizona State’s backups were highly-rated transfers and guys who during their recent winning streak were being propped up and praised by their coaches, media and fans. The Devils still had a remote shot of playing in the Big 12 Title Game with a win and the betting line heading into the game had Arizona favored by just a little. Even so, there were plenty of “expert” predictions (and a couple from my colleagues here) that had the Territorial Cup trophy staying in Tempe.

So it’s not like Arizona won a game they should have, and yet from the very first snaps it was apparent that it was a game the Cats would win so long as they didn’t hurt themselves too much.

Fortunately what might have become this team’s greatest strength is why that didn’t happen. Over the course of the year this veteran group proved to be mature enough to handle adversity and confident enough to keep its poise when things weren’t going according to plan. Maybe it’s Red Line, but bad plays did not turn into bad series and bad series did not spiral into bad quarters, halves or games. If a field goal was missed, the defense would get a stop (or even the ball). When the offense needed to move the ball, it did. When it needed to score points, it got them.

That has been a theme most of the season, where Arizona was hardly perfect but consistently found ways to be good enough. And they did this without any surefire first or second-round NFL draft picks on the roster.

So take a bow, coaches, and enjoy these flowers you so richly deserve.

Would you have expected a sentence like that one year ago? How about the 600-plus words that preceded this short paragraph?

Arizona fans likely need no reminder to enjoy this while they can, because they know nothing is guaranteed to last. While it seems unlikely Brent Brennan will leave anytime soon, both of his coordinators, Seth Doege and Danny Gonzales, could soon find themselves on lists to fill some head coach vacancies. It’s one of the prices of success and we can only hope that yes, other schools continue to want them, and that Arizona will do all it can to keep them happy in Tucson.

The same is true for any players who might have wandering eyes or an opportunity to make more money and/or earn more snaps elsewhere.

Again, enjoy what you can, when you can.

But similar to how this season played out, there should be a renewed confidence that Arizona’s worst days are in the past. The way Brennan attacked last offseason with his coaching hires as well as player acquisition showed not only a willingness to make difficult choices, but an aptitude for making the right ones. No one saw the hires of Doege and Gonzales as moves that would bring about an offense and defense that were both ranked fourth in the Big 12, and few got up to protest when Arizona landed all of zero players on either of the 2025 Preseason All-Big 12 teams.

That so much was achieved when so little was expected is not only on brand for Arizona football, but something that should inspire confidence going forward. Progress is never a straight line and it’s possible the team will take some sort of a step back next season. Then again, Arizona football has shown a level of resiliency we didn’t know existed so maybe not. A season like this should only help with recruiting, and Tucson would seem like a pretty appealing destination for transfers and traditional recruits alike.

It’s not a bad place to be.

Over the last few weeks as more praise has been heaped upon him, Brennan has made sure to point out how aligned everyone is at Arizona. He did so again Friday night.

“I really think I’m fortunate to be surrounded by awesome people,” he said. “I think it starts with like, alignment with our administration, our president, our athletic director, all the people that are helping us build it, but just the coaches are fantastic.”

He pointed to alignment with his coordinators and how they are able to create good game plans and correct mistakes when they pop up.

“But I think that when you have a great alignment from top to bottom, and everybody is all in moving the same direction, you can do incredible things,” Brennan added. “And I think that’s what’s happening for our program right now.”

That could not have been said one year after Arizona lost to ASU 49-7 to finish up a miserable season. And if it is indeed true, then the success we’ve seen this season could become a regular thing.