Arizona's Josh Miller Leading Charge in Tight End Room
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Week four of spring football practice is fully underway, and the Arizona Wildcats are looking sharper than ever, practicing under the hot desert sun, bonding as a team, and gearing up for the upcoming summer training camp.
Last season, Arizona benefited greatly from a potent passing attack that saw Noah Fifita score 29 touchdowns through the air. 11 Wildcats caught at least one touchdown, displaying the diverse group of receivers that Fifita had to work with.
Arizona strikes first ⚡️
— Big 12 Conference (@Big12Conference) November 8, 2025
Noah Fifita connects with Sam Olson for a 16-yard touchdown.#Big12FB | 📺 ESPN2 pic.twitter.com/FFs5mC5Pc6
A key part of the receiving group was the tight ends, who, head coach Brent Brennan said are, "Going to be really interesting." He added, "There's a couple new guys there. There's a couple young guys there. I think that's going to be a lot of fun to watch."
Leading the charge in the tight end room is Josh Miller, who is headed into his second season as the tight ends coach and has lofty goals for his group of hungry competitors. Miller made the move to Arizona after one year with the Marshall Thundering Herd and was a colleague of offensive coordinator Seth Doege.
Before that, he was an offensive analyst for Purdue in 2023 and an offensive coordinator for Midwestern State in 2022. Miller brings a lot of experience, not just as a tight ends coach, but across the offense overall.
Tyler Powell Coming Back Stronger
Miller values long, lengthy tight ends who can fit in well to the passing game and make quick blocks in the run, which is much needed in Doege's speedy offensive scheme. Tyler Powell fit that description and was the starter at the beginning of the season.
Powell suffered a season-ending injury on the first play against Hawaii in week one, leaving the Wildcats to go with Sam Olson and Cameron Barmore. As much of a drawback as Powell's injury was, Olson and Barmore were exceptional for the remaining 12 games.
"Obviously, a very unfortunate situation with TP," Miller said. "He's done a great job in his recovery. He's well on pace. He's doing a little bit of functional movement as you see out there on the field... Obviously, with TP, we lost the girth and size to really be that butt kicker at the line of scrimmage that we were hoping he would be. What he hasn't gotten a chance to showcase as much yet is that he's got some real vertical juice, and we missed that a little bit."
Powell hasn't participated in spring practice, but is going to be back in the full swing of things when summer practice rolls around in May.
Arizona Adds Multiple Tight Ends Out of the Portal
The Wildcats lost Olson, Barmore, and Keyan Burnett this offseason, prompting Arizona to hit the transfer portal in search of replacements. Olson, a senior who transferred from San Jose State, performed in Arizona's Pro Day in hopes of scouts taking notice of him.
Burnett opted to transfer and is currently at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, after a long season in which he battled through a lingering hamstring injury.
Recruiting players out of the portal was "Quite tiresome" and felt a lot like "Rapid fire speed dating" to Miller, but once the process was over, he got the guys he had been looking for.
Miller added, "I think that the organization, and specifically the recruiting department, did a great job of the evaluation of guys. And I think through that process, you got to be really honest with yourself of what you can budget and what's realistically in your ballpark. You got to evaluate all guys... I felt like I've been able to view the whole board so I could adequately critique everybody."
Arizona Tight Ends Have Plenty of Length And Size
Through that process, Miller found Shane King, Arthur Ban, and Cole Rusk, three tight ends who fit the mold of what Miller is looking for. King is a redshirt freshman who transferred over from Southern Miss. Ban is a redshirt sophomore who previously played at San Diego State and Rusk a redshirt senior out of Illinois.
Miller wants a certain type of tight end that fits Arizona's high-caliber offense and prioritizes the pass to gash the defense. All of them are above 6-foot-2 and weigh more than 230 pounds.
"All of them are 6'4 plus," Miller said. "Shane and Arthur have done a great job within their development of adding 10 to 15 pounds plus. Shane's up to 240, Art's up to 245. With both of those guys, there's a little bit of an adjustment period of understanding how they're moving and the dynamic ability of how much more I have to drop my hips to have a base on contact with all the other weight. But the best thing that they did is they got it on now..."
"Although Illinois didn't ask Cole to do some of the things that we've asked him to do, he showed me the ability that he can run counter, he can use divide zone, he's able to drop his hips to roll it through. And so that's why I always err on the side of athleticism because if you do some of those certain functional movement things, you have the ability to do other things specifically in the run game even though he may not have been asked to."
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Nathaniel Martinez and a set of shoulder pads at 7 years old. He later graduated from Pima Community College in 2023, where he began writing for the Pima Post. He is working to achieve a Bachelor’s in Mass Communication and Media Studies.