What Doege, Gonzales Said About Improvements for Next Game
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After the Arizona Wildcats took their first loss to the Iowa State Cyclones in Ames last Saturday, they are now turning their heads towards a new week and a new matchup against the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
In that 39-14 loss, the Arizona Offense gained 360 yards of total offense, saw 12 receivers make at least one catch, and had no penalties. Four costly turnovers, bad execution on some plays, and just three trips to the red zone led to defeat.
On the defensive side of the ball, the Wildcats gave up a season high 399 total yards, an average of 19.2 yards on passing plays, and saw the Cyclones have six successful redzone trips out of seven.
Seth Doege and Danny Gonzales talked with the media about what went wrong for their respective units and what they will try to improve ahead of this upcoming Saturday's game.
Here is a collection of five interesting comments they made in their conferences.
Doege on Fifita's struggles and confidence that he will improve
"By no means will I ever sit here and tell you Noah Fifita was the reason we lost that game, but he can play better and he knows that. And so I I have full confidence in him. We're going to get that right. But yes, on some of the throws that he had behind, I felt like he was just late and it had to do with his feet and just trusting the rhythm of the play. He also threw some really, really, really good balls that I felt like we dropped that were a critical place too."
Gonzales on Doug Meacham and what to expect on Saturday
"What he's doing is very dynamic, especially in the Baylor game. I mean, you got Jackson, number 18, who was a quarterback at out of high school and then played quarterback at TCU. I mean, he can roll out. They'll do some sprint out roll out stuff and they'll throw to I mean, it's very innovative. It's very creative. They did some double pass. They did some reverses and all those things. Give him a ton of credit because those kids are playing really hard. Now, I think what you really want to give credit to is the ones that are playing, and you haven't seen a mass exodus into the portal from Oklahoma State, which those guys have played four games."
Doege on third down struggles
"If you want to be really, really good on third down, then you're going to have to be extremely detailed in what you do. And in those money downs, um our best players got to show up, too. I felt like the third and two, third and three that we threw to Chris Hunter was the right call. They played exactly what I thought they were going to play. We hit him right in the face mask and he makes that play nine times out of 10. Just for whatever reason he was kind of lazy with putting the ball in his chest and it got away from him."
Gonzales on the linebacker rotation
"We've got five linebackers that can play. Can they play every down? No, because we put 12 and 13 personnel in there, they probably get outpower us. But that was 11 personnel. We got a sack out of it. We can do some things athletically with those guys and we've got the ability. If you have smart football players that conceptually can do things, you can do a bunch of packages and you don't have to call things differently. And we've been able to manufacture that. They've done a great job with substitution. They've done a great job with understanding conceptually what the calls are."
Doege on making sure Fifita and receivers don't overthink things
"There's a fine line, because you don't want to you don't want to handcuff a really special player. But the details that I see are just fundamentals. So, we're still allowing these guys to be themselves. I'm still allowing Kris Hutson to be himself. I'm still allowing Chris Hunter to be himself. But the details that matter, putting the ball on your body in a critical situation like that, I mean, I don't think that'll ever handcuff him. I just got to demand that from him every single day."
Tell us your thoughts on how you see the game against Oklahoma State playing out and whether or not the offense and defense will look improved. Just click the link to find our X account.
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.