The Pac-12 is returning to action this fall and Friday both athletic director Dave Heeke and Arizona head coach Kevin Sumlin took some time to chat with the media, virtually, about the decision that was made by the conference's CEO group to move ahead with a fall season for football plus men's and women's basketball. Here's a rundown of the most notable topics that were addressed by Sumlin during his time to chat with the media.
▶ Arizona is not jumping quickly into full practices despite the league allowing teams to begin in earnest as soon as the decision made Thursday afternoon. Instead, Arizona will wait until next week to begin its preparations for the season with a team meeting set for Sunday in addition to a meeting between Sumlin and the families of players in the program set for this weekend as well. It is at that point that the plan for the coming weeks will be laid out and the team will move ahead with its prep for the season though the Wildcats are planning to begin with preparations for the season starting Monday.
Among the discussions that will take place will be conversations with players who have been on the fence about playing in the upcoming season until an official plan was known. Now that Sumlin and the staff know the team will be playing this fall they will speak with the players and families of those players to determine if they will indeed take the field this fall.
▶ So far the team has been on the field for about a month, Sumlin said, and it will move gradually into the next phase of the preparations. The UA coach said the team will be easing into its preseason work with the team utilizing three workouts per week over the last month. Once the NCAA cleared teams to move into 12-hour work weeks last month the team began working in helmets and "spider pads" plus the team could utilize sleds and tackling dummies in that time. The earlier part of the summer limited teams to eight hours of work per week with limited field time without much actual football equipment. The upcoming week will feature four workouts before the team moves to five the following week. After that is when the team will move into its typical practice pattern, which will essentially be a mirror image of what the team would have done in a normal August training camp. That will give the team three weeks of practice before game week.
Both Sumlin and Heeke mentioned that six weeks is what the rest of the league has decided will be most safe and they believe that to be the case as well. Sumlin said the plan to slowly "ramp up" workouts and training the next couple weeks is being done to help the team avoid "soft tissue" injuries that have swept across the NFL and some college teams up to this point in the season. Expect UA to be cautious in the next several weeks when it comes to its level of intensity with its workouts.
▶ Sumlin was asked how much the team is going to be set back because of its lack of prep time on the defensive side of the ball considering the Wildcats have an entirely new staff there. He said that even being able to get in four practices in the spring is an advantage since some teams didn't have any spring practices before shutting down because of the coronavirus pandemic. He did admit that it will be a challenge for new coordinator Paul Rhoads, but is confident the team will be able to work through it in the coming weeks and be ready in time for the season. He also believes being able to have so many players on campus early in the summer plus how his staff handled the summer months is going to be important to having success defensively as well.
"The key is how we've handled the last couple months," Sumlin said. "... How we've handled Zoom meetings, schematically. How we've been on the field with our guys to teach technique. So, you can say, 'yeah, that's our situation,' but guess what? There's a lot of other programs in this league that have new head coaches, have new staffs and have not even been on the field with their players. It's all on how you look at it."
▶ On that front, he said senior linebacker Anthony Pandy is someone who has done a "great job" to get ready for the season up to this point and could play "inside or outside" according to Sumlin. Pandy is the lone veteran scholarship inside linebacker on the roster and the staff has taken a liking to what he can bring to the table this season. Arizona is going to rely on him heavily from the sounds of it. He says the holes on the team right now are obvious based on who the Wildcats no longer have on the roster and the linebacker is certainly one spot the team will need to have young players step up this season.
"We've had some transfers, but we have some young guys that have come in here," he said. "Obviously, we have a new defensive staff and some guys to work with. We've got some good young players who could come in here and some veteran guys that have done some great work. ... We've gotta find the depth and the flexibility with maybe some younger players, particularly up front on defense.
"Some of the issues we had with our offensive line last year have been solved just because they were first-year players, first-year starters and now they've got some depth. That's where we're gonna be. We've gotta look where we are defensively up front, get that solidified, with what that two-deep looks like. On the perimeter, offensively, what our receiving corps looks like because at running back we've got a lot of talented guys and I think our offensive line, although still young, is experienced because of last year."
▶ As for those departed players, there were different circumstances for each but Sumlin said Colin and Brenden Schooler made it clear that they wanted to play this fall and didn't see the opportunity to do so at Arizona so they left the program. He added that he had conversations with Tony Fields II about staying as well, but all three players want to have a chance to get drafted and felt it would be best at another school.
"They were intent on going somewhere to play this fall," Sumlin said. "They didn't have the information that they have today, which is unfortunate, but they made it clear to me that they wanted to play this fall and then have an opportunity to play at the next level next year. So, their decision was based on the fact that the information they had at that time was that that opportunity was not going to be available to them here in our league. We had conversations about it ... there's a lot of work by both sides to split up. Each situation is different, but those conversations were had."
▶ Sumlin is hopeful that the team will learn what its schedule will look like as soon as this weekend but that could be early next week as well. He has essentially conceded that whatever he prefers for the Wildcats' schedule this season is out of his hands at this stage.
"There's only so many people you can play, right?" he said. "That's helped us from a preparation standpoint. ... In a one-off year with things like this you can't be concerned about that. You can't say, 'here's what I'd like to see. What I like to see, that ship has sailed."
