Tag: Jedd Fisch

5 Arizona Wildcats to know ahead of the Valero Alamo Bowl

Taking a look at five Arizona Wildcats to know as Oklahoma prepares for the Valero Alamo Bowl.

Oklahoma’s final game of the 2023 season will see them return to San Antonio for the second time in three years. The last time the Sooners were there, they were coached by legendary Oklahoma coach [autotag]Bob Stoops[/autotag]. Brent Venables will wrap up his second campaign as the head man at Oklahoma, returning to San Antonio to take on the Arizona Wildcats, led by head coach Jedd Fisch.

This season has been a much better experience than his inaugural one, and Venables will look for his first bowl win as a head coach. To get that, the Sooners will have to take down a tough Arizona team that finished 9-3 and third in an ultra-competitive Pac-12. Fisch has a hungry team that certainly is talented, with 13 players receiving all-conference honors.

Oklahoma would be wise to check their egos at the door and remain humble. Arizona won’t roll over, and if the Sooners approach this game taking the Wildcats lightly, they may get run off the field.

Arizona has a surplus of impact upperclassmen coupled with Pac-12 Freshman of the Year quarterback Noah Fifita.

Let’s look at Arizona and break down some key Wildcats ahead of Thursday’s Alamo Bowl.

Power ranking 7 candidates who are reportedly in the mix for Michigan State football’s coaching job

Ranking 7 candidates who are reportedly in the mix for MSU’s coaching job:

It has been a long road for the Michigan State fan base, but that road is finally coming to an end. MSU has reportedly been conducting interviews with candidates that they have vetted over the last two months and are looking to zero in on their next leader.

There have been some leaks on guys who have interviewed for the job, and some sources have shared some names with Spartans Wire, giving us a good idea who is in the mix to take over the Spartans football program.

Let’s take a look at where Spartans Wire ranks the candidates that are reportedly in the mix for MSU’s job:

Aggies Hot Board 2.0: Five Texas A&M head coach candidates to replace Jimbo Fisher

Here are five new head coaching candidates to take over at Texas A&M after the recent firing of now-former head coach Jimbo Fisher.

Texas A&M fired head coach Jimbo Fisher on Nov. 12. Fisher finished 45-25 record, including a dismal 27-21 SEC record, in slightly less than six full seasons. In a shock to many, TexAgs’ Billy Liucci reported the move last Sunday, three days after the Board of Regents met.

Elijah Robinson is off to a good start in the interim role thanks to the Aggies’ 38-10 win over Abilene Christian on Saturday afternoon. The long-time veteran assistant received the game ball after the win in the last home game of the season. Senior wide receiver Ainias Smith noted:

“I’m so proud of Coach E, so happy for him, so glad that he’s getting the things that he’s getting. I’m so glad that we got the win for him.”

“He has been doing a real good job, an amazing job. … The seniors got to present him with the game ball today. That was cool.”

While Robinson remains a candidate for the position, Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork is reportedly interviewing many candidates. Only a few names, including UTSA head coach Jeff Traylor, have been released to the public.

Heading the list of more realistic options, here are five Texas A&M head coach candidates to replace Fisher.

Report: 4 candidates have moved on in Michigan State football’s coaching search

According to a report, 4 candidates have moved on in Michigan State’s coaching search

Michigan State Athletic Director Alan Haller is getting into the nitty gritty of Michigan State’s coaching search, with interviews commencing and a decision likely coming in the next two weeks.

As the process goes, Haller is doing initial, first round interviews right now and they best of that bunch will move on to in-person second round interviews.

Michigan State’s Rivals website, Spartans Illustrated, is now reporting four candidates that have moved on in the interview process:

Of note, there could be additional candidates that are not on this list that could move on:

Arizona’s Jedd Fisch should be a top candidate for Coach of the Year

The Wildcats went 1-16 across the 2020 and 2021 seasons. Now, they’re bowling for the first time since 2017 after three straight ranked wins.

20 months ago, Arizona was a broken program.

The Wildcats went bowling eight times in 10 seasons from 2008-2017, including a 10-win season in 2014 that saw them reach the top 10 in the College Football Playoff rankings.

They hired Kevin Sumlin to be the new head coach ahead of the 2018 season, and the slow decay began. They went 5-7 in 2018, then 4-8 in 2019, the first time the program missed back-to-back bowl games since 2006-07.

Rock bottom came afterward. Arizona was winless in five games during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, the last with Sumlin at the helm. They brought in current coach Jedd Fisch, but he could only manage a 1-11 record in 2021. From Oct. 5, 2019, to Sept. 3, 2022, the Arizona Wildcats lost 23 of their 24 games.

The Wildcats looked to be headed toward disaster again in 2022, starting the season 3-6. On Nov. 12, however, they stunned a top-10 UCLA team on the road with a 34-28 victory.

They didn’t win out to become bowl-eligible that season, but the victory over the Bruins indicated a changing tide. It turned into a tsunami in 2023.

Through nine games this season, Arizona is 6-3, already having qualified for a bowl game for the first time since 2017. The Wildcats won three of their first four games before they lost to playoff contender Washington by 7 points and reigning Heisman winner Caleb Williams and USC by 2 points. Since the two heartbreaking losses, Arizona has rattled off three consecutive victories over ranked teams for the first time in program history. They knocked off Washington State on the road before playing spoiler against Oregon State and UCLA again in front of their home crowd.

Since that fateful UCLA game a season ago, Fisch’s squad has played six ranked opponents in 12 games. They’re 4-2 against top-25 teams. A program that won a single game over a 35-month period now has a winning record against ranked teams in the past year.

Arizona also reached six wins in early November without their preseason starting quarterback. Junior Jayden de Laura, who threw for 3,685 yards and 25 touchdowns a season ago, was lost to an ankle injury after just four games.

In stepped Noah Fifita, who has been excellent. The freshman has made the job his own, with 1,521 yards, 14 touchdowns, and four interceptions in his five starts. His QBR of 82.4 is the 11th-best mark in the country.

Even beyond Fifita, the Wildcats are within the top 50 in the FBS in both scoring offense and defense. Arizona is one of just 14 Power 5 programs averaging 30 points per game or more on offense while allowing fewer than 20 points per game on defense.

The hardest job in college football is turning around a desolate program. Jedd Fisch took from 1-11 to No. 21 in the CFP rankings in just two years. If that’s not one of the three best coaching jobs in college football this season, I don’t know what is.

Power ranking 10 candidates for Michigan State football’s head coaching job: Version 2.0

Power ranking 10 candidates for Michigan State football’s head coaching job: Version 2.0

November is here and Michigan State’s coaching search is about to start ramping up in a big way.

In this series, we have ranked the potential candidates that could be in the running to take over Michigan State’s job. The list will be capped at ten names along with a few other honorable mentions, and will fluctuate based on how coaches are performing this season along with any rumored or confirmed interest from the Spartans.

Check out where we see the rankings at heading into the final month of the college football season:

Arizona, Jedd Fisch lost by failing to go for two against USC

Arizona should have gone for two. The Wildcats also shouldn’t have thrown long when they were mashing USC’s front. They blew it.

That was one horribly-coached football game on Saturday night in the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Lincoln Riley and Alex Grinch turned in a very poor performance. USC was soft and disorganized and fundamentally unprepared. Arizona had a different problem. The Wildcats were ready to play, and they took the fight to USC for most of the night, but they came undone with untimely penalties and some very bad situational decisions from coach Jedd Fisch.

Game management was a very big problem for a number of coaches on Saturday in college football. Mario Cristobal of Miami did not take a knee, and his Hurricanes fumbled away a win over Georgia Tech. Riley and Fisch both flailed and floundered in the USC-Arizona game, but ultimately, Arizona’s situational coaching was a little bit worse.

Let’s go through the many missteps of the two coaches, with Arizona giving USC that last push over the finish line on a night which was hugely entertaining for neutral fans but extremely annoying for USC and Arizona fans:

Pac-12 Preview: Arizona Wildcats look to find footing in third year under Jedd Fisch

Can Arizona crawl out of the Pac-12’s middle class in 2023? We break it all down in our complete season preview.

As June starts to roll into July, and July eventually leads us to the start of fall camps at the beginning of August, the 2023 college football season will be here before we know it. What a season it projects to be in the Pac-12 Conference, as well. With a handful of College Football Playoff contenders, and a group of Heisman Trophy candidates leading their prospective teams, we could be set up for one of the best football seasons out west that we’ve seen in decades. To help get us prepared, we at Ducks Wire wanted to go through each team in the conference and give a comprehensive breakdown of each school, breaking down their 2023 outlook. Welcome to our Pac-12 Previews. New editions will be published every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday leading up to the start of fall camp. 

It’s not a great year to be a middling Pac-12 team that likely needs to reach bowl eligibility in order to avoid a coaching change in 2023.

Unfortunately for Jedd Fisch and the Arizona Wildcats, that seems to be the situation going into this new season. Things have not gone swimmingly over the past decade in Tucson, and while there have been a few signs of life — offensively, at least — in the past year, that needs to start resulting in wins, and postseason appearances for a school that reached the Pac-12 Championship Game less than a decade ago.

The talent is there, offensively. Jayden de Laura is an extremely capable quarterback with elite weapons in WR Jacob Cowing and WR Tetairoa McMillan at his disposal. RB Michael Wiley is a proven veteran out west, and TE Tanner McLachlan made our list of potential breakout players in 2023.

Defensively is where the improvement needs to be made. Although they lost a couple of their top secondary players in Christian Roland-Wallace and Christan Young, the Wildcats utilized the transfer portal to add guys like LB Justin Flowe and DE Taylor Upshaw to the roster. Will that be enough to get the job done?

We’ll see, but it is certainly an uphill battle for the Wildcats. Here is our full 2023 season preview for Arizona.

Arizona football is unique among transfer portal leaders; Lincoln Riley paid attention

Arizona stands out from the other national CFB leaders in transfer portal entrants. It’s fascinating to see this happen. Lincoln Riley took advantage at #USC.

When Lincoln Riley took over as USC head football coach, it was clear that a lot of transfers out of the program were going to occur. The roster needed to be turned over. Riley needed to bring in players he wanted, which naturally meant encouraging a lot of the Clay Helton holdovers to leave and seek a new place to play college football. When a new coach comes in and cleans house, or when a bad situation gets worse, it is logical to expect a lot of transfer portal turnover and a lot of outbound traffic to other schools.

Conversely, when a school’s fortunes and results improve — when a situation clearly becomes better — one is not conditioned to expect a lot of outbound transfers. At the very least, if a new coach makes some improvements at a school but still sees the need to do even better, a housecleaning might occur after Year 1.

Year 2? Not as likely.

Yet, that’s what seems to be happening at the University of Arizona.

Despite Arizona’s four-win improvement from coach Jedd Fisch’s first season in 2021 to its second season in 2022, lots of players are leaving Tucson.

Clearly in the cases of Dorian Singer and Christian Roland-Wallace, we can safely say that Arizona lost players it wanted to keep. That was not a Jedd Fisch housecleaning. Yet, of the 20 Arizona players who entered the transfer portal, how many of them were encouraged to leave, and how many simply wanted something else?

You can see that Arizona is surrounded by programs which did not have good 2022 seasons: A&M, Florida, Arkansas, and Miami all had very disappointing seasons this year. None of them improved from 2021. Arizona did, and the Wildcats — from one win to five — improved substantially. Yet, the U of A endured transfer losses on par with those four other underperforming schools.

This isn’t a criticism of Fisch. We’re merely noting how one transfer portal leader (Arizona) is different from the other four schools in the top five.

Lincoln Riley was certainly paying attention at USC.

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Former Patriots QB coach believes Cam Newton’s best scenario is in New England

“For Cam, the best opportunity for him would be to continue to be in that situation.”

The quarterback situation for the New England Patriots this offseason has been wild and unpredictable.

There’s different parties who believe the Patriots’ 2021 quarterback signal-caller could come via trade, free agency the NFL draft or even internally. All of them appear to be options, but none of these options seem to hold any weight over the other. Jimmy Garoppolo, Marcus Mariota, Mac Jones and Cam Newton are some of the names who pop up most often.

Newton, 31, would make a lot of sense because of his institutional knowledge and his unfair assessment in 2020. He was given very little talent and time to work with, while stilling dragging the team to a 7-8 record in the games he played in.

Former Patriots quarterback coach Jedd Fisch, who spent the 2020 season with Newton, believes the best scenario for him is in Foxborough, according Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer.

While asked if he would return to the Patriots during Brandon Marshall’s ‘I AM ATHLETE’ podcast, Newton emphatically said yes.

“Yes,” Newton said. “Hell yes.”

He even had his compliments for Bill Belichick.

“I think Bill Belichick is the most misunderstood person in all of sports,” Newton said. “He’s dope as shit. He is a cool dude.”

With a revamped offensive line, including new addition Trent Brown, the Patriots will be in much better shape this season and it’ll allow for Newton to showcase his abilities at a much higher level if re-signed.

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