Arizona football: Rich Rodriguez reflects on Khalil Tate’s performance, decision to burn redshirt

Rodriguez said Tate’s performance was a “pleasant surprise”

There was no discussion about redshirting between Rich Rodriguez and Khalil Tate before the Arizona Wildcats’ head coach subbed in the freshman quarterback against UCLA.

In fact, there never has been.

“I didn’t have any discussion.” Rodriguez said Monday at his weekly press conference. “Be ready to play. I tell all of our freshmen, I’m not going to talk to you about being redshirted, just be ready to play.”

Ideally Tate would have been able to redshirt, according to Rodriguez, but given that he’s been practicing with the second team instead of the scout team, Rodriguez said the freshman should’ve known he was going to be used if needed.

And after starting quarterback Brandon Dawkins went down with a rib injury in the first half against UCLA, that’s exactly what happened.

“You have to prepare for that ahead of time,” Rodriguez said. “Zach [Werlinger]’s the next guy, but Khalil’s a little bit more explosive. When Anu (Solomon) got hurt a few weeks ago, Brandon was taking all the reps with the ones; we take an equal number of reps with the twos, and Zach and Khalil split those. So with that in my mind, we thought okay if we have to play him we’ll burn the redshirt and get him ready to play. We were just hoping that we didn’t have to. But we did and we’ll move on.”

The 17-year-old quarterback was thrown into the fire, but turned out to be a “pleasant surprise”, throwing for two touchdowns, passing for 72 yards on nine attempts, and rushing for 79 yards in Arizona’s 45-24 loss to the Bruins.

Rodriguez said Tate played better than he practices.

“I don’t want to say a pleasant surprise because... I always say if you want to find a guy that’s going to be a good player in college, find a guy that’s a really good player in high school,” Rodriguez said. “And he was a really good player in high school.”

“But he was more composed in the game than he was in practice so that was really pleasant. Sometimes guys get into their first action and the lights are too bright or something, but he was spot on. Even when he made a wrong read or something, he knew right away. So that part of it was very encouraging.”

While Rodriguez joked that there are only two plays when Tate’s at quarterback — an “inside run and a pass” — he said Tate’s performance would have been different had he not arrived at Arizona a semester early.

“Oh without question — I don’t think he could have done anything if hadn’t [arrived] early.” Rodriguez said. “That certainly played a big part in it.”

And now that Tate’s redshirt has been burned, questions about Tate’s role moving forward have been asked, and Rodriguez said he’ll have some sort of role.

“We never just play a guy to play a guy even at quarterback,” he said. “But it’s a long season and there are a lot of games left and he’s certainly going to play a big role for us.”

In a perfect world, Tate would’ve sat out this season and collected another year of eligibility, but it’s not a perfect world and it serves as a lesson for incoming freshmen:

Be ready to play.

“He would have been perfect, a 17-year old kid fresh out of high school [to redshirt],” Rodriguez said. “But if you’re good enough to win with, and we need you to win, you’re going to play. That’s what I tell all of them when we’re recruiting.”

“We don’t ever guarantee a guy that he’s going to start, because that’s not fair to them or the guys on the team. We also don’t recruit guys to be backups. Anybody we recruit, we recruit with the expectation of him helping the team win as soon as he gets here. Inevitably, half the freshman or more are not ready physically or mentally ready to play at the highest level yet. But some are, and some are forced to grow up in a hurry.”

---

You can follow Ryan Kelapire on Twitter at @RKelapireUA

from Arizona Desert Swarm - All Posts http://ift.tt/2dGfgNW
via IFTTT