Arizona football spring game: Offense dominates as expected

It was mostly expected, but the offense performed much better than the defense in Saturday's Arizona Spring Game.

The game gave most fans their first look at all the new faces on offense, and those faces certainly did not disappoint.

Early in the game, Austin Hill got destroyed on a ball that the quarterback left him out to dry on.

"That shouldn't have happened," Rich Rodriguez said afterwards.  "We told our guys it was live, but we didn't want any blow-up shots."

Final stats

Overall, the two most impressive quarterbacks for me were Connor Brewer and Jesse Scroggins.  Scroggins was the first QB out there during live action, but was facing the second-team defense.  He made some plays with his legs, and Terris Jones-Grigsby finished that off with a TD, and the offense never looked back.  Scroggins was also the only quarterback to throw an interception on the day.

Brewer connected on a touchdown pass with Cayleb Jones, giving us a "Hook 'em" moment.

All in all, it's tough to say which one of the QBs looked best and which didn't based solely on the defense that each was faced with.  A lot of times, the top linebackers would be in, but some of the newer guys at defensive line and in the secondary were also playing and vice versa. That made it tough to get a read.

For me, this race for the starting spot is down to Brewer and Scroggins, and that seemed to be how it was treated.  Scroggins was the first one out on the field for warmups before the game, which of course is a good sign.  And he wanted to be part of the long throw contest, while Brewer did not partake.

Jerrard Randall dominated that long throw contest, throwing the ball about 77 yards without a whole lot of effort, and a nice spiral.  Scroggins got it to that distance, but threw a duck.

At running back, Jones-Grigsby probably has the advantage there until Jared Baker is healthy.  Pierre Cormier and Zach Green didn't really do anything to catch your eye.

Come fall though, I completely expect to see DaVonte' Neal and Samajie Grant getting touches out of the backfield.  Grant got one handoff today, and coach Rodriguez said afterwards that Neal will start learning the running back position in the fall after learning the slot and wideout positions this spring.

The defense was certainly not impressive, missing tackles and allowing receivers to get wide open.  There may be a lot of games next year that get up into the 40s from both teams.

There's also a group of freshman coming in that weren't here in the spring that RichRod expects to be contributors on that side of the ball, including high school teammates Jamardre Cobb and Marquis Ware.

Stay excited about that offense though.  Whoever's throwing the ball will have plenty of options to get it too on a weekly basis.