What Jedd Fisch, Kyon Barrs and Jalen John said after Arizona’s shutout loss at Colorado

The Arizona Wildcats were blown out 34-0 at Colorado Saturday, the program’s 18th consecutive loss and its first shutout defeat since 2012.

Here’s what head coach Jedd Fisch, defensive lineman Kyon Barrs and running back Jalen John said after the game.

Fisch on his overall takeaways from the loss: “Okay, very tough game for us today need to play better need to coach better really need to improve in every single area. We need to really go back halftime of the season, great opportunity, as I said, to our team. When you’re at halftime, I’ve never been a part of the game played, coach, whatever it might be that at halftime, you don’t see the score 0-0. And that’s our mentality that we’ve got halftime, the first half didn’t go the way we wanted, and now we got the second half to go out and have a great second half of the season, or the best second half of the season we can have. The game didn’t go the way we thought. First half of the game kind of did, it was six nothing we had the ball first and goal on less than one yard line. We had four plays within the two, didn’t get in the end zone and that was very, very critical to, to our game to our half. Ended up being about two and a half minutes left, stopped them and wound up coming into halftime six nothing game, and then had a block punt for a touchdown had an interception where we lost Gunner (Cruz).”

Fisch on Gunner Cruz’s injury: “Gunner’s thumb, not a good situation, it doesn’t sound like. So, would not expect much. I don’t think we can get Gunner back this year. So, seems like that will be an injury that will require some more work, we’ll know for sure tomorrow but it’s not one that he’ll be able to play this season or at least I don’t think so at this point.”

Fisch on when Cruz got hurt: “It was on the interception for a touchdown. It was when he went to throw it to the tight end he hit a helmet. As he was throwing the ball kind of fluttered got intercepted and he tore a ligament I believe we’ll see.”

Fisch on Cruz’s play pre-injury: “Yeah, I think that we’re in the middle of growing pains playing with young quarterbacks that have not had a lot of playing experience. And I think that’s, unfortunately, where we are at. But I also believe it’s fortunate for where we can go. So you give guys opportunities to grow and develop, and you see how they can get there. You know there were some plays I think he started out, you know, hitting a bunch of yard balls behind the line of scrimmage at the line of scrimmage. We had some opportunities to hit some bigger plays we didn’t hit them. But, you know he’s got to learn from that, Will’s gonna have to learn from that. And that’s where we’re at as a team.”

Fisch on Will Plummer taking over as starting quarterback: “Will’s gonna be our guy, we’re gonna ride with Will. Will is our quarterback and he did a nice job in the second half. Unfortunately, you know we (got) into the red area a couple of times, didn’t score, so that’ll be the story and that’ll be the situation and we’ve got to get better at that and it comes down to everything. And we’ll evaluate everything.”

Fisch on Plummer’s performance Saturday: “I think he did fine. You know, I mean, I’d like to hit the deep ball to you know Tayvian, I’d like to hit the deep ball to Boobie. I’d like to, you know, hit Stanley on a dig route and all those things right, we’d all like to see that happen. But, you know in terms you’re also jumping into a game, it’s the fourth quarter, you’re down a bunch of points, you kind of have some adrenaline and you overthrow something, you don’t necessarily know exactly the speed and the tempo. But, he handled the plays well. I think we had one false start with him in. We had no delay games we didn’t have any wasted timeouts, he was able to get it in and out of the huddle, those are all important.”

Fisch on the feeling in the locker room: “You know the guys were good in terms of, there’s no bickering, everybody’s rooting for one another. Everybody wants to win and I challenged the team to go out there and find a way to get better. And what else can you do, you know why else do you play the sport and why else do you participate in a team sport like this other than to go find a way to keep competing and keep competing and keep competing. And it’s hard right now. But you know what it is what it is in terms of what’s gone on in the past and all we can control is what goes on on Friday night. And our job on Friday night to go out against Washington is to play our best game of football, and to do everything we humanly possibly can to move the football and get a victory.”

Fisch on the QB situation moving forward: “Yeah I think we’re gonna have to really research how we’re gonna dig deep into what we can do with our team in terms of the second quarterback. We have Luke Ashworth we travel with, who takes none of the reps, and really hasn’t taken many at all. We have Jamarye (Joiner), who has played some quarterback and we have Will that you know we need to try to keep healthy. I mean I don’t know I don’t think I can remember, other than in Baltimore in 2007, where it was, you know you just lose quarterback and quarterback and have other injuries throughout. Just one of those situations that occurred. We’re gonna to do our best to get Will ready to go and figure out how we can handle the backup.”

Fisch on overcoming turnovers and penalties: “Very challenging, very challenging. I mean you give up two touchdowns, as you said on the other two phases which you’re not accustomed to doing. You know, defensive offsides I think what happens is you get into a game now and it’s 20-nothing, or whatever it might have been at the time. They get a little bit anxious, they jump. And that’s the one thing you can’t do, you know you can’t fall asleep at corner when they jump. Now I didn’t see exactly what happened other than the fact that they were up the sideline with a little bit of separation which normally doesn’t happen on our go balls. And that’s something we do all the time we practice, two or three days where we were always using quick cadences and different cadences and hard counts to try to get the defensive offsides. We throw it up there too. They did a good job executing on that, and we did not do a good job of defending it.”

Fisch on seeing more of Jalen John and Drake Anderson: “I think Drake got a little dinged up, I didn’t get the exact medical report but we had to pull him. I think it was somewhere early in the first quarter. I don’t know exactly what his prognosis is. And when it came to Jalen, Jalen’s another freshmen that got in the game and really battled. I mean him and Stevie Rocker, you know you got two guys that have four years of football to play, and they’re just battling. And they came in and I think Jalen saw Stevie hav you have some success and he wanted some. And he ran extremely hard and did a really really good job and should have capped that off with a touchdown on that. I think what happened was they reviewed it or we would have just jumped the ball real quick and they were trying to figure out if it was a fumble or not a fumble so they held us over the ball on that one and went to a TV timeout and that was unfortunate. But I think he was running really hard, and you Jalen Johnson’s gonna be a good running back for us in the future.”

Kyon Barrs on the defense’s play: “Overall, we’re a team so we got to just focus on getting better. So, we have to execute so we have to come out there next weekend.”

Barrs on the team’s preparedness: “Yes, we work hard during the week, during practices we focus on certain things and I thought we came in and would do what we were supposed to do.”

Barrs on staying positive: “Us guys have to finish better in the second half. Keep, keep going all 60 minutes, but then go away to execute so you got to focus on next week.”

Barrs on losing two quarterbacks: “I mean it sucks but I’m sure everything will be fine. I’m sure they will do what he’s supposed to do. They’ll their job but we’re good.”

Jalen John on the loss: “It’s definitely tough, but I mean stuff happens, it’s definitely a process, but we’re halfway through the season. Our mentality right now is just 0 and 0 right now, so we’re just gonna keep going.”

John on not being able to score at the goal line: “It was definitely a little bit frustrating, but it just comes down to us finishing our blocks, and then making sure we all come together and do what we got to do to push the punch it in.”

John on his performance Saturday: “I definitely feel like I left some stuff on the field. Big shout out to my linemen; I couldn’t have nearly done it without them. Receivers blocking, everybody moved out in, and I just feel like I left some stuff on the field.”

John on Fisch’s message postgame: “The biggest message right now is that it’s the half of the season. Our mentality is just like we’re going as 0-0. The biggest thing for us is just to keep pushing and keep working.”