Arizona football set to open spring practice with overhauled roster, revamped coaching staff

A whole lot of new

Arizona’s practice jerseys don’t have nameplates on them, but they probably should.

Of the 93 players that are on the spring roster, 34 are new to the program. Another 20 high school and junior college players are scheduled to come on board at the end of May, and possibly a few more transfers could be added depending on late-identified needs.

“That is a big number,” UA coach Brent Brennan said Monday at a press conference ahead of his second spring with the program. “When we identified these players, conversations with the coaching staff was intense, and it was very clear. We were looking for guys that were tough, that love football and want to be here at the University of Arizona. Yes, they have to have the talent. They have to be good enough, all those things, but those three questions had to be definitively answered for me to say let’s bring them in. And I think we’ve done a great job of adding really, really good pieces to our team.”

It won’t just be a bunch of new players in action this spring. The Wildcats have overhauled the coaching staff, bringing in Seth Doege to run a new offense and handing the defense over to Danny Gonzales while having a dedicated special teams coordinator (Craig Naivar). There are several new position coaches as well including Joe Salave’a and Ronnie Palmer, ex-Wildcats who will handle the defensive line.

Arizona will hold the first of its 15 spring practices on Tuesday morning, going three times a week for the next five weeks culminating in the Spring Showcase on April 19 inside Arizona Stadium. That event will be vastly different than in years past, less a game and more an event with some football going on.

“We’re going to have an Easter egg hunt for little kids, it’s going to be an awesome day of community engagement,” Brennan said. “We’ve got a beer garden for the fans, on the field, which sounds like a good time to me, getting close to the action. And then on top of that, we’re going to play some football. We’re going to have kind of a practice, but we’ll have some live stuff mixed in there.”

Here are some things to keep an eye on as Arizona goes through spring ball:

The new schemes

Arizona ranked near the bottom in the Big 12 and nationally in most offensive categories last season, prompting a midseason change in playcaller and ultimately new leadership for 2025. Doege comes to Tucson from Marshall, where in his lone season as offensive coordinator he helped the Thundering Herd win the Sun Belt title while averaging 10 more points per game than the Wildcats.

Marshall averaged more than 200 rushing yards per game out of a spread formation but also threw 27 touchdown passes, nine more than Arizona.

“I think you guys are going to love the energy he brings to the practice environment,” Brennan said of Doege, who played quarterback at Texas Tech under Mike Leach and also spent time in the CFL and NFL. “He’s a creative guy, but he’s all about explosive offense. He feels like it’s a mindset of something that that our team is going to lean into and attack as we go.”

The change will mean quarterback Noah Fifita will have his third different coordinator since becoming Arizona’s starter, but early interactions with Doege have been positive.

“I think Coach Doege is going to be a different voice for him,” Brennan said. “He’s going to be a guy who played the position at an extremely high level. You can already see their bond developing and growing as we’re around the building every day.”

Defensively, Gonzales takes over for Duane Akina—who was set to go back to coaching Arizona’s defensive backs before accepting a similar job at Texas—and will run a base 3-3-5 alignment. It’s similar to what he ran as head coach at New Mexico and in defensive coordinator stints at ASU and San Diego State.

“With Coach Gonzales there’s some carryover, and I’m excited about him in that role,” Brennan said. “His experience as a play caller, the fact that he’s been in so many battles, have been in so many situations, the fact that he’s an expert in the 335, but then also has been in and around and enough football where he has experienced being in three down and four down. That gives us some variation. And I love the style that he’s accustomed to, which is just an aggressive, attacking defense. A lot of those things have already started with our players.”

Brennan expects Arizona’s defense to be ahead of the offense at the outset of spring ball, which he said is usually the case, but as the weeks go on he wants to see both sides have wins.

“Most times the defense is ahead of the offense, there’s a little less assignment there, it’s more reaction, that’s been my experience,” he said. “But I’m excited because I also think what we’re doing on offense is going to be very different than what this our team is used to seeing from our offense. So I’m excited to see the back and forth, and I’ll tell you this: on any good football team that needs to go back and forth. The offenses have a good day, the defenses have a good day. It can’t just be one side of the ball dominating all of spring practice, that does not work.”

Position battles

Other than Fifita and a couple spots on defense, most starting jobs are wide open going into the spring. And most figure to stay undecided until training camp in August, but spring is when the battles for positioning begin.

Brennan expects the competition for reps at wide receiver to be the most exciting. It’s also one of the most important since Arizona has to replace future 1^st round pick Tetairoa McMillan and all his production. His departure, along with others who graduated or transferred, leaves Arizona with 35.9 percent of the catches, 30.6 percent of the yards and seven of 18 receiving TDs back from 2024.

The UA signed four receivers out of the portal and two from the prep ranks including top signee Isaiah Mizell.

“We added a bunch of really good players there, and so I think the competition there is going to be intense, and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to watch,” Brennan said. “There’s some guys that established themselves as pretty good players for us last year, but how much can we elevate that group? And that’s what the competition is, what spring practice is about. It’s giving everybody a chance to be on the field and prove it and attack it.”

The competition for offensive line jobs should also be intense, particularly with Arizona signing five OL with Division I experience. It won’t have all candidates available, though, as tackle Rhino Tapa’toutai is not expected to participate in spring ball while recovering from a knee injury last fall.

He and defensive back Treydan Stukes, who also had a season-ending knee surgery, are both expected to be ready for preseason camp.

Showcase vs. scrimmage

It won’t just be the spring game (er, Showcase) that will look different than in past years. Across college football there has become more of a push to minimize risk in practices that are several months away from the season.

“I think the days of splitting the team in half and having the ones and the fours play the twos and the threes, I don’t think that’s going to happen anymore, because I just think there’s too much invested in the players on the field,” Brennan said. “And it’s complicated because there’s a fine line there. You gotta get ready to play, but you also need to make sure that you protect your most valuable assets on the football team.”

Because of the amount of money Arizona has invested in its 2025 roster, the days of full-contact workouts with tackling to the ground are pretty much over.

“I think you can be a little bit more aggressive in the spring, because you have a little bit more time,” he said. “But I think you also need to be smart about who gets tackled and who’s doing the tackling. Because there’s a lot of marquee players on this team that people are really excited to see play in September. And so how do we make sure that the environments are safe as we can possibly make them and still get the work done we have to get done to be prepared? So there’s a balance in that.”