The moves Brent Brennan made to restore Arizona football | Opinion

As the unofficial, unelected president of the Brent Brennan Fan Club — an organization that doesn’t exist, to the best of my knowledge — I’ve written multiple pieces in support of Arizona’s head football coach.

I was convinced he was the perfect person for the job before he touched down in Tucson.

I pushed for patience during the dark times of 2024.

I suggested we should all root for Brennan to succeed in Year Two for the long-term health of UA football.

But hey, this isn’t about me. Nor is Brennan’s success about him. At least not in the way you might think.

Brennan didn’t suddenly figure out how to be good at his job in his ninth year as a college head coach. The only notable change he made in terms of in-game strategy/philosophy was becoming more aggressive on fourth down.

The biggest driver of Arizona’s turnaround — the Wildcats take a 9-3 record and a Top-20 ranking into the Holiday Bowl against SMU — was Brennan’s supporting cast. He surrounded himself with better people.

“Every person in our football program is important to what we're doing here — every single person,” Brennan said. “It doesn't really matter what their title is. Everybody contributes in a significant way, and everybody is treated that way, with love and respect, because they're all making us better.”

Of course, Brennan deserves credit for picking those people and setting the tone for the organization. His tonal shift — basically, you’re either on board, or the bus is leaving without you — was also a critical piece in all this.

The staff upgrades Brennan made were a far bigger deal. There was no telling what Arizona’s record would be. But there was no doubt that the Wildcats would be better coached.

Coordinated effort

The first move was hiring Seth Doege as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. From the moment he first met with the Tucson media, you could tell Doege would succeed. He was smart, confident and motivated. He was also, we later learned, a grinder — the kind of coach who will sleep in his office.

Brennan discourages his assistants from doing that — he’d prefer they live normal lives, at least to the degree that’s possible in this business — but Doege is a young coach trying to climb the career ladder. And the results speak for themselves; Noah Fifita has never played better.

On defense, Brennan tapped into the familiar. That approach flopped the previous offseason, and I’ll get to that shortly. This time, Brennan went 2 for 2 with a pair of home runs.

No assistant coach in America has done a better job than defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales, who was already on the staff as the linebackers coach and special-teams coordinator. Brennan has talked about the concept of getting “the right people in the right seats on the bus.” Allowing Gonzales to drive it was a stroke of genius. Arizona — defensively challenged forever — has one of the best defenses in the nation.

On the same day Gonzales was promoted, Brennan brought Joe Salave’a back to Tucson. Salave’a brought greater gravitas, attention to detail and recruiting chops to the defensive line room than predecessor Joe Seumalo. Like Gonzales, Salave’a has gotten the most out of his guys all season long.

Now, you might be wondering: How did Brennan blow it so badly the previous offseason? Why didn’t he get it right from the start?

Brennan made some poor staffing choices — easy to see and say in hindsight. You can understand why he decided to hire Dino Babers and Duane Akina as his coordinators at the time. They were mentors of his, men who’d coached at Arizona before and achieved success. They just weren’t, it turned out, the right fits.

Seumalo had been with Brennan at San Jose State, where two linemen earned Mountain West Defensive Player of the Year honors under Seumalo’s tutelage. It made perfect sense for Brennan to bring his longtime colleague and friend with him to Tucson.

Again, though, it turned out to be the wrong fit. Brennan had the wherewithal to recognize that. He also learned that Salave’a was available and interested in returning to his alma mater.

Resource allocation

All the decisions Brennan made in early 2024 came under suboptimal circumstances. Brennan was hired in mid-January after the Nick Saban/Kalen DeBoer/Jedd Fisch dominoes fell — about six weeks after most head-coaching moves had been made and staffs had been built.

Maybe Brennan would have made the same choices in early December. Maybe not. It’s just worth reiterating that it wasn’t a “normal” situation.

Brennan did make smart hires in the front office. We just didn’t fully realize it at the time because of those same circumstances.

Gaizka Crowley, brought over from UNLV, and Fletcher Kelly, brought along from San Jose State, played integral roles in constructing this season’s roster. A year earlier, their options for players were even more limited than Brennan’s for coaches, with the first transfer portal window having long closed.

Arizona had to replace Crowley and Fletcher this offseason after both took jobs at Arkansas. The UA hired Aaron Knotts and Andrew Morgan to succeed them. Both have promising résumés. Brennan is wise enough to realize there are no sure things — although he’s been on a roll lately.

“When we lose somebody, we try and get somebody better,” he said. “We won't know if they're better until we do the job with them for a little bit of time. And then we have an idea.”

The roles Knotts and Morgan are assuming — general manager and recruiting operations coordinator, respectively — are incredibly important. College sports fans aren’t used to general managers being prominent figures like their counterparts in the pros. But the landscape has changed, and so has the value of those positions.

I would argue that, especially in football, general managers are underrated while head coaches are overrated — and, in many cases, overpaid. Brennan is not one of them; his compensation — which averages out to $3.5 million per year — is among the lowest in the Power Four.

Brennan couldn’t care less about that, recognizing that the UA program is better served by devoting those resources to other areas — such as the people who’ve helped him do his job better than before.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: The moves Brent Brennan made to restore Arizona football | Opinion