Uh, Kevin Sumlin’s Arizona could be a top-25 college football team in 2018

Way-early and preseason top 25 lists don’t account for every college football team that winds up being good in the year to come. Invariably, someone’s coming out of nowhere to win nine or 10 games.

One possibility for next year: the Arizona Wildcats. And that’s not only because they just hired Kevin Sumlin, recently fired after six years and a .662 winning percentage at Texas A&M. The Wildcats have finished in the AP Top 25 just once since 1998, and Sumlin’s got a lot to adjust to quickly. But a few things are working in Arizona’s favor.

That schedule is missing Washington and Stanford, two probable preseason top-15 squads from the Pac-12 North. The Wildcats get Oregon, probably the next-best team in that division, at home. Their division game against USC, the reigning conference champ, is at home. So is their Territorial Cup game against Arizona State.

Road games at Washington State and Utah should be tricky, but this is about as good of a conference schedule as a Pac-12 South team could hope for.

The non-conference schedule is manageable as well. Arizona opens at home against BYU, whose 4-9 record in 2017 was its worst since 1970. The Cats have a tricky game at Houston, plus an FCS game against Southern Utah. There’s a path to nine wins even if Arizona only improves mildly. And that shouldn’t be too hard.

Arizona finished just 7-6. But according to S&P+, the Wildcats lost two games in which they had better than a 50 percent chance to win based on their quality of play. They lost 30-24 to Utah in Week 4 (55 percent win probability), and 38-35 to Purdue (80 percent). They also had bad turnover luck, losing nine of their 12 fumbles.

More experienced teams should do better in close games, and the Wildcats will have more seasoning. Their two top wideouts in 2017 were juniors. Their top running back was a freshman, as was their best tight end. Their top three tacklers, and five of the top nine, were freshmen. Their last depth chart of 2017 included just five senior starters, and two of those were co-starters with younger counterparts.

Arizona is slated to have back its top producers of passing yards, rushing yards, tackles, tackles for loss, sacks, interceptions, and pass breakups. There are some key losses, like cornerback Dane Cruikshank and his three interceptions and 10 run stuffs from the secondary. But there’s a lot more still here.

Arizona’s backup quarterback hit the field in Week 5 and promptly ran for 327 yards against Colorado, then kept dismantling defenses from there. He made himself a dark-horse Heisman candidate and put up numbers typically unrivaled by even seasoned NCAA 14 players on the PlayStation. Tate ran for 1,411 yards and 12 touchdowns, while throwing for 1,591 and 14 more. He’s the reason Arizona had one of the most explosive offenses in college football, finishing No. 8 in IsoPPP.

Now he gets a chance to show what he can do over the course of a full season, with almost all of his skill-position players back. He’ll do it under tutelage of the head coach who gave the world Johnny Football in 2012 and ’13.

Tate has room to grow as a passer. He threw nine interceptions last year and may not be called upon to run the ball as much, or in the same way, as he was under Rich Rodriguez. But his speed and escapability have few peers in college football.

Given his 215-pound frame, if he improves his interior running and decision making, the sky could be the limit for him and Arizona’s offense.

Unless you think Sumlin is a massive downgrade from Rodriguez, some improvement is likely just by virtue of additional experience and a full year of Tate at QB.

Arizona’s history, its lack of elite recruits, and the uncertainty that comes with any new coach are all fair reasons for skepticism. Still, there’s a clear path to improvement.

The Wildcats defense finished 115th in S&P+ and 109th in scoring in 2017, but the team still won seven games. If they can get into the 80s in those departments and maintain an offense similar to last year’s, they can find another win or two, right?

Arizona has a favorable schedule, a coach with a winning track record, a more experienced core, and a dynamite quarterback, all in a division packed with question marks. A rare top-25 finish is on the table.