Coming off of its first home victory of the season, Arizona rides the momentum of the win vs. North Dakota State into this week as it prepares to travel to Cal. With non-conference play officially over and the Wildcats shifting their focus to Pac-12 play, here are five takeaways from head coach Jedd Fisch's press conference Monday.
New rule for 2022 is still being learned
With a new season also means changes, and for 2022 a new rule has been implemented that prohibits low blocks at the line in an attempt to protect players.
For the Wildcats, that rule is still being engraved into the players' memories as the only penalty that was called on Arizona in the game against NDSU was a cut block by wide receiver Jacob Cowing and a waved-off flag after a cut block by cornerback Christian Roland-Wallace.
"Well, it's a new penalty as of 2022 that you can't cut outside the tackle box," Fisch said. "So that's a new rule that came into effect this year. And they made that rule for the safety of players. So both offensively and defensively now, you can't cut. You used to be able to do that defensively even more so up until this year where you can protect yourself. And if a guy was coming at you in space, you could do that. But that rule has changed this year and I think both Jacob [Cowing] and C-Ro [Roland-Wallace] were playing off of last year's rule on that."
Adapting to the rule will take some time, apparently.
