Khalil Tate started his football career as a "true freshman" in 2016 at the University of Arizona. He made his debut as our starting quarterback against one of our rivals, UCLA, and won 47-30. Tate made an impressive debut with two touchdowns and 79 yards with 15 on carries! He finished off his freshman season with "1,411 yards rushing and 12 touchdowns, and also threw for 1,591 yards and 14 touchdowns, completing 62 percent of his passes. His 9.2 average yards per carry led the nation"! (bleacherreport) For a freshman playing against some amazing teams, he came and out-performed what spectators, fans, and analysists originally predicted of him. Tate was also a candidate for the Heisman award last season, but Baker Mayfield, a senior, won the award. It's pretty impressive, to say the least, that Tate was a candidate against seniors who had been already been accustomed to the game of college football and had ample amount of time to bond with both teammates and coaches.
Khalil Tate is already starting off the 2018 season right by being named a Top 10 quarterback by CBS, due to him being the "No.7 rusher in the country. No. 1 quarterback rusher in the country" (Dennis Dodd, CBS) and being put on the ballot for the Maxwell Award. If you haven't heard of the Maxwell Award, it is an award presented by the Maxwell Football Club that is given to the best college football player in the U.S. No football player at the University of Arizona has been given this award, and it would be absolutely insane if Khalil Tate won! He would make history at the U of A for this!
However, it seems that Khalil Tate has already made history in college football throughout the whole country! How did he do this though? Through a tweet! During this past offseason, Tate tweeted that he "didn't come to Arizona to run the triple-option". Now that might not seem like a revolutionary tweet on the surface, but big changes were made because of this tweet. Ken Niumatalolo was originally pinned to be the new head coach of the Arizona football team after Rich Rodriguez's scandal, but a few days after Tate's tweet, Kevin Sumlin was hired as the new head coach. Tate has now spoken out about the tweet, saying that he "knew exactly what [he] was doing when [he] tweeted that out". He's a voice (or tweet) for the entire U of A football team because according to him, none of his teammates wanted to run the triple-option either. Tate and his tweet obviously played a huge role in who would be appointed as the new coach which will bring many changes to his team, as well as other teams across the country. Players and teams across the country now have an open opportunity to make a difference and have a voice for their teams.
With all that being said, I believe that Khalil Tate is going to come out even better than he was his freshman year. I'm excited for U of A football season to start, and you all should be too! Go Wildcats!
