Worried about Arizona football’s O-line? ‘Coach O’ will take care of it | Michael Lev

He is uniquely equipped to handle whatever comes his way. Given the question marks that linger and hover over the Wildcats’ offensive line, it’s bound to be a lot.

It’s nothing new for Oglesby, who’s entering his third season as Arizona’s O-line coach and his seventh under Brent Brennan. The UA offensive line faced different forms of adversity each of the past two seasons. After the first, many fans and pundits wondered whether he was the right man for the job. He proved them wrong last year, when Arizona ran the ball better, scored a lot more points and won a bunch more games.

Brennan, who gave Oglesby his first full-time assistant job and brought him over from San Jose State, never had a doubt.

“Man, he's special, isn't he?” Brennan said as training camp got underway this week. “He's an excellent communicator. He's really good at building relationships with his players. And because he does such a great job of building such trust, he can be really demanding.”

Off the field, Oglesby is engaging and personable. On it, he’s stern and exacting. He can be both the good cop and the bad cop.

“You have to earn that with the guys,” said Oglesby, who’s also Arizona’s run-game coordinator. “I tell recruits all the time: ‘I’m gonna coach you hard, but I’m gonna love you even harder.’ ”

Evidence of the relationship Oglesby has built with his linemen could be seen during the team’s media day Tuesday. Alexander Doost and Tristan Bounds were lingering near Oglesby’s table. Bounds asked Oglesby what he thought about Arizona’s tandem at right guard (Doost) and right tackle (Bounds).

“I don’t know,” Oglesby said, smiling. “One of them is crushing Chick-fil-A right now.”

Bounds had a half-eaten chicken sandwich in his hand.

“That’s his fifth sandwich,” Doost said.

“You know what?” Oglesby responded. “I actually love it because now you're eating like a true O-lineman ... not like the bird that you used to eat like.”

“But that right side is pretty dope,” he quickly added. “They're the heart and soul of it.”

The next day, I spent about 15 minutes observing Oglesby coaching his group during practice. He strongly advised the young linemen to watch the veterans. The techniques being taught were incredibly precise — head placement, hand placement, arm angles. When one of the freshmen messed up, Oglesby got in his grill.

When Oglesby gets frustrated during practice, you can hear him from across the field. He’s a giant man — listed at 6-7¼, 338 pounds at the 2011 NFL Scouting Combine — with a booming voice.

“Every coach yells,” Bounds said. “He's just coaching you to be the best version of yourself.

“I know that it comes from a place of love.”

Finding his calling

Oglesby can relate to his players — and they can relate to him — because he’s been in their cleats.

Oglesby was a massive recruit, in many respects, coming out of St. Francis High School near Milwaukee. Rivals ranked him as the No. 1 offensive tackle and No. 10 overall player in the nation.

Oglesby elected to attend Wisconsin. By the time he arrived on campus in Madison, he already was dealing with the knee problems that would plague him throughout his playing career.

Oglesby tore the ACL in his right knee as a senior in high school. He tore the ACL in his left knee as a redshirt junior in college. In all, he’s had seven knee surgeries.

Oglesby bounced back well enough from the second ACL tear to earn first-team All-Big Ten honors as a redshirt senior in 2011. But he was never the same.

“It was tough, especially because everyone tells you forever that you're supposed to be this, you're supposed to be that,” Oglesby said. “You're projected here, projected there, and then you fail all 32 (NFL team) physicals because you're bone-on-bone in each knee.

“So it was hard. But it makes me love this even more. And to be honest with you, playing was awesome, but I'm having way more fun coaching.”

The closest Oglesby got to playing in the NFL was signing with Washington as an undrafted free agent. His knee issues wouldn’t go away. But they would lead him to his calling. He just didn’t know it yet.

It took some sage advice from his mother, Katherine, to nudge Oglesby in the right direction.

“I was just kind of lost,” he said. “Like, what do I do? My mom sat me down one day. She's like, ‘The hardships that you've gone through can be someone else's blessing.’

“It led me to go back to my alma mater and work a high school camp. I fell in love with it. It's been best thing I've ever done.”

Oglesby became a graduate assistant at Wisconsin, then a quality-control coach at Oregon State. In 2015 and ’16, he was part of the same OSU staffs as Brennan, who would become San Jose State’s head coach and hire Oglesby a few years later.

They’ve been together ever since.

“There are not many guys that'll give an opportunity to a 30-year-old offensive line coach,” Oglesby said. “I thank him every day for taking a chance on me. I just feel that it's only right that I do my best for him.”

Been there, rehabbed that

Oglesby knows the way to an offensive lineman’s heart is through his stomach. He regularly invites the group to his house, where he cooks brisket and mac ‘n’ cheese, among other staples, often coinciding with UFC cards.

It’s a common sight at the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility to see more than a dozen 300-pound men crammed into Oglesby’s office to talk shop or just hang out.

“It's not big enough to have 18 linemen in there. And every time there's 18 linemen,” UA offensive coordinator Seth Doege said.

He might have been exaggerating. He might not. Either way, Doege continued.

“They might be watching tape, they might be watching YouTube, they might be talking about something,” he said. “He just does a really good job getting to know those kids.”

Oglesby also knows, better than most, what it’s like to come back from an injury.

Bounds suffered a broken ankle last November. Guard Rhino Tapa’atoutai suffered a torn ACL in October 2024 and struggled to regain his confidence last season.

Oglesby helped them overcome the psychological hurdles that accompany every rehab from a major setback.

With Bounds, Oglesby emphasized patience.

“It's a long process. You just gotta go day by day,” Bounds said. “He stayed a constant point of connection during that (time).”

As Bounds noted, Oglesby didn’t necessarily have to do that.

“He's got a lot to worry about during the season. We're still trying to win games,” Bounds said. “The world didn't stop just because I got hurt, nor should it. He did a really great job of still being super involved in my rehab process while also helping the guys that were getting ready to play on Saturdays.”

Oglesby spoke to Tapa’atoutai during his recovery process “so much that I lost track,” the redshirt junior said.

“He knows how it is. He's been through it,” Tapa’atoutai said.

“It'd be so frustrating because I'd be good one day, I'd have a nick the next, and I'm like, ‘Dude, is this how it was for you? How'd you handle it?’

“It was a lot, I'm not gonna lie. Words can't even explain how much frustration and how (many) questions I had.

“He would let me know how it was for him. He'd speak on his journey.

“I feel like Coach O deserves a lot of credit for that.”

Oglesby could have ignored Tapa’atoutai while he wasn’t able to play. Instead, Oglesby showed that he genuinely cared.

Tapa’atoutai mostly served as a backup last season. He was pressed into extended duty during the Holiday Bowl, when starting left tackle Ty Buchanan went down and Oglesby had to patch the unit together.

He already had helped former defensive lineman Chubba Maae become a steady left guard and Ka’ena Decambra a standout center — after never playing center before.

This year, Oglesby is coaching up Matthew Lado, who’s slated to start at left tackle. Lado, a redshirt sophomore, has started only three games in his college career.

Besides opening lanes in the run game, Lado and his linemates are charged with protecting face-of-the-program quarterback Noah Fifita. There’s no more important job than that.

There’s no better man to direct them than Oglesby.

“He's just so easy to talk to,” Doost said. “He's (an) open book. If you have a question, it's always, ‘Come up to my office, text me, FaceTime me.’

“Especially when we're going through a hard time, he tells us from his experience, how he got through a similar situation. You want to play for a guy that has been through the same things you've been going through.”