A pickle for you to ponder:

Would you rather lose five defensive players to injury at five different positions? Or would you rather lose five guys -- all at the same position? It’s a lose-lose conundrum any way you slice it. But the latter was an unfortunate reality for the Arizona Wildcats this season, who were forced to play middle linebacker roulette after first chair and All-American Scooby Wright was knocked out in the first game of the season. So was his backup. And his backup. And his backup. And his backup.

This was a rare first for Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez, who said he’d never seen such carnage at one position in a career that’s spanned three decades.

“When you’ve been in this business this long, you think you’ve seen everything and you can prepare for everything,” Rodriguez said. “But it almost happened at the same time, like in a two-to-three week period. We had five or six different guys playing that position. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

The end result was a trickle-down effect to the rest of the defense that produced the worst points allowed average (35.7) since Rodriguez and Co. took over in 2012. There were also 13 fewer sacks per game from last year’s defense, half the turnovers and a minus-five turnover margin compared to a plus-eight ratio in 2014.

The critic’s instinct is to immediately question the scheme. Is the 3-3-5 the right defense to be running? But Rodriguez said that’s the wrong question.

“I don’t look at it in terms of scheme, because everyone who runs an odd front also runs even fronts and everyone who runs even fronts also runs odd fronts,” Rodriguez said. “Philosophically, are you a pressure team or a zone team or somewhere in between? I think we were both because we always evaluate what fits our personnel.

“The challenge this year was figuring out what fits our personnel because it was changing from week to week. Because of the injuries, that added to the challenge of our guys matching up with what we wanted to do philosophically with what we had available to us to play with. You’re moving inexperienced guys from one position to another position and you don’t have time to teach them the position. You only really have time to teach them the scheme for that week.”

The Wildcats' defense will get one last opportunity to prove itself in 2015 when Arizona travels to Albuquerque on Saturday for the Gildan New Mexico Bowl, where it will face the host school -- New Mexico (7-5, 5-3 Mountain West) -- on its home field at University Stadium.

It’s not the bowl game the Wildcats (6-6, 3-6 Pac-12) had hoped for coming off of a Pac-12 South championship last season and an appearance in the Fiesta Bowl. But they also knew coming into the season things might get dicey. Tagged with 12 straight games and no bye weeks, the last thing they could afford were injuries. So, of course, their top player goes down in Week 1. That was followed up by injuries across the lines, to the quarterback, running back and other assorted defensive players.

Some of them are back, which bodes well for the Wildcats as they prepare to take on a New Mexico team that runs a variation of the triple-option. There’s some Pac-12 film available, since rival Arizona State played New Mexico in Week 3 and won, 34-10. They also had Nevada as a common opponent, with Arizona topping the Wolfpack, 44-20, and Nevada besting New Mexico, 35-17.

Reports indicate that Wright has practiced and should be available to play for the first time since Sept. 26. Whether that’s his final game in an Arizona uniform remains to be seen. For now, Rodriguez is looking to close out a “bizarre year” with one more win.

“We’re happy to be in a bowl game,” he said. “At this point, it’s all about sending our seniors out the right way.”