As encouraging as they can be, moral victories don’t always translate into the win column. Stack up enough of them, and they’ll start to feel like missed opportunities. And after Arizona State (1-6, 0-4 Pac-12) held the nation’s fifth-best scoring offense without a touchdown while gaining half of their season average through the air only to lose, that’s how Saturday’s contest has to feel for Kenny Dillingham and company. Leading the No. 5 team in the country for nearly the entirety of the second half, the Sun Devils will surely be sleepless in Seattle tonight, as their upset bid of the Washington Huskies (7-0, 4-0) came up short in a 15-7 defeat.
“This is so frustrating,” DIllingham told the media postgame. “We could have won the last four football games. Our guys are playing solid-to-good football. We’re finding different ways to lose, and I got to remove that. We can’t keep losing games in different ways. We eventually got to get over the hump.”
Yet again, ASU’s defense was up to the challenge of an elite offense in the Pac-12. While they held Caleb Williams and Shedeur Sanders relatively in check already this year, ASU took it to another level against Heisman-hopeful Michael Penix Jr., allowing less than 300 passing yards and forcing three turnovers from the left-handed gunslinger. However, ASU couldn’t capitalize off their defensive effort, as their offense once again fell flat. Even so, the Sun Devils held a 7-6 lead into the fourth quarter and were marching down the field, primed to extend their lead with less than nine minutes to play in regulation. However, an ill-fated ball from Bourguet on 4th & 3 inside the red zone would be the bone the ‘Dawgs needed.
“We had a chance to put them away,” Trenton Bourguet said of the play. “Thought I had him, the guy made a good play.”
Looking for Melquan Stovall on an outside curl, the speedy receiver slipped on the wet turf, which allowed Washington defensive back Mishael Powell to cut the route off for the interception, which he would run 89 yards to the house, uncontested.
“That’s a big emotional swing,” Dillingham pointed out. “That takes a very veteran-led team, a very, very, very deep culture to respond at a really high level after something like that. And I got to go over there more, and I got to be more involved culturally in that moment to try to get those guys back and really give them a plan for what the next drive was. So we could go and respond,
which we didn’t on that second drive or that drive after it.”
The gut-wrenching pick-six would turn out to be the big play that Washington’s offense couldn’t produce like they had all season. With all of their momentum, along with the lead now swung to the other sideline, ASU couldn’t answer on the ensuing possession. The defense gave Bourguet and company one final chance to make something happen after limiting the Huskies to three points on their final offensive drive, but it would be to no avail. Down 15-7 with a little over three minutes on the clock, ASU would gain just two first downs before a hobbled Trenton Bourguet, who had to miss two plays on that final drive due to an ankle injury, would throw consecutive incompletions on 3rd and 4th down to seal it. On a night when the Sun Devils couldn’t catch a break offensively, the final drive would be the microcosm.
“Seven points at the end of the day, that’s not going to win a lot of games,” Bourguet noted. “Especially in the Pac-12, it’s going to be high-scoring. With those opportunities, we got to convert, we got to find a way, whether it’s field goals or touchdowns, we got to put up points. We still had a chance at the end of the game, and we just didn’t convert. I’m the quarterback, so I really got to look back and see what we can do better.”
Even though the circumstances of Arizona State’s win over Washington a year ago were shocking in their own right, with an interim head coach and a backup quarterback leading the way, the Sun Devils’ ability to merely compete with the Huskies this time around might be even more impressive, at least for one side of the ball. Like they’ve done most of the season, the stifling ASU defense put the floundering offense on its back against arguably the best team in the conference. Going up against the red-hot Huskies offense, Brian Ward’s unit not only held their ground on the road but took some of it for themselves straight from the jump.
On Penix’s second pass of the game, Ro Torrence would jump a route to bring in the first interception of the year for the Sun Devils while also setting their offense up in Washington territory. The defense would also come up huge backed up against the end zone late in the first quarter, as they halted Washington’s first sustained drive of the game in its tracks, courtesy of a Shamari Simmons interception after a tip at the line of scrimmage.
“It comes in bunches,” Simmons said of the takeaways. “It comes in bunches. So, as soon as we got one, we were just eager to get more, more turnovers.”
Despite their first two interceptions of the season, ASU couldn’t turn the turnovers into points. Following the Torrence takeaway, Dario Longhetto’s 31-yard field goal ricochetted off the right upright in just his second missed field goal of the season. It would not be his last misfire of the night either, as Longhetto couldn’t cash three points late in the third quarter when the Washington special teams blocked his 43-yard try.
With Longhetto struggling and a depleted offensive line taking even more hits, Dillingham was forced to get even more aggressive with his play-calling after injuries to Max Iheanachor and Cade Briggs.
“We were down two linemen,” Dillingham explained. “We went in saying, ‘If we lost two more linemen, we couldn’t kick field goals.’ One lineman was risky; we knew it. So we kicked the one field goal. Getting into the depth of the O-line, so we were a little concerned when that one got blocked. Then we lost another O-linemen; Cade (Briggs) was out for a little while. So it was a no-go. We couldn’t kick it.”
While Dillingham and the Sun Devils have not shied away from fourth-down tries all year, they had to go into overload just to have a chance against Washington, with the kicking game becoming a non-starter behind a battered offensive line. However, they would only go 2-6 on their conversions on Saturday, including a 0-3 mark in the fourth quarter that hampered the offense.
Although they lacked execution on the offensive side of the ball throughout the night, Arizona State did find the end zone in the second quarter. Starting off from midfield following a fumble off the snap by Penix, Bourguet would move the ball through Washington territory before culminating in a one-yard, walk-in touchdown for Cam Skattebo’s sixth score of the year. Both Skattebo and a returning DeCarlos Brooks would prove vital to ASU’s limited production on offense, as the duo combined for 114 yards on the ground on Saturday.
Surprisingly, this scoring drive would be the first of the game from either side, as the Sun Devils would take a 7-0 lead with less than five minutes to play in the first half. While Washington did put a field goal through, their 7-3 halftime deficit weighed much more on the minds of the pack of purple in the stands due to the stout ASU defense.
“Defense played their butts off again,” Bourguet said of the unit. “It was a great week of practice for them. I think they said they created the most turnovers this week in practice. So to see them create all those turnovers, it was awesome to see.”
“Unbelievable,” Dillingham added. “Defense battled, they attacked, they played aggressive. They played way better than enough to win the football game versus that offense. Unbelievable job by Coach Ward. Unbelievable job by that entire staff. Unbelievable job by our players competing and fighting our corners. Taking those guys outside one-on-one and on base downs and challenging them. Loved how our defense played.”
The locker room break would not slow down the Sun Devil defensive intensity, but it wouldn’t help the offense get their feet under them, either. Washington tacked on another field goal in the third quarter but still trailed 7-6 without a touchdown as the fourth began. And while ASU’s defensive prowess didn’t step back, its offense would eventually do it for them with its ineffectiveness, with the pick-six acting as the cherry on top of another execution failure on offense.
“We had a couple of opportunities to really extend that lead, and we gotta take advantage of that,” Bourguet said. “Offensively, we were able to drive that ball down and up the field, but we keep making minor mistakes. With me being the quarterback, that’s on me.”
“Every lack of success this offense has is my fault, 100 percent,” Dillingham noted. “There’s nobody else to blame. There’s no player to blame, there’s no other coach to blame, it’s 100 percent on me. I gotta get it fixed.”
While the Sun Devil offense shot itself in the foot plenty of times, the officials didn’t do them many favors on either side of the ball. Early on, edge rusher Clayton Smith was ejected from the game for a hairy targeting call while closing in on a pass rush. On that fourth-quarter drive that ended in the pick-six on fourth down, a picked-up flag following a clear hold on Troy Omeire took away what would’ve been a first and goal, potentially costing the Sun Devils the chance to make it a two-score game with eight minutes to play.
While this loss especially felt like a missed opportunity, Dillingham remained adamant that it was a step in the right direction for a team that he believes has not lost its motivation.
“I’m so proud of our guys,” Dillingham said. “Our guys are battling. We’re 1-6, and our guys are competing their butt off. We couldn’t go to a bowl game preseason; nobody cares about us, and our guys are showing up to work every day. They’re competing every day. They’re in that locker room hugging each other, saying we’re going back to work. We’re building the right culture here. We can see how close we are in year one through all of this. All the all the banged up, all the negative, we’re this close. We’re this close to not just being a solid team. We’re this close to beating the number five team in the country.”
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