Beaten down, banged up, what will it take for offensive line to regroup?

When I asked offensive line coach Dave Christensen for his evaluation of the offensive line’s performance in last Friday’s 19-7 victory over Sacramento State, he kept his answer simple and blunt.

“It wasn’t good enough, so we got to get better,” he said of the group that allowed nine tackles-for-loss by the Hornets, while ASU only averaged 2.3 yards per rush on 38 carries (not counting one sack).

There are an abounding number of factors that explain the unit’s disappointing start to the season, especially considering the regression from the first and second games- at least by the eye test.

As Christensen would mention multiple times, the current starting five has only one player at the same position he started for ASU in 2018; senior left guard Alex Losoya. Senior left tackle Cohl Cabral made the switch from center to left tackle at the start of Fall camp due to the absence of Zach Robertson, while senior right tackle Steve Miller played guard in most of the action, he saw last season.

Then there’s the newcomers, starting right guard Jarrett Bell and center Dohnovan West, a redshirt freshman and true freshman, respectively. Bell earned his spot, outperforming senior USC transfer Roy Hemsley throughout camp, while West was thrust into his role as a result of senior Cade Cote breaking his foot days before the season opener.

“We’re not real deep as it is,” Christensen commented on the team’s offensive line depth. “Generally, when you get an injury and you’re not real deep, the guy going in doesn’t have a lot of experience.

“You only get experience by playing, and we don’t have the type of depth- there’s nobody in our junior class, there’s nobody in our sophomore class, so it’s not like we got a bunch of guys that have played snaps that have the experience to help our depth. So, it’s the situation we’re in, and we’re going to try to do the best that we can each and every week to bring these guys along, and we would expect them to get better each week, and with the more repetitions they get the better they’re going to play.”

But just how much better is the unit going to have to play just to be competent against a fierce Michigan State front seven, which is about all they can hope for in this defining game for the 2019 season. The short answer is much better, and the injuries to Miller and Bell during last week’s game only complicate the matter.

Although both guys returned to practice Monday as full participants- as far as we could tell during our 20 minutes of viewing- a close eye should be kept on both, as Hemsley and true freshman Spencer Lovell were both forced into action in their place later in the second half for the remainder of the game.

With that development, ASU has already played a pair of true freshmen and a redshirt freshman in Bell through two games. While many may feel like the sky is falling on this group, especially considering the enthusiasm around a unit that returned all but one key player (six seniors total) from a heralded 2018 unit, Cabral believes they’re getting closer to where they want to be.

“Going back and looking at (the game film), we were one guy away the whole time,” Cabral said. “So, we’re making progress, and it’s just going to take time to get everyone comfortable with each other…it takes five guys, I mean if one guy’s wrong the play just doesn’t happen, so having five guys on the same page is always what it takes.”

Losoya echoed Cabral’s cautious optimism about the unit, as the word ‘fine’ seemed to be reiterated the most throughout his five-minute or so conversation with media members.

“Everyone’s getting to play, pretty much, so we’re getting more confident in everyone,” Losoya said. “I’ve played next to everyone, so it’s fine.

“I think most people don’t really know football when they haven’t played at this type of level, so they can assume whatever they want, but we’re coming together, we’re going to be fine, we’ll be ready to go on Saturday.”

Both Losoya and Cabral are pretty familiar with the Spartans front seven, not only from watching game film this week but from playing them a year ago. Losoya makes the point that they’ve returned all of the same guys, which will aid significantly in seeing what worked from last year’s film and having a sense of familiarity with what they do. Of course, that familiarity won’t have any value if they can’t nail down the little things.

“Just technique, assignments, knowing what to do,” Losoya said about what they must focus on to have success on Saturday. “We’re going to come to play, they got some big dudes upfront and we just got to match their level and we got to bring it to them.

“They’re pretty sound, they play a lot like Pac-12 teams we’ve seen, nothing too fancy it’s kind of just one-on-one matchups, who’s going to win.”

Cabral has his own opinion on that second part, saying Big Ten teams and Pac-12 teams are much different.

“I’m really looking forward to going and playing against them again, just because it is such a difference from playing the Big Ten from the Pac-12,” Cabral said. “I just love being able to play other teams that you’re not going to see very often.”

Even if Cabral relishes the opportunity, this will be a brutal welcome to power-five college football for Bell, West and any other freshman who may have to enter the game if the the physical element takes its toll. For what it’s worth, Christensen has liked what he’s seen from the freshmen, both those who’ve played and those who haven’t yet.

“I’m really, really pleased with the progress of the kids we signed,” Christensen said. “We signed five guys last year and without a doubt, every single one of those guys are going to play here.”

He also added that the seniors have been crucial to helping bring them along, especially in the case of guys like West and Lovell who are being thrown in with the sharks, so to speak, right out of the gate.

“They’re great at helping the young guys,” Christensen commented. “They’re good leaders, they want those kids to have success and they’re counting on them to play. They’re giving great effort, they practice well, they perform pretty well. Nobody’s played great, so we’ve got to keep working on that, but they’re getting better each week also.”

“Just making them understand how they’re going to play,” Cabral said about how he helps the younger guys. “It’s one thing to watch it on tape, but it’s a whole different thing to feel it in a game. So, being able to talk to them like ‘hey, this is what you’re going to have to do, you’re going to have to be on top of everything,’ and just getting them prepared as much as we can because at some point they got to grow up too and figure out how it’s going to be played.

“You’re going to try and give them as much advice as you can just because you don’t want to see the guy next to you fail, you want to see them succeed because if he’s succeeding, then the whole group’s going to succeed. So, having the whole group be on the same page, it’s poetry in motion at that point.”

There’s a lot of unknowns for the offensive line, one of the biggest ones being if they’ll be able to make it through this whole game without injury. If the unit can manage that, the seniors can play up to their full potential and the freshmen can heed even some of the guidance from their elder teammates, then it’s possible this unit can avoid being a liability in the season’s first true test.

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