Chasing expectations: Lucas reflects on his career, envisions his future
Chase Lucas sticks out his right arm and averts the media’s attention across the Arizona State dining hall. As the contingent follows the order of Lucas’ pointed-out index finger, the Arizona State cornerback continues to narrate.
The quartet of media members fixate their eyes onto Lucas’ grandparents, sitting together at a dining table decked out in Arizona State apparel.
They’re waiting for their grandson to finish talking at ASU’s Spring Football Media Day so they can take him out to lunch, a regular occurrence, Lucas said. The redshirt junior has already been going for almost 40 minutes, but he doesn’t mind having them wait a little longer.
He has a lot to say.
The Chandler, Arizona native is entering his fourth season in Tempe, treating it like what it is: one that has the potential to make him a lot of money. After transitioning from a high school running back, Lucas has shown the potential to be a first-round NFL Draft pick, a notion backed up by ASU coaches and national media alike.
Behind 59 tackles and a 54.9 completion percentage against in 2017, he was named a USA Today Freshman All-American. Then, in what was supposed to be his breakout season under new head coach Herm Edwards, Lucas’ numbers largely flatlined.
He’s honest about it, though. With the media, with his coaches, with himself. Lucas doesn’t sugarcoat his shortcomings or mistakes, he accepts them and is eager to learn. That’s, in a small part, why he enjoys the influx of time he’s able to spend with his grandparents, for the ability to soak up their experiences and knowledge.
“Those are my best friends. I see them three times a week,” Lucas said. “Those people have wisdom, they’ve seen a lot of years.”
Gaining his Freedom
There was a reason Lucas wasn’t incredibly eager to depart his interview table. He had some stuff to get off his chest.
“You want to talk about Graham? I’ll sit here for seven hours,” Lucas said as quarterback Dillon Sterling-Cole pulled up a seat and tried to interrupt him.
Graham is former ASU coach Todd Graham, the head man in Tempe during Lucas’ freshman and redshirt freshman seasons. A strict coach who puts a high value on discipline, freedom and expression weren’t often visible in a Graham-led locker room.
At times, Lucas said, he felt “caged in.”
“I had no voice on the field,” Lucas said. “I had no voice in my own head. I’ll never forget, I waved my finger like this (as he moved his index finger back and forth) and he took me out of the game.”
When Lucas was named a USA Today All-American and All-Pac-12 Second-Team cornerback (the only underclassman honored), Graham, who by then had already been fired but stayed on to coach ASU in the Sun Bowl, told Lucas, according to the cornerback, “You’re Welcome.” Over a year later, he’s still seething with frustration and anger.
The animosity towards his former coach grew so profound, even before that, that Lucas admitted if Graham stayed at ASU, he intended to transfer.
“No exaggeration, I was gone,” Lucas said. “I was getting ready to get my release papers and everything and then they said that Graham got fired and I was like, ‘Well… Let’s see who comes in.”
In brash terms, the former Chandler High School star said that had Vice President of University Athletics Ray Anderson not fired Graham just a day after he knocked off Arizona, he wasn't going to be the only one leaving Tempe.
Then the news came down that Herm Edwards would be Arizona State’s next head coach. It rattled through the sports world, greeted by scorn and mockery by nearly everyone. Lucas, though, couldn’t have been more jubilant.
Edwards, a former NFL defensive back, was the perfect man Lucas’ needed to learn from. But he offered the youngster much more than a subject matter expert, he handed Lucas freedom, the ability to be himself and not have to worry about repercussions for doing so.
It was a dream. Almost one that was too good.
He finally had the freedom he so desired in college, and nearly like any power-hungry person who finally gain some, Lucas wanted to see how much freedom he really had.
So he started waving his finger. He grew ultra-animated after just about anything good happened on the field. He fired bold statements to the media. And he trash talked … a lot.
“I don’t talk like that, I don’t mean to talk like that,” Lucas said. “It was just the fact that I was caged in for so long that I had no voice. When I finally got out there, I felt like, ‘OK, I’m free. Let me try some things. Let me see how I really am.’
“And I found out that’s not the person I am. I’m not that kind of s--t-talker, none of that. I’m changing my strategy.”
Reality Check
A dejected Lucas boarded the Arizona State plane nearly an hour after the Sun Devils’ 28-21 loss at Colorado, quickly tossing his head into a pillow. After a second, he turned on his phone and checked Twitter.
He searched his name only to discover what he likely anticipated to find. The whirlwind of criticism shot at him as he continued to scroll, reading each tweet one-by-one. “Can we finally agree Chase Lucas is the most overrated ASU player,” one read.
Lucas went through and liked each tweet individually. He knew he had a rough showing, the least he could do was try and use the criticism for motivation.
The Chandler native gave up six receptions for 120 yards (most of which came while covering the Buffaloes’ dynamic wide receiver Laviska Shenault,) missing three tackles in the process as he recorded his second-lowest Pro Football Focus defensive grade of the season.
“That was hard,” Lucas said in reference to that contest. “I still have dreams about it, I swear to God. Shenault, he’s a great athlete, a great receiver, but he shouldn’t have beat me like that. I know that and everybody else knows that.
“I watch that game probably once a week and try to figure out, ‘What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong?’ And I figured it out and I’ll be seeing him again.”
Lucas grows angry talking about the game, mad at himself for allowing that Saturday afternoon in October to define him. He becomes curious at the same time. What would my future be without that game?
There were rumblings before the year that, with a great season, Lucas may have been able to join his high school teammate N’Keal Harry in declaring early for the NFL Draft. It was a long shot, no doubt, but the possibility was there.
His performance in that Colorado game shattered that dream.
“After the first game, everybody was pumping me up, ‘Oh, he’s going to be a first-round pick.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Lucas said. “After that Colorado game, I knew it. I was not ready. I needed another year. I needed a reality check.”
The starting ASU cornerback finished the season with 54 tackles, four pass breakups, and three interceptions while allowing over 60 percent of the passes thrown his way to be completed. He hasn’t set any personal goals for himself this season other than saying he’s trying for “some ridiculous numbers.”
Other people envision the same thing.
After ASU’s season ended with a 31-20 loss to Fresno State in the Las Vegas Bowl, Lucas got a text from former ASU defensive back and current ASU radio sideline reporter Jordan Simone, whose number wasn’t even saved in Lucas’ phone.
“N’Keal is gone, you’re the man now,” Simone’s text read.
“I looked up to him crazy before I got to college,” Lucas said of Simone. “Seeing that, I smiled at it and went to work.”
Living up to Expectations
For the last year, it seems, the first-round pick notion that Edwards and cornerbacks coach Tony White have backed up has built up this pile of expectations for Lucas that seems nearly impossible to live up to.
He agrees, his standards are high.
But then Lucas looks to his right, pointing down the long cafeteria-style table to Shaun Aguano, his former high school coach at Chandler who was recently hired as the Sun Devils’ running backs coach.
“He set the standards high. That man right there,” Lucas said while looking at Aguano. “He said, ‘It’s either you’re going to be the best or you’re going to fail.’” Either you’re going to be (former Chandler and current NFL quarterback) Brett Hundley or you’re going to be one of the bums that come back to the games talking about what I could have done.”
College offers started to roll in for Lucas his sophomore year at Chandler. So too did a warning from Aguano that if he didn’t continue to push and work hard, Lucas would start to drop.
Overlooking his coach’s warning, Lucas slacked off and regressed his junior year only to come back around his senior season before committing to ASU.
“I’ve always wanted to be at the highest standard do I know if I fail, I failed on my own,” Lucas said. “It was nobody else, it was me.”
Determined to not let that happen, Lucas noted that he’s been in the Arizona State facilities nearly every day since the Sun Devils season ended in mid-December.
He wants to be prepared for the season that could change his life. No more problems with coaches. No more toggling with what he can get away with. No more trash-talking on the field. There’s too much at stake.
Lucas quickly thinks back to a quote former ASU defensive backs coach TJ Rushing told him, one that still sticks with him years later.
“Football feeds the family.”
“That’s why I was thinking about transferring,” Lucas said. “I was like, ‘I’m not going to be able to do what I need to do here so I’ve got to get out. My grandparents, I did not want to leave them, at all. They’ve been here for me since I was a kid, him (pointing to Sterling-Cole,) everybody.
“But that has nothing to do with what I had to do for myself.”
Those worries are in the past, it’s all in the past. Lucas’ mind is on the present, knowing what that could mean for his future.
Just minutes before he heads over to his grandparents’ table so they can go to lunch, someone asks the cornerback what people can expect from Chase Lucas this year. He repeats the question to himself, pausing for almost 10 seconds as he thinks.
“Just focus,” he said. “I’m going to be really focused. I’ve been really focused. After that bowl game, I’ve been really focused … getting on my grind, doing what I need to do. Just going to work.
“I want this to be my last year.”
