On Monday, Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham spoke in front of the media for the first time after ASU’s bye week, and it was clear he spent a lot of this hiatus breaking down his team’s first six games. The downtime was a chance to self-scout his team as he continued to mention the same shortcomings he pointed out earlier in the year: Explosive plays on both sides of the ball.
“We’re going to try some other things this week to change it because you’re not going to win many football games if you can’t create explosives and specifically if you can’t run the ball or create explosive runs in any way, shape, or form,” Dillingham said. “That limits you to true drop back, and if you’re true drop back, you better be ready to be able to pass protect and throw the ball down the field and drop back. We’re really looking at those explosive plays and how we can create that without necessarily holding on to the ball.”
ASU’s largest gain on the ground this year was an 18-yard run by junior running back Cam Skattebo in his breakout game against USC. Dillingham and his staff would love nothing more to ensure that such plays aren’t an aberration this season. Against Cal and Colorado, he tried to combat that shortcoming as he showcased a formation that lined up graduate receivers Gio Sanders and Melquan Stovall and junior receiver Elijah Badger in the backfield.
“Some of those guys are our most explosive players, so we’re trying to put them in different spots to create the best one-on-one advantages we can create,” Dillingham remarked. “If a team is going to treat one of our wideouts as a running back and play the same coverages, the same match principle defense, and now they’re WILL linebacker or their defensive end has to cover a wideout in the passing game, which we’ve gotten a few times. That’s a big advantage play for us.”
Dillingham added that those real estate-consuming plays have completely shifted over the years in college football. In the past, there used to be a lot of quarterback-designed runs, yet now the game has shifted into a new era that relies on a lot of the same basic plays for each team. He commented that it is his job to find out how to run those plays creatively.
“If I go back to look at eight years ago, every defense is gonna play tight quarters, and your explosive plays are going to be some sort of play action posts,” Dillingham described. “It was a tight quarters game because it was a quarterback run-driven game at that point. While the game has evolved past that, and teams have become a little bit more significantly more one-high (safety) again because the quarterback run game is not as prevalent in college football as it was eight years ago.
“I usually look for creative ways to run screens, creative ways to run throwbacks, creative ways to scheme up open people, because at the end of the day, if you face a post safety defense, everybody’s gonna run post wheel. If you face a quarters team, everybody’s gonna run post-climb. That is everywhere in college football. If those plays aren’t creating your explosives now, how do you do that, creating leverages and splits and motions to create the leverages around the same thing? That’s what makes coaches really good.”
One team that has executed that type of creative vision on offense is ASU’s next opponent, No. 5 ranked Washington. The Huskies have been the premier offensive team in college football and are coming off of a huge win over Oregon that extended their winning streak to 13 games over the last two seasons. And this week provides them a chance to exact revenge on the team that handed them their last loss.
Last year’s 45-38 home win over the Huskies was the clear highlight of the season for the Sun Devils. It was the first time the ASU fans got an extended look at current junior quarterback Trenton Bourguet, and he delivered in upsetting the then-no.8 team in the nation by throwing for 183 yards and three touchdowns. Nonetheless, the game-changing aspects were the rushing game that averaged just under five yards per carry and the timely stops by the defense that flipped the game on its head.
“I told the guys today it was the pick-six,” Dillingham noted regarding the play that tilted the scales. “If you want to win games like this, you have to be the team that has the pick six on your side. There was a drive in the second half where they stopped them on a fourth and one on the minus 28 minus 32. They stopped Washington when they went for an aggressive fourth-and-one call. They won those two downs. And those two downs equated to 14 points. That’s the football game.”
This year’s Washington has shown that they are arguably already a better team this year than the 2022 version. Senior quarterback Michael Penix Jr. is currently the favorite for the Heisman as he leads an offense that ranks third in the country in points per game (44.3) and yards per game (543.7). The Huskies are averaging 8.4 yards per play, putting themselves in a great position to convert first downs. Dillingham devoted the majority of his press conference to describing what makes this offense so dangerous.
“Motions, shifts, eye candy, they do the same stuff, and they present it a bunch of different ways,” Dillingham explained. “They do a really good job. Their offensive coordinator and their head coach they’ve been together for a long time. And they do a really, really good job creating leverages in the passing game with split variations.
“Their offensive line is good, and that helps. When your offensive line can pass protect for you on a consistent basis, and you can go through your third, fourth, and fifth reads on a consistent basis, you’re going to be a good passing team when you combine that with the weapons they have and the scheme they have.
“I would say this is one of the rare teams that has a difficult scheme with good players and a great quarterback. Not many times do you have to play all three; usually, you get to play, you know, a simple scheme, and we’re going to beat you through our players. Very rarely do you have to play a team that is super well coached with great players that use advantage plays, which is kudos to them.”
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If the Sun Devils will attempt to pull off the miracle upset for the second year in a row, they will need the long list of injured players to shrink down. Dillingham feels that the bye week did help quite a bit in that department.
Dillingham said he hoped that junior offensive linemen Cade Briggs and Isaia Glass and junior running back DeCarlos Brooks would be available for this week, although the latter may be only ready for the Washington State game at home on October 28. Senior offensive lineman Sione Finau is still questionable. On the defensive side, senior defensive back Jordan Clark was helped greatly by the bye week and ‘should be good’ this weekend.
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