Dillingham candid with self-criticism, dialing back emotional component
Following each postgame press conference after an Arizona State football game, the most common sentiment from head coach Kenny Dillingham is the number of things that he has to improve on as a head coach. In his first year, almost everything about being a head coach was new to him, and he was open about recognizing where he went wrong during a game.
Apparently, he isn’t the only one that heavily critiques his work.
“My wife is my hardest critic,” Dillingham said.
Like Kenny, Briana Dillingham attended ASU; she was a cheerleader when the Arizona State coach attended and was part of the football staff, and is just as competitive about football as her husband is, so losing is as unacceptable to her as it is to Kenny.
“She’s a Sun Devil, so she’s always asking, ‘What happened on this? What happened to this? Why did you go for it? What does this? Why this?” Dillingham said with a huge smile on his face. “She is my toughest critic, and that’s what makes us work is her passion for the game, and she’s passionate about the game.”
Dillingham’s open criticism of his own decisions and choices has become one of the most refreshing things about his tenure. Although ASU is still losing most of their games – with all three losses coming by multiple possessions – belief in the program seems to be in a much better place than it was a year ago, even though the Sun Devils are 1-3 for the second consecutive year for the first time since 1955-56.
He is open about 2023 being a growth year. Wins and losses don’t even mean as much due to the postseason ban, so Dillingham has approached every practice and game as a chance to get better.
“I think our guys realize we have the ability, the belief factor that they know that we can go out there and win football games,” Dillingham said after the game against USC. “It doesn’t matter how we start. Like, what’s the record matter this year anyway? It doesn’t matter. It is about getting better.”
Despite the loss against USC, ASU showed significant growth from the disaster that was the Fresno State game. Against the No. 5 team in the country and Dillingham calling plays, the ASU offense looked the best it had all year. A combination of a more aggressive run game along with a variety of trick plays resulted in the Sun Devils’ top-scoring game of the year, even leaving a good chunk of points on the board.
It was clear that the ASU offense had finally found some sort of rhythm, especially in the first half. The Sun Devils scored on three straight possessions for the first time all season and were within one score of one of the best teams in the country. Yet, in the second half, ASU turned the ball over twice and got sacked seven times. Dillingham naturally took the blame for the drop in performance.
“I thought there was a few emotional calls,” Dillingham admitted. “I kind of mentioned it after the game. I felt it where I rode the wave of the emotions, and I responded with an emotion. Not as sound of a response as I would like, so I would like to have a few calls back.”
ASU, though, definitely got better, the metric Dillingham is looking for week to week, but he also knows there is a difference between playing better and playing well.
“The execution was average,” he commented. “We’re going to be better, and that’s what I told our guys. We played a lot better, but there is a difference between playing better and playing good. You can’t be satisfied with just mediocrity. Were we drastically improved because the growth was there? Yes. But better is nowhere to be confused with good, and we’ve got a long way to go.”
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With such a young head coach and a relatively young team, mistakes are bound to happen. And while ASU has been struggling in the turnover department, the Sun Devils have been one of the best teams in the country at not committing penalties. Despite missing multiple offensive linemen and cycling through four different quarterbacks through four games, Arizona State has tallied the fewest penalties in the Pac-12 with 19 or a 4.75 average of penalties per game. This is a far cry from ranking second to last in the conference in 2022 with a 7.3 average.
The figure looks even better when you remove a sloppy second half against Southern Utah. Coming out of the nearly three-hour lightning delay, ASU committed eight penalties in the second half and has committed just 11 penalties across the remaining seven halves of football played this season.
“Other than the second half in week one, we have been a fairly disciplined team,” Dillingham noted. “Most of them are aggressive penalties. We haven’t jumped offside very many times. Now, we haven’t played on the road yet, so we’ll see what happens. We haven’t jumped offside on defense. We haven’t had many stupid personal foul penalties. We have been playing a brand of football that can win from that standpoint.”
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With ASU taking to the road for the first time this season, facing Cal next week, it will mark the first test of the team’s discipline in front of an opposing crowd. Cal is coming off a 59-32 road defeat to No.7 Washington, but Dillingham is certainly not overlooking this conference foe.
“I don’t think that game is any reflection of the defense,” Dillingham said. “Go back two games ago, and I believe they gave up 14 points to Auburn. This is a defense that limits explosive plays and is elite sound. If you hurt yourself, you’re not going to move the football, and it’s an offense that’s explosive, and you saw that against UW.
“I have the utmost respect for (head) coach (Justin) Wilcox. They are one of the most sound defenses in the entire country. You have to physically beat this team. We’re going on the road to play a defense that is elatedly sound in what they do. They’re gonna make you earn everything you get.”
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