A little over five hours after the Oklahoma State game had wrapped up, Kenny Dillingham could not sleep. He could not stop thinking about the first loss of his young college career. Dillingham had already spent all night breaking down the game by watching several times, but getting a normal shut-eye session evaded him.
“I hate losing,” Dillingham said. “I don’t sleep. I was up until 4 am. I watched the game three times before I closed my eyes for 45 minutes. I don’t sleep. If I lose, I just can’t do it.”
Winning is everything to Dillingham. It is obvious that he embodies the saying, ‘I hate losing more than I love winning.’ So whenever a contest ends up in the loss column, fixing as many mistakes as possible for the next game is at the top of his priority list. However, goes about it in an extremely creative way.
Every week, Dillingham –and his staff and players– go through all of the plays from the week before and are told to choose their favorite mistake from the game.
“We show things on the board in terms of things we can improve on,” Dillingham remarked. “What’s your favorite mistake? Right, I show my mistakes. I think it’s really important for people to know nobody’s perfect, coaches included. We’re all in this together. And I show my mistakes, I show our staff’s mistakes, I show (players) their mistakes, and I show how we can get better.
“It’s all about taking ownership. It’s Extreme ownership.”
Dillingham was soon asked what his favorite mistake from the previous game was, and his answer gave an insight into how adapting from offensive coordinator to head coach has been challenging for the 33-year-old. The mistake came with 3:38 left in the third quarter on a third-and-six. Quarterback Jaden Rashada dropped back and found running back DeCarlos Brooks for just a one-yard gain, forcing ASU to punt.
Identifying something he liked in the pre-snap coverage, Dillingham screamed into his headset, ‘Bubble, Bubble, Bubble,’ wanting a bubble screen to be called. However, Bubble meant something completely different in the playbook, but since it was a direction from the head coach, they ran the play and were forced to punt.
“I’m not calling the plays (offensive coordinator) coach Baldwin is, and I think he’s doing a good job,” Dillingham noted. “I wanted to throw a bubble. I saw it. I liked it. Well, my mind said the wrong word. And because I’m the head coach, they ran it. So we wasted a play on third down. It’s 100 percent my fault for wasting a drive on me; I got to do better. So I’m going to put my mic up and kind of be quiet at times.”
The error came at a period of the game when ASU was struggling on offense. The movement and running game that was working in the first half was not working in the second half, and Dillingham was looking to adapt. Against the Cowboys’ three-high safety look, the Sun Devils worked to move the ball on the ground.
One of the reasons for the lack of movement running the ball could be attributed to the lack of depth currently on the offensive line. Graduate offensive lineman Emmit Bohle went down on the game's first drive, joining five other ASU offensive linemen who didn’t suit up last Saturday or are playing through injury.
On Monday, Dillingham announced that Bohle will be out the remainder of the season with a lower leg injury. ASU’s head coach did not have an injury update on redshirt junior offensive lineman Cade Briggs or junior offensive lineman Isaia Glass, who didn’t dress for the Oklahoma State game. Therefore, the Sun Devils will need to shuffle around several players on the front five for at least the next few weeks.
“We’re gonna adapt some things. We’re going to be a little bit different,” Dillingham said, “Because right now what we’re doing, we got to be a little bit different, especially with some injuries, upfront, we got to be a little different. But at the same token, we’re going to trust our process, and we’re going to adapt to the personnel we have. That’s the high school coach in me. We’re going to press along and do whatever we can to win this football game.”
Dillingham announced that redshirt sophomore and Notre Dame quarterback transfer Drew Pyne would be available for this week’s game as he completed his rehab from the hamstring injury he sustained at Camp Tontozona. On Saturday, fans saw the three-quarterback system that Oklahoma State was employing, but it’s an approach that Dillingham indicated would not take place in Tempe.
“I don’t believe in using multiple quarterbacks unless there is an advantage of some sort to use multiple quarterbacks,” Dillingham commented.
Two games into his college career, Rashada has thrown for 403 yards with three touchdowns and one interception, completing 56.7 percent of his passes. Dillingham left no doubt as to whether the true freshman will get the nod again versus Fresno State.
“Jaden has done such a phenomenal job,” Dillingham stated. “If you watch him play the football games, he has one turnover in two games. He steps up in the pocket, gets hit in the face, and delivers throws. The growth he’s made in those two games is incredible. Absolutely incredible. So I really could not be more pleased with how he’s played.
“Our staff, we’ve got to be able to adapt to the situation we’re in at other positions, adapt, change and be creative. But I’ve been so pleased with how Jaden has played. There’s no doubt his future is extremely, extremely, extremely bright. “This (offensive problems) has nothing to do with the quarterback. This is a unit that we have to figure out.
“My wife always talks about it. Truffle is elite, but you can’t put truffle in everything. So you’ve got to find a way. You may have an elite guy at some place, but the truffle may not make it better because the recipe is different now because you don’t have these other ingredients.”
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