Dual Cal QBs pose a formidbale challenge in ASU’s first road test
Not often do you see a Power Five college football team wait to play its first road game of the season until the 30th of September. Yet, that’s the situation Arizona State finds itself in. Following its 1-3 start at Mountain America Stadium, the Sun Devils now get set for their first clash away from the desert, heading up to Berkley for a matchup with Cal (2-2) come Saturday afternoon.
While the Golden Bears’ recent history doesn’t offer much in terms of recent success (two winning seasons since 2016), fortunes seem to be turning around in Northern California. Their 2-2 mark isn’t getting them anywhere near the Top 25, but competing with a college football blue-blood like Auburn and hanging 32 points on Washington, the No. 9 team in the country a week ago, may show signs of a brighter future for Justin Wilcox’s program.
One of the ways they’ve been able to steady the ship comes in their quarterback room. Much like Oklahoma State previously, Cal utilizes multiple quarterbacks and will stagger their usage throughout the game to confuse the opponent. This formula was one that equated to a loss for Arizona State against the multi-QB system used by Oklahoma State when they came into Tempe and defeated the Sun Devils 27-15 back in Week 2. As for Cal, the difference in their system comes in the diversity of the kinds of quarterbacks they have and how they cater to them.
“They really do try to mold their offense around both quarterbacks,” Arizona State defensive coordinator Brian Ward said Wednesday. “You really gotta have, not necessarily different plans for them, but different answers for them. They’re both very different players. I just gotta be aware when one’s in the game, or both are in the game at the same time.”
The two signal-callers in question at Cal are NC State transfer Ben Finley and TCU transfer Sam Jackson V. For the season, Finley has logged 79 passing attempts in comparison to Jackson’s 68, and while Finley has the edge in passing yards, Jackson paces the room in touchdowns. Finley’s big arm and Jackson’s mobility give the Golden Bears the ability to change the identity of their offense and flip field position in a hurry, something ASU head coach Kenny Dillingham emphasized as an area of attention.
“They’re explosive,” Dillingham noted. “They wanna throw the ball vertically down the field, and they wanna attack vertically. They wanna be a run-play-action football team. So, I think their tempo is what we have to control. When you play a team like this, when they get into a rhythm, that’s when the drills we’ve done were big play; you’ve gotta sprint down the field and stop them. When they get into a rhythm is when they’re at their best. So we got to stop early downs. We got to stop the first, first down drive; we got to stop the rhythm of the of the offense. And if we stopped the rhythm, if we keep them in second and longs, not second and mediums, we can throw them kind of out of what they’d like to be.”
“They like to run the football a lot,” ASU linebacker Tate Romney added. “They have a very elusive quarterback, number five. The linebacker’s first responsibility is to stop the run. We’re working towards it to plug up the run this week. That’d help the defense a lot, make them a one-dimensional offense.”
While they face a more complicated offense this Saturday, ASU is taking away the lessons from last week’s opponent to help them better prepare going forward. Having gone toe-to-toe with the nation’s top-scoring offense in USC, Brian Ward thinks that his unit has now seen the standard and can only play up to it from here on out.
“Last week was really kind of a litmus test to see where we were at,” Ward noted. “There were times when we did a great job keeping the ball in front of us. We were opportunistic in certain situations. Just being familiar with that offense from last year, they had two weeks to prepare for us, and they broke a lot of tendencies. There are probably three things in that game they came in with completely different looks, and we didn’t get into the right check or the right look, and it led to touchdowns. It was a litmus test of how we can play and, who we could play with, and where we’re at.”
“We’re starting to pick it up now,” Romney added. “We’re starting to really click and come together. Defense and offense together starting to pick up off each other a little more.”
What also helps with going against the best is being more familiar with the first-year scheme employed by Ward.
I keep saying it every week: I think the more our guys are getting comfortable within the system and doing the same things and preparing the way we do each week,” Ward said. “That extra half-step we get with the familiarity of doing what we do week-in, week-out and just trying to really focus on those fundamentals.”
Not only from an offensive standpoint can Cal be dangerous, but a strong, fundamental-driven defense can cause problems as well, as they showed against Auburn.
“These guys are so sound,” Dillingham remarked. “I think their coaches do a phenomenal job defensively, and they’ve been there for a while. Everything is in their arsenal, and they know exactly what their counter-punches are. They know if they’re getting this, they’re gonna counter with this. They do a great job of not doing it at halftime. They counter-punch mid-drive.
“So if you think you’re gonna get them with something, and you’re just gonna keep rolling it out the whole drive, you’re delusional. You gotta be ready for their counter. I think that’s the chess match of this week.”
Taking his team on the road for the first time, Dillingham is challenging his players not only to step up to the occasion against an improving opponent on their home field but on the visitors’ sideline as well. With this contest marking the first one away from Tempe in 2023, along with the continued injury concerns, ASU’s head coach preached the importance of both the coach and the player having their own separate roles in getting ready for Saturday.
“We’re not able to get as many reps as we have the past few weeks just because we’re still banged up a bit more,” Dillingham explained. “But it’s part of it. So we will go a little bit more walk tempo, a little bit more jog through, but I thought the guys were locked in and just challenged the guys that if you can’t get physical reps, and you plan on playing Saturday, because we have to get your body right, or just being smart, you have to go do some extra stuff. We can be a part of a coaching staff; you got to do it on your own, and we can’t monitor. We ask you to do it; you got to go do it.”
“It’s next man up,” Romney stated. “You gotta play with who you have. You gotta use what resources you have. Everybody has to come together and step up. It’s a great opportunity; it gives other people opportunities. Just gotta work together with it.”
As for the transition to the away game, Romney says it’ll be refreshing for the team more than anything and that it’ll only promote focus and determination within.
“It’s a good change up,” Romney said. “I like road games. They’re fun; you get to travel with the team and stuff. Going to play at someone else’s field is a fun opportunity. You have to look inward. The atmosphere doesn’t matter.””
“I think the focus level, they see a little bit of success,” Dillingham commented. “It’s human nature, when you taste success, that you want more bite. So I definitely think they've built upon that now."
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