If there’s one thing ASU's head coach Herm Edwards has prided ASU throughout his tenure in Tempe, it’s been competitiveness. The Sun Devils have not suffered blowout losses, and have often put themselves in a position to tie or win the game in the fourth quarter.

That was up until last week though when they traveled to UCLA. Last Saturday's game was all but over by halftime.

Sitting at the podium Tuesday afternoon, with three days of reflection behind him, Edwards seemed to feel that there was something amiss with his football team. When they were clicking on all cylinders -- a 5-1 record and holding their destiny in the Pac-12 South -- the Devils had the proverbial ‘It’ factor.

They had swagger. They had energy. They had confidence -- yet, perhaps too much. Over the last two contests -- losses to Utah and UCLA -- ASU’s youth caught up with them. Careless penalties started occurring once every drive instead of once a game. As Edwards stated each of the last two games, ASU was playing with emotion.

The narrative he offered is that the Sun Devils are young. This season, nearly 30 redshirt or true freshmen have seen the field. To expect them to not commit a good deal of mistakes would be naive -- but the transgressions seem to only start after ASU had enjoyed success, which raises more questions about how the Devils’ young roster handles prosperity.

“When you have a young team like this, there’s a lot of energy when you’re 5-1,” Edwards said. “When you’re 5-3, you’ve lost two games in a row, that’s not a lot of fun. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with losing?”

That’s what Edwards wants to determine during this bye week.

Edwards acknowledges the over-emotional play of team, hopes they can build off fourth-quarter performance

There’s not much fun in returning home, as several Sun Devils who hail from Southern California did on Saturday, only to be losing a football game by 32 points in the final quarter.

Nonetheless, this was the case for ASU, however, even though the team battled back to cut the final score's deficit to an almost respectable 42-32 loss.

With this past weekend’s debacle at The Rose Bowl being merely a continuation of what started in the loss at Utah- a slow and painful withering of the Sun Devils hopes to play in a Pac-12 championship- this bye week gives players and coaches another chance at a true gut check process ahead of a grueling final four games to close the 2019 regular season.

“I think the emotion of the team,” Edwards responded to a question about the most unpleasant surprise that has arisen over the last two games. “We were pretty calm, going into the Utah game we were the least penalized team, I think, in the Pac-12.

“Then all of a sudden this emotion kind of reared its head for some reason, and that’s not good. I don’t believe in that, I just believe that you can be passionate but you can’t play emotional, because when you do that you make errors. That’s what’s kind of caught me a little bit by surprise.

“Some of it has to do with youth. But then again, some of the guys were older guys, you know, and you expect those guys to be more like- ‘wait a minute?’ So, it’s just a phase we’re going through, and when you’re building a program, like we’re doing, and you have so many young guys, you never know what’s going to happen, you just don’t.

“I think it’s a learning thing for me as well, to handle all that and to figure out how do I handle this, and hopefully that doesn’t rear its head anymore- we can’t have fouls.”

Edwards went on to explain how his team dug itself into such a deep hole early in last Saturday’s game against the Bruins, saying the Sun Devils didn’t play good enough defense, and when they did, silly penalties allowed UCLA to continue marching down the field.

He went on to talk about how in such a blowout game, it was at the very least a good sign that the team tried to rally in the last 10 or so minutes instead of just throw in the towel. The latter would’ve been easy to do in a contest where ASU’s fate was already sealed, but Edwards is hoping the Sun Devils build on that fight they did show at the end.

“We got to help them as coaches,” Edwards commented. “But then eventually, they’ve got to help each other. Now I will say this; the middle of the fourth quarter, I saw that energy kind of come back. I turn around and go, ‘oh, that’s those guys,’ right?

“Can you imagine if we did that at the beginning of the game, it would’ve been a nice, competitive football game. But early it was not very competitive. We were behind, and then (our players) had to make a decision: is this going to be like really, really bad, or was this going to be like, ‘Hey man, let’s get back in this and see if there’s enough time on the clock, maybe we can get back in this.’

“To their credit, on both sides of the ball, they did that. That’s a good sign. It’s bad- you didn’t win, but that’s a good sign. We got to build on that, hopefully we will.”

The one-week hiatus is coming at just the right time for Arizona State

After suffering their first back-to-back losses of the season, Arizona State’s second bye week couldn’t have come at a better time for the Sun Devils.

During the matchup, the Sun Devils experienced several injuries making the bye week one of rest and recovery for head coach Herm Edwards’ team.

“Comes at a good time for us for a lot of reasons,” Edwards admitted of the bye week. “Some guys are a little bit nicked and beat up and that always helps you. Just try and regroup now going down the stretch of the next four games. Get some things sorted out offensively, defense, special teams. That’s probably the most important thing.”

Alongside with recovering the team’s starting players, the bye week also allows Edwards and his coaching staff to mix things up in practice.

This includes taking a longer look at the team’s younger players that are either on the scout team or listed in the second or third-string units that may not have received ample playing time, if any, throughout the year.

“We had a period for a lot of the guys that don’t play a lot at practice today,” Edwards stated. “We got a look at a bunch of young guys that haven’t played a lot on either side of the ball. Attributed one period, about 20 minutes to those guys which I thought that was a good idea. Make sure we’re bringing those guys along ─ we’ll do that for the next three days.”

This evaluation process is essential for the young players given that just four games remain in the season. The significance of this figure is due to the fact that it is the maximum amount of games freshmen can play in without forgoing their redshirt year.

For Arizona State, some freshmen have already exceeded their four-game limit and played in all eight games such as quarterback Jayden Daniels, but there are plenty of players who are still eligible to redshirt.

These redshirts will be important for a team that is set to have a limited number of seniors next year due to the overall youth of the Sun Devils.

"I was visiting with (linebackers coach Antonio Pierce) and I want to say next year we’re only going to have maybe five seniors on this football team. The rest will be juniors, sophomores and then the freshman so we’re going to be pretty young. The junior guys will really be the older guys because there won’t be that many seniors.

"We’re heading in the right direction on what we want to do so we just have to figure out what guys we’re going to redshirt and what guys will we leave on the team to play right through."

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