Herm Edwards doesn’t know what he has yet in the 2019 Sun Devils. He has an idea, but it’s just an idea. Throughout his coaching career, he’s learned that a season opener is either a blessing or a reality check.

Your assumption was either on point ... or there’s a bit of work to do. Thursday night against Kent State, Edwards is hoping for the former. He’s hoping to start 1-0, to find some clarity in personnel questions and, most importantly, stay in the hunt.

“I think a successful season for me is, you’ve got to win,” Edwards said. “You want to be in the hunt. We were in the hunt last year and it felt good coming down the stretch. We just couldn’t win five in a row. If you say we can do that again this year I’m saying, ‘I’m in man. I’m in for all of that.’”

Edwards stayed away from attaching a win-total goal to his season talk. He always has. He expects and prepares to win every game. Placing a win total as a declaration of a successful or unsuccessful season is, in a sense, admitting that if that goal is reached or becomes unattainable, the rest of the season is a waste.

“I’m not one of those coaches that say, ‘Well if we win this many games.’ When I say that to a team I’ll stop coaching,” Edwards said. “I’ll flat stop coaching. I just think you prepare every week to win a football game and that’s what it is to me.”

The Sun Devils want to win as many games as it takes to put them in Pasadena on January 1. If that’s 11, it’s 11. If it’s nine, it’s nine. Throughout it all, Edwards will be calm. He’ll be the stoic figure amongst the chaos that is a college football sideline.

And he’ll do that because there needs to be consistency. No matter the circumstances surrounding their return to the sidelines, Edwards needs his players to run off the field each and every series and know their head coach will be the same.

“Somebody has to be in control over there and make sure the players understand we’re going to adjust on the sideline and we’re going to have to adjust at halftime as well,” Edwards said. “I won’t panic. I’ll just coach. And that’s what I do. I just coach. And I don’t panic and I think the players understand that.”

Players and coaches alike ready and eager for games to begin; Edwards emphasizes the importance of playing young guys and tackling early in the season

After eight months of practicing, conditioning and other offseason work, Edwards made it clear that everyone in the building is excited and ready to start game action in just three days.

“Players are tired of practicing against each other, they want to just go play a game,” Edwards said. “I think as coaches, you want to play a game as well, find out a lot about yourself the next couple weeks, what type of football team you are, and then from there you get to adjust and then just figure out what you can do well and play.”

Just like a season ago, Edwards expects a number of freshmen to see the field right away, reminding everyone of the long-term value he puts on getting younger guys game experience. He believes there are several freshmen who will get significant playing time throughout the season as well, which means a lot of guys won’t be using their redshirt, even with the new rule that allows playing in up to four games and maintaining redshirt status.

“Some of those guys are really good players, they’re just going to play the whole year,” Edwards stated. “We’ll be young, and the only way to learn how to play is play, and you’re better off for it in the long run when you’re trying to build a program.

“You can’t guard against it, there’s nothing you can do, except not let them play, but that doesn’t do us any good, so the guys that are available to play are going to play, and if they’re a freshman, and he plays, we’re going to root him on and we’re going to help him as much as we can, but he’s going to play.”

One concern any college football team naturally has about their young defensive players, especially less experienced ones, would be regarding tackling. Edwards used this past Saturday’s games as an example of how it can be an adjustment for players to tackle properly again early in the season, counting 20 missed tackles in Florida’s win and 18 in Arizona’s loss to Hawaii.

“Tackling is a big concern I think for all coaches,” Edwards commented. “In pro football, I watch it, you miss tackles…first four weeks of pro football, I mean if you can just don’t beat yourself, you’re going to win some games early because it’s a mess.”

“No player goes out there to play bad, it just happens, I don’t know if it’s nerves, it’s just part of football, and the tackling part, you can tackle all you want, until it’s live against another opponent, you don’t really know and that’s why I always say the best way to teach tackling, know where to miss, you got to know where to miss. If you’re going to miss him, miss him on the right side and hope your defense is running to clean it up for you, but if you miss on the wrong side, it’s a big play.”

Edwards excited to watch Jayden Daniels, updates some positional battles

Coming out of fall camp, ASU had few position battles still churning. That’s a good thing. But on Monday, Edwards gave a bit of an update on the two remaining starting spots up for grabs: Right guard and Tillman safety.

Senior right guard Roy Hemsley and redshirt freshman Jarrett Bell have been competing for the starting right guard spot. Bell looked to be in control until an injury sidelined him for a few days last week. In his absence, Hemsley took the first-team reps.

The Sun Devils’ depth chart gives Hemsley the starting nod, but Edwards admitted both will play on Thursday and the competition is far from over.

“I just think the more you can get some guys in there, eventually, you want to solidify your offensive line because your quarterback has to feel comfortable,” Edwards said. “But, we want somebody to win the job, too, and it’s kind of like, ‘Somebody doesn’t make this a competition. Somebody win it.’ Right?”

As far as the Tillman safety spot, Edwards said much of the same. Graduate Tyler Whiley and junior Evan Fields will both see the field Thursday and as of now, the depth chart doesn’t indicate who will get the start against Kent State.

The competition that’s been over for weeks has been at quarterback. Freshman Jayden Daniels will become the first true freshman to ever start the season opener under center for the Sun Devils. From everything he’s shown, Edwards said, the moment won’t get to him.

“He rolled over on the cart with me today and he’s smiling,” Edwards said. “I go, ‘You alright?’ And then I said, ‘You’re always alright, aren't you?’ He goes, ‘Yeah coach I’m alright.’ I just said, ‘OK.’ We’ll see when he comes through that tunnel if he’s alright. I’ll make sure I see him and make sure he’s not sitting on the bench when they get introduced or whatever. I’m kind of excited about watching him play to be quite honest.”

Even with the maturity of Daniels, Edwards doesn’t want to overwhelm the freshman -- especially not with Eno Benjamin in the backfield. ASU is going to try and feed its workhorse as much as possible. But in Benjamin’s junior season, teams are keener on his abilities.

Kent State will likely stack the box. They’ll try and take Benjamin out of the game and make Daniels beat it in his first collegiate start.

“That’s what I would do,” Edwards said. “And I’d bring pressure. How is he going to react to pressure? How is he going to react to six guys coming at him? What is he going to do with the ball? I mean, all those things are going to happen to him and he’s going to have to play. And he’s going to have to deal with it.”

Edwards hopes to avoid ugliness from Week Zero games

There was a lot of bad in the pair of Week 0 college football games. Florida and Miami had almost 220 yards of penalties and 11 sacks. The Arizona, Hawaii game late Saturday night was an offensive slugfest with over 1,100 yards of offense offset by eight total turnovers.

As Edwards has mentioned in the past, college football doesn’t offer chances to work out kinks in the preseason, as he enjoyed for years in the NFL. Last Saturday was a cautionary tale to Edwards about the ugliness early season college football can produce.

“That’s what you always are concerned with when the season starts. How will you play? How will you react to opening day?” Edwards said. “And so, we’ve kind of addressed that with our players, showed them some clips of certain games, what had transpired in a couple of games, that we didn’t want to get into that kind of stuff. We’ll see if they listened.”

Among the clips Edwards showed his team was the final play from Hawaii’s seven-point win over Arizona. He keyed in on Hawaii’s nose tackle Manly Williams, who, after missing a sack on Arizona quarterback Khalil Tate, sprinted 40 yards down the field to down Tate a yard short of the goal line as time expired.

That, Edwards argued, didn’t take talent.

“When you get on the grass, that’s what we say, ‘Leave it on the grass.’ Just go man. Just play hard,” Edwards said. “And then you can live with the consequences, you truly can. Whatever happens you can live with that, go play. And you never know the play that could win a game.”

For his whole football career, coaches preached to Edwards that you never know what play, or when a play will end up winning a game. On Saturday, Williams chase-down of Tate secured Hawaii’s victory. On a Sunday 41 years ago, Edwards made his own game-winning play on a November day in the Meadowlands.

He recovered a fumble. The Eagles beat the Giants. His legacy was made.

“As a player you say, ‘Yeah, coach, he doesn’t know.’ Well, I stumbled around and made a play,” Edwards said. “I didn’t make many in my life, but I made one. And they still show it every once in a while. Same deal. It’s the same deal because that was my mindset, it ain’t over.”

Why the Kent State Golden Flashes cannot be overlooked

At 50/1 odds to win their conference (MAC) and an over/under win total set at four, many people see Kent State as a guaranteed victory for the Sun Devils Thursday night. But many of the team’s starters refuted that idea, which is exactly what Edwards did himself on Monday.

He noted Golden Flashes dual-threat quarterback Woody Barrett’s ability to scramble and throw balls deep down the field, among other things that ASU will have to be aware of come Thursday night.

“He makes the unannounced play, a lot, he’s a powerful runner and he’s hard to tackle when he gets into space,” Edwards said about Barrett. “They’re a team that goes for it a lot on fourth down. I saw them one game, 4th & 9, they were on the minus-30 (yard-line), quarterback draw, he made it, took off and ran 30 yards. So, when he starts running around a couple of things, you better contain him and then you better plaster on the back end of your defense. He’ll throw it down the field, he’s got a good arm, got some big receivers that can jump up and catch the ball, that’s what they brought in over the Spring I believe.”

“They throw the ball vertically, they spread you out, they attack the whole football field. They got a short passing game early, try to spread you out, hit little balls, 2nd & 5, want to nickel and dime you, and then vertically they’ll threaten you down the field. So, very well-coached football team and they go fast, I mean really fast, we’ve been working on that all week. So, we’ll see how the weather affects both teams, really, because you want to go fast, that’s great, but can they hold up and can we hold up, it’ll be interesting to see.”

Also made aware of the mid-major versus power-five school narrative this game brings, Edwards said he made sure his guys understand how amped up Kent State will be to play in Sun Devil Stadium.

“No matter what conference you play in when you feel like you’re the underdog, you get up for teams,” Edwards said. “You feel like ‘maybe I was under-recruited,’ whatever it may be, players use all kinds of things to motivate them, and I think when you feel like you’re the superior team, which we do not feel like by any stretch of the imagination, you got to be on your guard.

“I said ‘look, these guys are going to come in this field over here Thursday, they’re going to be excited about playing us,’ and we know it, and we’re going to have to withstand all that. We can’t lose our composure.”

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