Edwards says players’ attention isn’t hard to obtain ahead of UNLV game

There were plenty of lessons to be learned for Herm Edwards’s Arizona State squad as they reviewed film from the Sun Devils season-opening 41-14 win over Southern Utah. The lesson began prior to ASU’s first game, but as the weekend continued to unfold, conference foes gave Edwards more teaching product.

“I talked about it Wednesday night that it’s hard to win a football game. And I think sometimes we look on paper,” Edwards said. “You know, paper has never won a football game. It’s actually the execution and what you do out on the football field.”

Pac-12 North members had a particularly rough go of things as no. 11 Oregon was the only division member to escape the opening weekend without a loss. No. 20 Washington provided the lowest point for the division as the Huskies were upset by Montana. The loss was the fifth ever for an FCS program against a ranked FBS opponent. When all was said and done, the Pac-12 North finished the weekend 1-5, leaving UCLA to do the PR work of the conference with an upset win over no. 16 LSU.

“I said it when I first took this job, there are a lot of upsets in college football,” Edwards said. “No one can ever figure it out. You know going into opening day for a lot of teams that something is going to happen.”

Talk coming out of Thursday night’s win largely centered on Arizona State’s 13 penalty performance and the special teams' miscues that saw a kickoff out of bounds and two missed extra points. Edwards told reporters Monday that he expected the penalties to be cleaned up in Week 2 and joked about the extra point snafu.

“I’ve been around a lot of football, and when you score a touchdown, generally, the offensive line stays in there, and you go for the point after,” said Edwards with a tone of bewilderment. “We had guys running off the field, and I was looking going, ‘did we substitute for some reason?’ That is as simple as it gets.”

Edwards elected to point out that the Sun Devils scored the most points and had the greatest margin of victory of any program in the Pac-12, but the impressiveness of the accomplishment comes into question when comparing Southern Utah as an opponent to the likes of LSU.

“What does that mean?” Edwards asked rhetorically of the 41 points scored and 27-point victory from Thursday night. “Nothing. It means we’re 1-0. That’s all. I don’t worry about other teams in our conference. I’ve got enough worries of my own, and that’s what you realize as a coach.

“It’s hard to win a football game.”

The next two Sun Devil opponents showed struggles with stopping opponents’ passing attacks, as UNLV allowed Eastern Washington to throw for 374 yards in a 35-33 double-overtime loss, while BYU allowed Arizona to pass for 345 yards in its win. Still, Edwards made note of an interesting trend for the Sun Devils. In their last two seasons of play, ASU is 9-1 (lone defeat coming at USC last year) when rushing the ball for more than 200 yards.

“When we run the ball fairly decent; we’ve got a chance,” said Edwards. “I’m not saying we’re a running team, but we’re 9-1. That’s what I do know. That’s a pretty good stat to keep in your back pocket.”

The evidence would suggest that Arizona State is a running football team. Not only are the Sun Devils 9-1 when rushing for over 200 yards, they have rushed for 19 touchdowns in their past three games – a mark only surpassed by a three-game stretch of 22 rushing scores from Nebraska in 1997 and tied by Kansas State in 2002 and Nebraska in 2000.

Defense for ASU is expected to be a strength in 2021 as an experienced group returns 10 of its 11 starters. Upon further review of the tape, the first showing of game action this season impressed Edwards as well.

“Pretty good job in pass coverage. Not a lot of leaks in the defense,” said Edwards as the Sun Devils forced four turnovers in their first game. “It goes hand in hand. Good coverage produces a good pass rush. They hit us on a couple of runs, and we’ve got to make sure we tighten that up a little bit.

“We tackled pretty good, to be quite honest. We don’t have live tackling (during practice) … We’ll find out how good we can tackle this week because of this running back.”

As UNLV prepares for a trip to Tempe; the Sun Devils will get set for the arrival of Charles Williams. The UNLV running back had 27 carries in the Rebels’ season-opener, rushing for 172 yards and two touchdowns.

In his first showing as a Sun Devil, freshman punter Eddie Czaplicki placed a punt at the 1-yard line and had a few other impressive boots. Edwards expressed his approval of the young Sun Devil special-teamer and told reporters what to expect from his role going forward.

“The one he kicked down inside the 1 was really nice to see,” Edwards said. “As he continues to grow and kick, he’ll get better. He’s a talented kid. He can punt and kick, but you don’t want him to do both. It’s too hard, so right now, he has to be our punter.

“I continue to hope he doesn’t have to punt a lot because that means we’re moving the ball, but when he does, I think that game helps him.”

Arizona State’s squad picked up some “nicks and bruises,” according to Edwards, but there were no notable injuries to speak of. Edwards declined to mention specifics when it came to sophomore running back DeaMonte Trayanum’s status, after he left the contest against the Thunderbirds with what appeared to be an ankle injury.

Improvement from the first to second game is always supposed to be noticeable as players get acclimated to the systems and pieces in place, and Edwards said with as many things as there were to clean up, getting the attention of his bunch won’t be hard going into this Saturday.

“If you look at the film no it’s not real hard (to get players attention),” said Edwards. “We’ve always talked about the standard of how we want to play. We didn’t do a good enough job of that on opening day.”

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