'Get those season tickets': Jayden Daniels named ASU's starting QB

Nick Rogers woke up to the text he’d been anticipating for months, since the day his prized quarterback, Jayden Daniels, rose from his chair, pulled down the zipper of his grey Nike hoodie and exposed a black t-shirt that read “Sun Devils.”

“Hey, get those season tickets,” Daniels texted his former high school head coach Sunday morning.

Daniels has been back in San Bernardino sporadically since he left for Tempe in January, attending camps and working with the current crop of Cajon quarterbacks at occasional practices.

At every possible opportunity, his former head coach wants an update on how Daniels is fairing in Tempe, how he’s stacking up in ASU’s highly-publicized quarterback competition. He doesn’t need the details.

“It was kind of a running joke, I would say, ‘Do I need to get season tickets?’” Rogers said. “He told me from the minute he signed, ‘I don’t even know anything about these guys but I’m going to get it.’”

Following his senior season in San Bernardino, in which Daniels became the all-time leader in career passing yardage (14,007) and passing touchdowns (170) in California's CIF Southern Section. He ultimately narrowed down his Top-4 schools to Arizona State, Utah, Cal, and UCLA. Only one of those programs was absent of a returning starter.

Daniels announced his commitment to the Sun Devils in a packed room at Cajon High School on December 13, signing on to a Sun Devil program that already bolstered its 2019 signing class with a pair of quarterbacks, Joey Yellen from Mission Viejo, California and Ethan Long from West Linn, Oregon.

“When that came up, that the other two were there, he didn’t mind because he knew they were on equal footing,” Rogers said. “But he didn’t want to walk into a place that already has predetermined (their quarterback) -- you know, you tell people that there's going to be an open competition, but is it really in every case? I don't know.”

The moment that felt like an unavoidable prophecy when four-star, second-ranked dual-threat quarterback signed with Arizona State in December came to an official fruition Monday.

Come August 29, Daniels will suit up in the maroon and gold, trot out of the Tillman Tunnel and become ASU’s first true freshman to ever start Week 1 under center against Kent. St.

After a month-long spring camp and two weeks into practice, this fall Herm Edwards announced Monday that Daniels had beaten out redshirt junior Dillon Sterling-Cole and fellow 2019 QB commits Yellen and Long for the starting job.

"That says a lot about him, " said ASU head coach Herm Edwards about his decision, "and his ability to do some things that we feel really good about. The first true freshman (quarterback) to start at ASU...that says a lot about him."

When the competition under center began to take shape, head Herm Edwards knew from his days in the NFL waiting wasn’t the best strategy. Let the decision linger for too long, guys start taking sides. All the sudden, the locker room is divided. That wasn’t going to happen in Tempe.

At his media day press conference prior to the start of fall camp, Likens expanded upon Edwards comments, noting the Devils had circled two weeks before the season as their decision deadline. When ASU wrapped up its stay at Camp Tontozona, Monday became announcement day.

Even before ASU came down the hill, though, Daniels’ fate seemed locked in.

Looking in from 300 miles away, Rogers can relate to Arizona State’s conundrum when it comes to handing a young Daniels the reigns of a program.

Back in 2015 -- Daniels’ freshman year and Rogers’ second season as Cajon’s head coach -- Daniels and Cajon’s returning starter, junior Terry Ryan, were splitting starting reps. Then in a preseason scrimmage, Ryan sustained an injury to the mouth that kept him out past the school’s first game.

Having been in high school for just a couple weeks, Daniels stepped in Week 1 for Cajon. The teenager compiled nearly 300 yards of offense, threw for a touchdown and ran for another in an upset victory over Eleanor Roosevelt High School.

The thought of deviating was nonexistent. Rogers rode out his freshman phenom for the next four years. Ryan was Wally Pipped.

“Early on, there were a lot of people questioning the move of going with a freshman over a returning guy but we saw what this kid could do,” Rogers said. “The game wasn’t too big for him then and I think that’s really going to help him out coming in at Arizona State in a similar situation.”

Rogers isn’t sure if season tickets are in the cards this season, not when two of ASU’s seven games will kick off on a weekday. But he’ll be following along, and when his schedule allows, darting east down the I-10 towards Tempe.

When he arrives, he expects to find the same even-keeled freshman he threw into the fire four years ago. Daniels has, not for a second, seemed phased during this quarterback competition if he even thought there was one.

“I think he felt confident that was going to be what it was for a while now,” Rogers said. “But for him, you know, he obviously he's going to be looking at the team stuff, what he needs to do and make sure he's doing everything right for the team. So I don't think the competition was a huge weight off him or on him, per se.”

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