In case you haven’t heard, Arizona State’s subpar defensive performance on Saturday night, when the unit allowed 34 points and 475 total yards in a three-point loss to Colorado, was defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales’s fault.

I don’t write this at all as a cynical reporter looking to place blame for what happened defensively in the Pac-12 opener, I am simply regurgitating the words of Gonzales himself. Watch his press conference from today or after Saturday’s loss, because even if you only watch for a few minutes on either one, you’ll still likely hear him voice the sentiment.

“The offense did plenty enough to win the game, we screwed it up,” Gonzales said. “We’ve got to coach (the defense) better.

“Players win games, if they don’t perform to their highest it’s coaching, I will go to my grave saying that. That’s what I was taught, it’s what I believe, and I think in the long run of it, when the players know that you have all the faith in the world and you believe in them, they’re going to play harder for you, they’re going to try better for you, and they’re going to come back today with a really upset attitude to get better, and I think they believe in what we’re doing.”

The next most repeated sentiment that Gonzales expressed, behind his belief that bad coaching was to blame for Saturday night’s performance was that his guys will be ready for Friday night’s game at No. 15 California. Here’s a deeper dive into some of the key things ASU’s second-year defensive coordinator touched upon during his 40-minute press conference.

Key injury update for ASU’s secondary

The Sun Devils may have taken a disappointing loss at home on Saturday night, but the starting unit experienced a significant loss of its own. Gonzales didn’t offer any updates on defensive tackle D.J. Davidson, who came in and out of the game late in the fourth quarter, but he did deliver some grim news about starting redshirt freshman safety Cam Phillips.

“Cam Phillips, he dislocated his elbow on Saturday night,” Gonzales stated. “His status will be game-time; I would be shocked if he could play because that’s a pretty traumatic deal.”

Although he was honest about Phillips probably not playing on Friday, the “game-time decision” designation is being highly optimistic, at the very least. According to the Summit Medical Group, the recovery time for a broken or dislocated elbow is four to six weeks.

With that timetable, Phillips is looking at an October 26 return at UCLA, but if his recovery is somehow fast-tracked to just under four weeks, he could dress for the Utah matchup on October 19, and as a result only completely miss two games thanks to ASU’s bye week between the California and Washington State matchups.

Now that Phillips is out for the near future, that means another true freshman will have to step into a starting role for the Sun Devils; Pittsburg, California native Willie Harts.

While losing Phillips is a significant blow, because as Gonzales pointed out he’s arguably been the the defense’s most productive player play-for-play and has ASU’s only interception this season, Harts should be a more than capable replacement, even as a true freshman.

“Willie Harts is equally as talented as Cam Phillips,” Gonzales said. “He’s played- probably in the first four games- he probably has 60 snaps total.

“It will definitely hurt, not having (Phillips) out there on (Friday). Willie is very talented and smart, so he’ll be in a lot of the same places. Now, when the lights are on, is he going to make the plays? We’ll find out.”

If you’ve followed our preseason coverage, this is nothing new on Harts. During camp Tontozona, defensive backs coach Tony White compared Harts to Aashari Crosswell in 2018, who ironically, he will start with on Friday night, as a true freshman who “gets it” and could play early on as a result. Now, albeit maybe earlier than expected, Harts’ time to step up has come.

What went wrong against Colorado

Bear with me, because of the next few sections will be a very long-winded explanation, mostly from the words of Gonzales, about the Colorado loss. It reflects the extensive detail that Gonzales went into surrounding why Saturday’s game went so poorly for the defense.

He cited numerous problems, as one would expect, throughout the session. But in this specific section, the focus will be on matters of game strategy and schematics.

For starters, Gonzales admitted there was a stark difference between the first and second halves. After going into halftime trailing 24-21, the Sun Devil defense allowed only 10 points in the final 30 minutes in addition to 63 fewer yards than the first half.

“We didn’t change what we were doing, we changed how we were doing it,” Gonzales said. “In the second half, (our defense) got a little better at it. But when you make some of those adjustments, if you haven’t practiced them over-and-over, their block reactions become different, so our pass-rush became absolutely zero.”

He also added that their the second-down defense is what killed them because it led to third-and-short situations over-and-over again, which Gonzales pointed out for a second consecutive week are converted at a very high rate.

“Our first-down defense was pretty good, there were a lot of second-and-longs,” Gonzales said. “Our the second-down defense was terrible. Then when we get to third-and-short, in third-and-three or plus they were very heavy pass.

“It’s a lot easier to call a third-and-seven than it is third-and-two, you have a lot more tricks in your bag for those things…the 10-of-17 that (we allowed on third-downs) on Saturday, 11 of those 17 were third-and-three or shorter. That means we’re not playing very good second-down defense. First-down defense on Saturday night was actually really good, we didn’t have very many second-and-shorts.”

Additionally, he detailed how Colorado’s offensive line had ASU’s defensive front beat throughout the night, and ultimately led to the poor pass-rushing effort. This was another issue that Gonzales pinned on himself.

“I thought going in, the game plan- from what we’ve done the first three weeks of the season- there was a lot of stunts that were going to work with that stuff and we were running those things early,” Gonzales said. “On the front side of some of those things, they were cutting off our (defensive) linemen, where they were cut-blocking them, which the first three weeks of the season (our opponents) were doing the same thing, we were running through them; we weren’t (on Saturday).

“If you watch the tape, and you watch the line of scrimmage you can tell early on in a game by which way the line of scrimmages is moving on every snap- and it’s a matter of a yard or two. If it’s coming (forward), it’s going to be a long day. If it’s going back, you’ve got a chance to make that running back miss. On first down we were good, second down we weren’t. So, as I go through it, there’s a good chance that some of the (lack of aggressiveness) was on me.”

More specifically, Gonzales emphasized that the d-linemen must win more one-on-one matchups when trying to pressure the quarterback. From his end, Gonzales admitted he could’ve done things differently by forcing Montez to scramble to his left- his non-dominant throwing side- instead of his right every time, which was the case when ASU did force him out of the pocket.

Of course, not having redshirt sophomore edge-rusher Tyler Johnson- who Gonzales called the team’s best pass rusher before the season- hurt a lot. But as far as Gonzales sees it, that was no excuse for the lack of pressure throughout the entire game.

“Tyler Johnson on Saturday night was a game-time decision, he wasn’t able to go,” Gonzales stated. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t play well, that means give them a better chance to be successful.

“Now, we’ve got to win some one-on-one matchups in a four-man rush, our d-lineman have to win one-on-one matchups. You rush four, they have four o-linemen plus a (running) back to block most of the time. One or two of (our) guys are going to be one-on-one, and we’re not winning those matchups right now, our d-line’s got to get better at that- or, you’ve got to give them a better chance by doing some exotic things in coverage, and stunting.”

As non-existent as the pass-rush was on Saturday, Gonzales believes the defensive backs share just as much of the blame for the unit’s poor start early in the game.

“I thought early on in the game on Saturday, I was very *sic* disappointed in the aggressiveness of our DB’s,” Gonzales said. “I think they were trying to feel their way into the speed of the game with some of the plays we gave up (against Colorado) last year. I think that shows a little bit of a lack of confidence in yourself- we’ll build on that, they’ll get better.”

As much as that was, Gonzales was just getting started…yikes.

“(Montez’s) jersey probably didn’t need to be washed, we didn’t knock him down one time,” Gonzales added.

Gonzales believes team can change play with better attitude, mindset during game

Going off what he said about the defensive backs lack of aggressiveness, Gonzales made it a point to challenge the mindset and attitude his players took during the game. He believes this was in direct correlation with the team setting a new season-high for missed tackles in last Saturday’s loss.

“We were not aggressive enough,” Gonzales said regarding the missed tackles, “they were not flying down there mean and angry. I don’t think they were scared; I think they were a little uncomfortable early.”

To go back to the defensive backs, since it seems enough time has been spent dissecting the pass-rush, Gonzales expanded on the attitude they need to take to avoid more slow starts.

“If they want to have the right attitude, they don’t worry about- it’s the faceless opponent deal,” Gonzales stated. “It doesn’t matter if that guy (has a 4.4 40-yard dash) if I do my technique right, I’m going to dominate him.

“Every once-in-awhile they’re going to get beat, ball is ball, and that’s fine. But if you keep beating at him and you keep beating at him, guess what, you’re going to win more of the battles and you’re going to come out on top, and we did not do that. I thought we were tentative on Saturday night, we weren’t as aggressive as we were the first three weeks, and it showed.”

If you think that was harsh, hold onto your seatbelt.

While Gonzales has taken plenty of blame for his team’s performance, he also spent ample time emphasizing that his expectations were not met by the way his unit played. By the time he had been at the podium for over half-an-hour, he was no longer pulling any punches.

“The worst thing you can be on a football field- and I think this is worse than any four-letter word, any nasty- you call somebody soft, they’re taking your man card,” Gonzales said. “I thought we were soft on Saturday, and when you have a football team that’s soft, then you got to look at yourself in the mirror because you ain’t doing something right to prepare them right.

“I won’t make excuses; you can’t have an off night. When I sit up here and preach about all the stuff we want to do and everything’s great, and you play this and you give up seven points and we talk about being dominant, then you can’t have an off-night. That’s coaching, that’s the coach’s fault.”

In all fairness, he did credit his guys for coming out to Monday’s practice with the right attitude, and a sense of urgency to fix their wrongs.

“When you get your tail whipped like that, you want to get back out there as fast as you can so you can redeem yourself,” Gonzales said. “Today’s practice, the energy was good from those guys, and usually on a day like this, the energy has to come from the coaches…the energy shows that you have a chance to be successful because I think their pride was really smashed on Saturday night.

“There are two ways you come back; you can come back feeling sorry for yourself and waiting for somebody to tell you everything’s going to be ok. Well, guess what, it ain’t, unless you fix it. So, they came back with the right attitude, and the right attitude will give you a chance. If we play aggressive and fast on Saturday, then we’ll have a chance. If we don’t, well we’ll see.”

Looking ahead to the matchup against Cal

On that note, the Sun Devils know they must figure things out fast ahead of Friday night’s tilt with the No. 15 California Golden Bears, one of the most improved defensive units within the conference themselves. With that in mind, this game is likely to be closer to the Michigan State game than the Colorado one, which is something Gonzales never shies away from.

“I told our kids this morning ‘I hope it stays that way,’” he answered when asked if this could be another instance where the defense must win the game for ASU. “Everybody’s talking about how great their defense is, we just gave up 34 points, so nobody’s going to be talking about you guys finally. Well, let’s don’t let them forget who we’re trying to be, don’t be pretenders.”

Gonzales went on to say that both defenses could play pretty well and Cal could still end up scoring a decent amount of points, citing UCLA’s 67-63 victory over Washington State Saturday night as an example of how crazy college football can get in general.

But keying in on the Golden Bears, he had a lot of good things to say about their offense and team as a whole, starting with their head coach, Justin Wilcox.

“He is one of the great defensive minds in college football,” Gonzales said about Wilcox. “He and coach DeRuyter are doing a great job over there.

“(The offense) is still explosive, they’ve gone over 400 yards twice this year. (Chase) Garbers, the quarterback, he’s getting a lot more comfortable back there…this year, if you watched him on Saturday, he’s sitting there like a postured veteran. So, if we play like we did Saturday night and give him the same time Montez did, we’re going to make him look like a Heisman candidate.”

He later commended the toughness of Garbers, citing how he came back from a couple of gruesome looking hits in last Saturday’s game without missing a beat, eventually comparing him to a superhero. Also, he’s noticed on film how much better Garbers is making his reads, showing a much higher comfort level doing run-pass-option plays.

But he made sure to emphasize how good Cal’s skill players on offense are too, which of course helps Garbers be as improved as he has been this season.

“They have a really good running back, Chris Brown, he’s a San Diego kid- very familiar with him from El Camino high school, he’s very physical and downhill,” Gonzales commented. “The receivers, they have a speedster and then they have two guys like Michigan State that are bigger and will go get the football and will compete for it.

“Then they’ve got two really good-looking tight ends. I mean they’re 6’5’’, they block well at the line of scrimmage but they use them in the passing game more than most teams do. So, we’ll see a bunch of that on Saturday. I’m sure we’ll see them line up in quads and throw one of those as a slant like Michigan State did, see if we stop it early.

“If we don’t, we’ll get a heavy dose of it. If we do, then they’ll go back to what they normally do. We’re going to get a little bit more empty (sets) than we’ve seen the first three weeks, they major in that and they’re pretty good at it, (Garbers) knows where to get the ball. And then you have to worry about him because the sucker’s fast.”

As much as this defense needs to quickly improve on with the next game four days away, Gonzales made one final promise, as mentioned earlier.

“Our kids will be ready, I promise you that,” Gonzales declared.

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