Suffice it to say that Arizona State will not enter any contest this year as a heavier favorite than its season-opening game at home versus NAU. Therefore, it’s only natural that Sun Devil fans wouldn’t only yearn for a defensive dominance but also wish to see an offensive explosion versus an FCS team. ASU head coach Herm Edwards agrees with that general notion but also offered his pragmatic view of what he expects on Thursday night.
“It’s easy to do them in the warmups. You got to do it in the real-life competition now,” Edwards said of the prospects of scoring early and often in this game. “I’m going to enjoy every moment watching these guys, and as soon as we kick the ball off, it’s like, ‘OK, I’m going to watch our offense. I’m going to watch our quarterback, watch a couple running backs and couple tight ends, receivers.’ I mean, the objective is to score, but defenses don’t just let you score. You got to earn it.
“They want to see scoring, man. We live in a world where everything is fast. You want to see something going on, but hopefully we have some opportunities, and if we do, we need to cash in on them, for sure.”
Undoubtedly the potential icing on the cake in this contest would be a scenario where an ASU offense under a first-year coordinator, Glenn Thomas, can both score in bunches without revealing much if any of their new playbook, especially with a challenging road game at Oklahoma State next week. Edwards seemed to agree with this notion, albeit offering his own point of view on the matter.
“I think sometimes less is more, and I just believe that anytime when you open a season up,” Edwards explained. “That’s the discussion that we’ll have together as a staff, ‘How much do we have?’ And it has nothing to do with the opponent; it has something to do with us. I want them to play fast. I don’t want them to have to think. I want them to be dialed in to say, ‘Hey, this is what we’re doing. Let’s go.’ And then we can adjust from there, and I think when you can do that, they can play free.
“I don’t want smoke coming out of guys’ helmets like, ‘Oh, man. What is that?’ Just play the game and play fast; use our speed. Historically since we’ve been here, we’ve been pretty fast. We can run on defense. We can run on offense. We got the kind of guys we try to recruit, so I want to see that show up. I don’t want to see guys with their blinker on like, ‘Uh-oh. Wait a minute; I’m trying to think.’ I want guys to play free, so less is more for me.”
“We have a plan going in, and then obviously things happen in the course of a game, the score can dictate that a lot of things can dictate that, and then from there, you go. But that’s how we play, and that’s just how I think anyway and whatever it takes for us to win, that’s what we have to do. And that’s what we’re going to do, bottom line. I’ll just leave it at that.”
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Northern Arizona may have had an overall disappointing 5-6 campaign last year, but the crown jewel of their handful of victories in 2021 was naturally their first-ever win over a Pac-12 opponent as they upset Arizona in Tucson 21-19. In 2016, a 44-13 win by the Sun Devils over the Lumberjacks was a much closer affair than the score indicated, as ASU was up by double digits for the first time that night in the waning seconds of the third quarter. Therefore, Edwards knows that NAU is anything but an opponent his team can take lightly.
“When you watch how they play, offensively and defensively, (NAU head) coach (Chris) Ball has done a good job over there,” Edwards commented. “We anticipate a team that comes in here with a lot of energy, with some new players as well. Offensively, I think they settled down on their quarterback; they have a receiving corps that’s coming back, and they have a really outstanding football player in their running back. Defense, the corners are good, they got a free safety that’s very active, and they got some good linebackers as well. They’re coached very well. What we can’t get into is what we got into last year, a game that was marred by us by penalties. And I mentioned that to the team, we played last year, and we got ourselves in a bad wave with penalties, and we turned the ball over.
“When the first (penalty takes place), I’m going to go, ‘Don’t start. Whatever you guys do, don’t do it. Don’t go down that path.’ It’s a bad path to go down. There are so many new players here that are going to be part of this; you don’t know how they act under the lights. The fans want to know; I want to know too. I know how they practice, but I don’t know how they play in a game; I don’t know what their anxiety levels are going to be. We got to stay away from that; the turnovers and the fouls they just extend the game.”
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With the dup of defensive backs senior Timarcus Davis and sophomore Jordan Clark out this week (according to Edwards, both should be back in week two), Edwards said that he expects to see up to eight players in secondary to see the field in the season opener.
“They’re going to rotate,” Edwards remarked regarding this unit. “A lot of guys back there, a lot of guys with talent, and we got to get them some playing time. We anticipate that (happening) the whole season; we’re not set like we were last year. And I think it has been good to watch these guys compete, and that’s what we anticipate the whole season. We said that; we got eight guys that are going to play a lot.”
On the defensive line, Edwards noted that sophomore defensive end Gharin Stansbury may be coming back soon from an injury that has sidelined him in the vast majority of preseason practices. Nonetheless, with that absence and the season-ending ACL injury of senior Michael Matus, Edwards is still content with the quantity and quality of bodies in that group.
“We just have to have a rotation,” Edwards said. “We have so many guys that give them the ability to just play hard, just go. The game of football is real simple. The defensive line, and offensive line, they control how the game’s going to turn out for the most part, and there’s a good group up there (at the defensive line). There are some newcomers, some guys that haven’t played, but we’re going to get them all in there. It’s going to be warm (weather), so that’s going to be part of it too now.”
Speaking of newcomers, no first-year player in Tempe will get more attention than Florida transfer quarterback Emory Jones who will make his first start as a Sun Devil on Saturday. The ASU head coach is eager to see his energetic signal caller in his first gameday action here.
“He has really great arm velocity. He can throw the ball from different slots, he can throw it overhand,” Edwards described, “he can get it to some spots where you go, ‘Uh-oh, OK.’ He just got to be careful. The key to all that is that sometimes you fall in love with your arm, and the other team gets it. So you just got to make sure when you throw it, you’re throwing it in the right direction in the right spot. His anxiety will be up too. He’s never played in front of this crowd. He’s played in SEC games, but he’s never been here.
“We’ve had some conversations, and we’ll continue to have some, and obviously, before the game, we’ll have one. But, I’m going to just tell him to go play free and not to worry about making mistakes, ‘You just be you. That’s why we got you. You just go be who you are, and we’ll be fine.’”
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Edwards has often said that passion has to overcome emotion, and that may be especially true for a week one contest. The angst that his players are more than likely to feel on Thursday night is a sentiment that the ASU head coach fully expects to manifest itself. He certainly realizes the positives accompanying that feeling, as long as the energy generated flows in the right direction.
“Anxiety is always good; I wake up with it every morning,” Edwards admitted. “It’s good to start the day off. I wake up with the personality of every day starts off deserving of being a good day. That’s how I live my life; that’s how I think of life. And you got anxiety in your belly that keeps you alive. When you got no anxiety, man, it’s like, ‘OK, what am I doing here?’ So it’s good to have it; it’s just you got to control it. That’s part of your adrenaline that everyone has. And I think (with) football, you can’t use it in a way where it hurts you. Because it’s a competitive game, it’s a competitive violence at the highest level, within the framework of the rules. And you can’t get out of them, can’t get out of that box.
“There’s a lot of anxiety on this team right now about wanting to play a football game. Some new coaches and they have some anxiety as well. So I think it’s a unique situation for all of us to come home, play in our stadium. But we’re going have to play well, and it starts as soon as the ball is kicked (off) either way. We got to have the mindset that we’re going to have to play four quarters. That’s what we’re looking forward to this weekend.”
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