Transcribed quotes

On why Daniels won the starting job:

“He doesn’t put the ball in jeopardy and he sees the field. And those were the two main things. For his age, he hasn’t had a lot of experience like in college football except for spring practice…his ability to make quick decisions with the speed that’s going on around him and his ability to adjust from the high school speed to the college speed was, I’ve never seen anything like that before. So, it’s pretty amazing.

“And the ball security thing, that was a really big thing.”

On how he feels the team has responded to Daniels:

“One of the things you have to look at is, what does the offense do while he’s in the game? So, we watched, and we moved the ball while he was in there. Positive things happened. Sometimes you can’t put your finger on it. Sometimes it’s hard for the other guys, and they get blamed and bad things just happen when they’re in there. I’m sorry, but when he was in there, most of the time, positive things happened to our offense.”

At what stage of preseason practices did he know that Daniels would be named as the starter:

“Probably within the first week of (preseason practices) you saw flashes of his greatness in spring, and then you kind of wanted to see how he did during the summer. I wanted to have those guys the chance to see how they went through the summer running all of the pass plays without the coaches out there. And then, really the first week of camp, right before Camp T, I started seeing like…yeah. We started talking at night after practices saying ‘Yeah, this looks like it’s kind of heading in this direction if he keeps going that way.’

“I talked to the other quarterbacks today and it was a tough day. Tough conversations. But they are just amazing kids. They are all Sun Devils for life.”

On Daniels’ traits:

“I think that he sees the field as a passer. He’s beyond his years. He sees the field like a junior. It’s really amazing. And then on top of it, he’s a passing quarterback. He is a legit, drop back passing quarterback who happens to, when he’s pulls it down, and you guys don’t even see it…because he doesn’t pull it down because he’s such a good passer. He makes fast decisions. He gets the ball out of his hands. And none of us have seen what he’s going to do when the play breaks down. We probably won’t see that until the Kent State game. We’ll see what happens. I think good things will happen.”

On whether he’s concerned about Daniels’s size and arm strength:

“No, and you know what? If I didn’t go through the deal at Cal with Jared Goff in his freshman year, I would’ve had some concerns. But I watched him, Jared was not, you know, he was kind of skinny his freshman year. I was really worried about him making it through the season. And he made it through the whole season, I think he got knocked out in the last game against Stanford. But Jayden is very similar to his body stature. One thing about the kid is he’s shifty and hopefully, he knows how to slide. We’re going to work on that, and run out of bounds as fast as humanly possible. But I’m not concerned about it.”

On coaching a true freshman quarterback:

“I’m excited. I see some of the things that he can do — now we can’t put too many expectations on him and think that he’s the savior. He might be in two years, I don’t know. But we can’t put that on him now, at all. But what he can become, I just think he’s special. I really do. He’s special.”

On how much Joey Yellen has improved as he’s named the No. 2 quarterback:

“It all started with changing his body. He lost some weight, and he got in great shape. He had some throwing motion issues that he was going through that we got fixed right before camp started. He’s extremely smart. He grew up idolizing Peyton Manning and that’s what he kind of fashions his game after, that he uses his mind to beat the defense along with his arm. And that’s why he’s improved so much.”

On his overall expectations from the ASU offense having a freshman QB:

“The thing is, we will grow and be as dynamic as much as the quarterback can handle. And that’s the tough part right now is that we have all of these veterans all around this young kid, and they are chomping at the bit to do…(saying) ‘Let’s do this. Let’s run these formations. Let’s do this.’ I’m like, ‘Hold on. We got to just let this kid grow.’ But when he gets there, I think we can be pretty dynamic and powerful.

“This my first time in 30 years (having a true freshman starting QB). You’ve got to be pretty special to come in and start as a freshman. Once after a couple of practices in the spring and watching his arm, and then going back in the summer, when I got back from vacation, I broke out all of the spring film again after I got away from it. And I watched all of his plays in a row. And that’s when it started hitting me…‘Wow. Look at how fast this guy sees this. Like he sees this so fast. He sees this faster than a senior or a junior.’”