It’s no secret the Sun Devils had its fair share of offensive deficiencies in 2023. In Kenny Dillingham’s first season at the helm of the program, after being battered by injuries up and down the roster, Arizona State was forced to employ several different tactics just to give itself a chance at victory every Saturday, which included tight ends taking snaps, the swinging gate offensive line, and a laundry list of gadget plays that didn’t always confuse its opponent.
In an effort to fold the pieces together for a fresh start in 2024, Dillingham brought in a savvy and well-traveled offensive mind in Marcus Arroyo to serve as the new offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for an ASU unit that needed a veteran voice to lead it.
“I wanted somebody with NFL experience,” Dillingham said of the hire. “Coach Arroyo’s been a play caller in the NFL. He’s a quarterback guy. I like having coordinators who have been head coaches. As a head coach, he built a program (UNLV) and he built a roster that won ten games last year. When you call his references, guys like Todd Monken (Baltimore Ravens’ offensive coordinator) and Dirk Koetter (former Tampa Bay Buccaneers and ASU football head coach), and they all give you the same name of the same guy… you’re like, ‘Wow. This person’s four hours away, and he wants to be here.’…With his experience in the NFL, coaching quarterbacks and calling plays at that level, I think it’s a really good fit.”
“Any time you’re going through this process like we did, you start trying to align yourself maybe with some different things when you’re looking for where you wanna land,” Arroyo mentioned. “When we first started talking, me and Kenny realized right away we shared some common thoughts and common beliefs both on and off the field. That was really fun to hear. It was exciting, it was authentic, and that was important to me. It was encouraging and engaging in regard to how he saw the program. He’s from here; he’s got a passion for it, and that was important.”
With plenty of college football mileage logged, Arroyo has established himself as a well-known name among the ranks of offensive innovators and quarterback whisperers. A former signal-caller himself at San Jose State from 1998-2002, Arroyo worked his way up the coaching ladder at SJSU as well as Wyoming, Southern Mississippi, and California before getting a chance to work with Josh McCown and Mike Glennon as the quarterback’s coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2014.
After his stint with the Bucs, Arroyo went back to the college ranks, first as a running backs coach for Oklahoma State before spending three years in Eugene as the offensive coordinator, playing a leading role in the development of current NFL All-pro gunslinger Justin Herbert at Oregon. Under Arroyo, the Ducks placed in the top 30 nationally in points per game from 2017-2019, and the void Arroyo left with the Ducks would eventually be filled a few seasons later by his new boss at ASU, Kenny Dillingham.
Much like Dillingham, Arroyo worked his way up from a grad assistant to an offensive coordinator at a high-profile school before getting the keys to his own program at UNLV. A couple of years ahead of Dillingham’s curve, though, Arroyo’s accomplishments at Oregon placed him on the national radar as one of the brightest young offensive minds around, and the Runnin’ Rebels secured his services after the 2019 season for his first head coaching job. While things didn’t go according to plan in Vegas (then again, what does?), as the Rebels went just 7-23 in Arroyo’s tenure, Arizona State offered him a second chance to re-establish his offensive pedigree after a year away from the game, something Arroyo couldn’t be more excited for now with his takeaways as a program leader during one of the more trying periods to be a first-time head coach.
“You spend your whole career studying for that role,” Arroyo recalled. “What you don’t study for is COVID and all the stuff that happened. You gotta take that with a grain of salt and find out there are so many things that you got from it. The way that you demand, the way that you detail, the way that you organize, the way that you gotta be steady every day, it’s so much bigger than you.
“It helped being a coordinator for so long, it helped stepping into the role right now, it’s a collective effort. There are so many moving pieces that you gotta be able to step back and manage them all the best you can. It was an awesome experience for me, and we’re gonna be fantastic because of it.”
Having worked with one of the best signal callers in the recent college football history in Herbert and growing an elite offense around him, Arroyo’s unique schematics and creativity will come as a relief for Dillingham, who was forced to take over offensive play calling duties after just three games into the 2023 season. For Dillingham, having an established power conference level coordinator certainly takes a weight off his shoulders, as the new offensive coordinator will establish much-needed organization for this side of the ball.
“A lot less freedom, a lot more structure, which is what I’m comfortable with,” Dillingham remarked.
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In a freshman campaign in which he only played in three games, recording two starts, former four-star quarterback Jaden Rashada is expected to take a huge leap in his sophomore season, yet will be put to the test in the battle for the starting job by Sam Leavitt. The former three-star recruit out of Oregon comes to Tempe by way of Michigan State, where the soon-to-be sophomore saw action sparingly in four games for the Spartans. Profiled as a pocket passer who can use his legs when needed, Leavitt’s experience at a Power Five level was attractive to Dillingham, who suggested creating a position battle between Leavitt and the incumbent Rashada will only push both quarterbacks to raise their level of play early.
“He has experience,” Dillingham noted of Leavitt. “He played as a true freshman, and he’s competitive. At the end of the day, we’re gonna bring in the best players for this football program at any position. I don’t care if we have a sitting first-round draft pick. If there’s another first-round draft pick at that position, I’m gonna bring him in. Beat him out. The greatest players in any sport ever, they’ve never been scared of competition. If you ask any great at anything in any profession, anything you do in life, if you’re scared of competition, there’s no way you’re gonna be great.
“So, I think the challenge to those two guys is, ‘Yeah, you can go somewhere else, but if you think you’re not gonna compete, you’re fooling yourself.’ If you don’t think competition makes you better, you’re fooling yourself. You can be internally motivated all you want. When you get external motivation on top of your internal motivation, that’s the combination that takes people to another level. That was why we did it. We brought in the best guy. I evaluated every quarterback in the portal. Me and the staff, we ranked them, we brought in the best guy we thought we could.”
Leavitt noted that his familiarity with Arroyo, who was the offensive coordinator for Leavitt’s home state, Oregon Ducks, was one of the tipping points in his recruitment to Tempe.
“Once I heard it was him, I got on the phone with him, and that was one of the biggest selling points for me to come here,” Leavitt described upon hearing of Arroyo’s hire. “Probably the biggest selling point for me. I’m trying to pick his brain. He’s taken multiple dudes to the NFL, so I’m learning from him every day and trying to see what it takes to get to the next level. He gives me all the keys, and he’s gonna prepare me to do exactly what I need to do every play.”
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With his voice likely the loudest come spring ball and fall camp, Arroyo outlined a position battle as a responsibility of his own, just as much as that of the players.
“That’s the key to watching it right now,” Arroyo noted. “You watch at the highest level and find the guys that can really compete and let the cream rise to the top. I think, more than anything, you just gotta be honest with the position. You gotta create clarity. I think that’s the piece that you find most advantageous when you get into a room. Any room, really, it’s just eliminating the grey.
“I think all of us inherently as humans want an opportunity to know what we need to do and how we need to do it, and when we don’t do it, what we need to do right. I think the quarterback position, as vaulted as it is, doesn’t have to be any different. Having an open competition where everybody knows what it’s about and everyone knows how to do things is fair.”
With Leavitt just one of several reinforcements offensively through the transfer portal, Arroyo sees the potential in a talented group of individuals to form a cohesive and dynamic offensive attack the next time the Sun Devils take the field.
“Coach has done a really good job recruiting and starting a foundation for an explosive offense,” Arroyo said. “We’ve added some important pieces, we got bigger, we’ve added some elements at the skill positions that can make the offense really go.”
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