Was it two high fives then two backhanded high fives? One high five into a backhanded high five repeated two times. With a perplexed dialogue, Dillon Sterling-Cole and Frank Darby stood pat inside the Arizona State Student-Athlete Facility playing out all the possible options, hoping they could jog their memory.
They remembered the ending to their three-year-old handshake -- running by each other while pretending to shoot a one-legged fade-away jumper -- but failed to recall what preceded it. All eyes in the designated ‘interview hallway,’ fixated on the pair of redshirt juniors as they sent yells and laughter through every crevice.
After a 30-second trial-and-error period, they finally replicated the elaborate and extensive handshake routine. It started with a few normal and backhanded high fives, went into a phase where they did the thumb-over-shoulder part of the ‘hand jive’ and finished with the basketball shot.
Things were back to the way they used to be, at long last. Back to the days when the pair were an elite scout-team combination when meaningful playing time felt a lifetime away.
This time was different. It wasn’t two newcomers off in the corner jovially coming up with a unique handshake while everyone turned a blind eye. It was two charismatic first-team players at the center of attention.
Now, though, with Sterling-Cole competing against a trio of freshmen signal callers for the starting quarterback role and Darby looking like the Devils’ No. 1 passing game threat, the scout-team days are almost like a rites of passage, if not a point of pride, moments that always seem to come up regardless of the situation.
“There was one pass he threw to (Geordon Porter,) it was a laser,” Darby said. “And after that catch, I was like, ‘Yo, that was a great pass,’ and he was like, ‘Do you remember we did that in spring when (former ASU head coach Todd) Graham was here?’ I was like, ‘Yes, I still have the video too.’”
From there, Darby started rattling off plays from as early as 2016. They’ve transitioned from relics into Sterling-Cole and Darby’s lexicon, a secret language that they’ve kept with them over the years.
The meanings to most of their references make little sense to outsiders but the products of such show themselves with clarity. The result often goes like this: Sterling-Cole drops back and fires a bomb down the sideline right into the pocket of Darby for a substantial gain.
The video Darby mentioned was from a closed scrimmage his sophomore year under Graham. It was a backup-to-backup connection that helped garner Darby some snaps. Since then, he’s transitioned into virtually an every-down receiver.
All he hopes is that Sterling-Cole can do the same under center, to get back to the scout-team days where the pair can finally flourish together in a real game.
“Now it’s time,” Darby said. “That’s what we say together. We waited, we trusted the process, now it’s time to try and win the battle and let’s show everybody like, it’s the moment now. Let’s show them what we’ve got.”
***
Intrigued to look for mistakes, Sterling-Cole still turns on the ASU, Oregon game from his freshman year.
After then-starting quarterback Manny Wilkins was injured against USC, and then Washington State three weeks later, and Brady White against UCLA, the freshman from Houston was tasked to lead the Sun Devils, then 5-3, into Eugene.
ASU lost by 19 as Sterling-Cole threw for 302 yards on 21-of-38 passing with a touchdown and three interceptions.
Looking back on it now, it’s easy for the 6-foot-3, 215-pound quarterback to admit. He sees everything clearer, he knows where his receivers and defenders alike are going to be. But he watches the game anyway.
Maybe he’ll pick up on something he missed.
“I was able to take so much from that game,” Sterling-Cole said. “It was really important being able to go in there and take the reps I did, everything slowed down when I went in the Oregon game and it felt like high school again.
“The USC game this past year (when Wilkins went out for a drive with an injury,) I watch the play (a deep ball to Darby that was dropped in the end zone) every time. I watch that whole little 3-play series every time just to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes.”
The Oregon game is the only start in Sterling-Cole’s three-year ASU career. For all of that time, he was stuck behind ASU’s three-year starter Wilkins and in spurts, also pegged behind White, Bryce Perkins, and Blake Barnett.
Even now, with Wilkins gone, the Sun Devils have three youngsters trying to pry the starting job away from the veteran Sterling-Cole. His time in Tempe has been light on the highlights and heavy on questions about who can beat him out.
At every turn, he has an out: Transfer. There’s a market 6-foot-3, 215-pound quarterbacks who can sling the ball a quarter-mile.
“It’s truly been a long road for me,” Sterling-Cole said. “There’s been a lot of adversity, a lot of time I’ve been able to sit back and be like, ‘Hey, why am I still here.’ But this road is a long road, a long path, a long journey. I’m just so happy to be here to take advantage of the opportunity I have competing against these guys.”
Sterling-Cole’s views against transferring are rare in philosophy college football today. Loyalty has been overtaken by the transfer portal, almost making it advantageous for guys to jump ship at the first sign of adversity.
But his views were shaped from watching the path Wilkins took -- beating out White and Perkins, then seeing ASU go get Barnett, an Alabama transfer, and beating him out as well. Heck, Sterling-Cole knows he was once one of the younger guys Wilkins had to step up his game to beat out.
“Learning from Manny and seeing how he handled it, why shouldn’t I handle the adversity as well as he did?” Sterling-Cole said.
***
Sterling-Cole is quick to praise Wilkins for everything he helped him with while in Tempe. But all the while, the Houston native is candid that Wilkins’ presence forced him to hold back in a sense.
“I didn’t have that much of a voice with Manny being that guy that’s already doing that,” Sterling-Cole said. “I don’t feel like I was given the opportunity to just go and be as vocal as I wanted to be. But now that I see that open, I just want to take advantage of it.
“I feel like there’s one that’s truly accepted to a certain extent. And it’s not that I didn’t have their ear before but I definitely, now that I’m in the role like, ‘Hey Dillon, you’re the older guy, you’re the other QB, da da da.’ Like sh--, let me go ahead and do my thing then.”
An example: During a one-on-one drill this spring, receiver Brandon Aiyuk beat cornerback Kobe Williams. Aiyuk started running up the seam then made a shifty cut towards the sideline. Williams fell to the ground as Aiyuk caught a deep pass. Not even in on the play, Sterling-Cole started sprinting down the sideline yelling, “B-A! B-A!”
For the fear of making it seem like he was overstepping his bounds and going over the head of Wilkins, Sterling-Cole said he wouldn’t yell or scream things out to tell guys how he felt. Instead, he may have just pulled Aiyuk to the side and told him, ‘Hey, great catch.’
Standing against a wall in the same hallway where he and Darby went through their handshake, Sterling-Cole lets out a wide grin that exposes his braces, he’s trying to think of the right words to help clarify what he meant when he said he’s going to implement things guys haven’t seen in a long time.
“I mean just wilding out, just being myself, just being vocal,” Sterling-Cole said. “Like running down the field being like, ‘Oh!’ making it seem like it’s more than what it is but, actually to me, it really is. Bringing light to the field is what I like to do, I did that in high school when guys make big plays run down the field. Just having that type of energy and poise throughout practice is what we kind of need going forward.”
When that doesn’t happen, too, he blames himself.
“Some days, like this past Saturday, we didn’t have any energy out there on the field and I felt like I let the team down by not saying something, not being vocal that day,” Sterling-Cole said. “Even though I (wasn’t working with the first-team offense that day,) I should have stepped up as one of the older guys and said, ‘Hey guys, let’s pick it up. Bring some energy, bring some light to the field. Let’s do this.’”
Darby is quick to admit that Sterling-Cole has changed since Wilkins left the program following ASU’s Sun Bowl loss. He plays and acts free like he’s not bogged down anymore by any issues.
Sure, Darby says, Sterling-Cole was probably going through the motions at times over the last three years. But, could one blame him> Sterling-Cole knew there wasn’t a scenario, aside from injury, where he could jump Wilkins to become the starter.
“That position I was in, I just didn’t feel like it was necessary for me to go out and be too much. I never try to overstep anyone and I never try to disrespect anyone, like go over the top with anything. I’ve always made sure I get my point across with my guys.”
Now, he can be as exuberant as he wants. He’s the alpha … finally.
While others would have looked at the Sun Devils signing three quarterbacks as a sign to move on, he looked at it as an opportunity. He’s the one with the most experience, the one who’s seen this play out before, the one who understands how important every practice and every rep is.
He waited three years, watched quarterbacks come in and out of the program. He soaked up as much information as possible from both Wilkins and his own failures. Now Sterling-Cole has a voice. At last, it’s his time.
“He’s dealt with mad stuff, just being stressed out, not playing, being a starter at one point to being like the fourth-string quarterback,” Darby said. “He’s just been going up and down. He waited, he trusted the process. He could’ve (transferred) with all these quarterbacks coming in but he stayed strong.”
Join us on our premium message board, the Devils’ Huddle, to discuss this article and other ASU football and recruiting topics. Not a member yet? Sign up today here and join your fellow Sun Devil fans!
