A lackluster showing offensively is a blunt way of describing Arizona State’s (5-2, 2-2 Big 12) road outing against Cincinnati. Scoring just 14 points, the lowest the Sun Devil output this year, has naturally raised many questions and produced potential courses of action to improve out of the bye week as Arizona State ramps up for the final stretch of the 2024 season.
A first-quarter fumble by senior running back and three-time Big 12 offensive player of the week Cam Skattebo was a momentum shift during the 24-14 loss. Following his turnover deep in ASU’s territory, the Sun Devils offense failed to chalk up points for over 20 in-game minutes. Offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo feels his team is still learning how to deal with growing pains.
“I think it's a big piece of the maturity of a football team,” Arroyo said. “I think when you get an older group that goes on the road and can take punches like that, and you don't have your crowd to back you up in certain instances and have a little more maturity. I think you can be able to have a reservoir of a group that says, ‘Hey man, on the next play, it's about us.’
“I do believe it's a maturity thing. I think time on task with guys in those environments in programs with coaches and systems helps. I think they can fall back to old instances and say, ‘Hey, this is how we did it there, but until you're together in those moments, I don't know if you've got the same bank.”
The Sun Devils failed to convert on both of their fourth-down tries in the Queen City, now posting a 1-7 mark on fourth-down conversions in three away games played this campaign. Arroyo notes the difficulties on the road to those specific plays due to the momentum swings that often occur when an offense is halted on the road.
“I think that's one thing that we've tried to harp on in regards to consecutive first-down conversions in drives, which usually lead to scores. That's what we're trying to get,” Arroyo said. “I think we're in the infant stages of putting the offense together, but the guys are starting to see when you start to put it together.”
Missing its starting quarterback was a noticeable hindrance to Arroyo's offense. While senior Jeff Sims played admirably, converting 12-23 pass attempts for 155 yards, the lack of touchdowns or explosive plays certainly didn’t aid this side of the ball for ASU. Yet, Sims’ game management playstyle can be attributed to the limited playbook Arroyo decided to execute, feeling as though he held his backup from showing his true capabilities.
When you're playing at any level with your backup for the first time, you're going to be conservative in regards to being able to let them manage the game,” Arroyo explained. “Unless the backup is a seasoned veteran who's been in the system and who really knows what you're doing.
“I got to find a balance between being as aggressive as I normally am as a play caller and being conservative in protecting players or protecting the calls Because unless you're really good, it's hard to matriculate the ball just playing really conservative Ball versus anybody, especially a good opponent.”
Arizona State allowed the agile Sims to gain yards on the ground, using all of his 6-foot-3 frame to earn over 50 yards rushing against Cincinnati. Nonetheless, the coaching staff does have its quarries about having a quarterback use his legs extensively, even if he is athletically capable.
“I'm not on huge running the quarterback all the time for the same reason that right now we don't have Sam because of a rib injury,” Arroyo remarked. “I just had that happen in a couple of different instances going all in my whole career. I had one [Justin] Herbert's sophomore year with him he broke a collar bone on design a quarterback keeper that sticks out that have two calls. Sam did his own kind of a scramble deal, which is kind of weird, but I just think you got to kind of protect your quarterback sometime.”
The running game was, as usual, dominated by Skattebo, who carried the ball 17 times compared to nine carries for senior DeCarlos Brooks and sophomore Kyson Brown combined. Dillingham has noted the benefits of using more than one running back in the offense and the team's desire to spread the attempts out more consistently. For Arroyo, he feels the offense was off to its proper trajectory on the rushing front before the early turnover.
“I thought, for the most part, guys had a good feel for what we want to get done, “Arroyo said. “We got off to a fast start, then we kind of pulled back a little bit and lost kind of the momentum of the game a little bit, and we had a turnover that kind of pulled us back. But as far as the designs and the run games and those guys being able to mix it up.”
The bye week now awards the Sun Devil offense plenty of time to adjust and amend last week's woes, as well as allowing offensive players to lower the depth chart to show their skills in practice and break up the usual monotony of game week preparations.
“Fortunately, we had two byes in the season, so we've had kind of this first third, and then you got kind of this middle third here,” Arroyo said. “You take a little bit of a chunk of the week on staring at yourself and being able to self-scout. Evaluate what you're doing, your injuries, your health, what do you need to do moving forward in the offense collectively, and then you kind of get a forecast of what you got coming up down the road, so right now we got a five-week stretch with no break from here on out so it's going to be Oklahoma State's.”
Defensively, the unit suffered its own first-half difficulties against the Bearcats, allowing 24 points, more than in any other half of the season. Defensive coordinator Brain Ward is not one for excuses, and the bye week grants the defense a chance to self-reflect ahead of the five-week remainder of the season.
“We got to get it cleaned up and it's really good to get a bye week this point in the season after seven games really able to go look at yourself and see how other people look at you,” Ward stated. “Adjustments that we can make to hopefully clean some things up."
Ward points to the challenging field position that didn’t help them start the matchup. After Skattebo's turnover, the Bearcats were in prime position to attack the endzone, and the avalanche began from then on. Ward knows the red zone has been a point of emphasis in practice, yet plenty of work is necessary for the squad to improve in that area.
“We really haven't had to start with a short field and those types of things, and it's up to us to respond, so there are no excuses for that because we work red zone and we work high red zone, and we weren't able to execute in the red zone,” Ward detailed.” Except for one time in the first half, and when you start three drives on the 50 or your side of the field, the defense has to step up we had another short field in the second half, but our guys responded, so that's the expectation for us we believe in our guys, and it doesn't matter the situation we got to be able to respond to it.”
A key moment in the hosts' first-half landslide of 24 unanswered points was a 55-yard rushing touchdown by Evan Pryor, who exploded up the heart of the defense and didn’t look back until he was across the pilon. Ward was still pleased with his players' defensive adjustments to the explosive moments on Saturday, attributing calm mindsets to the second-half adjustments later on.
“They only had five explosive plays total, “Ward noted. They had one big play, and it honestly was a bad call by me in that situation. I didn't put our guys in a great position to be successful. Give credit to those guys you like. Our guys played hard. There weren't any other explosives that ultimately led to points for them, so we played very solid football. And at times, with situations where games come down defensively to situations that we need to either call it better, and B we need to execute the calls that are the right calls better.
“They play really hard, and they're unflappable, and Coach Reynolds, our Defensive line coach, said it best: he hasn't experienced a group that is this unflappable. There's no freaking out there's no guys losing their cool on the sideline. There's ‘Hey guys, let's get back to work.’ That's a testament to the guys. They believe in what we're doing and they also believe in how they're being coached, there's no gray area in terms of what the expectation is so we got a great group and I'm excited to see how we can close the season these last five games.”
The bye week has seen some young players on the squad grow and develop as time has gone on, allowing the non-two-deep players to scrimmage and get live-action reps rather than being utilized as scout team players. Ward has been no stranger to using his younger players this season, like freshman defensive back Rodney Bimage Jr. or freshman linebacker Martell Hughes, two players who have taken tremendous strides since stepping on campus.
“We got a great young group and I just love coach Dillingham's philosophy is they're really trying to develop guys, “Ward praised. “The first couple years here, we've had to in guys to get our depth right, but we're really trying to invest in these younger guys; as you get into our depth chart, we got a lot of talent in those rooms. A bird in the hand is better than a bird in the bush, so basically, those guys are already with us, so let's develop the guys that we have and uh and help them to get a vision of what their future is going to be here as a Sun Devil.
“They’re special freshman; they're exactly what we recruited; we thought those are two guys that could potentially help us right away, and both those guys have, so I'm just really excited about their development, and that piece is really the critical piece. I talk about guys being comfortable in the system and comfortable with calls, that's where guys separate themselves in terms of their development and their progression throughout their careers.
“Guys that jump around and find new coaches and kind to get into new schemes never develop, and they never hit the ceiling the way they should, and then they wonder why they don't get drafted or don't make NFL. It really is about development and especially from a defensive standpoint and watching Rodney and watching Martell just those guys and what their Futures are going to look like if they stay the course, their potential is off the chart.”
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