With a period of major transition for Arizona State taking place this year, the need for valued veteran leaders is more important than ever. Two such players who can assume that role for the Sun Devils are a pair of seniors in defensive lineman Michael Matus and safety Chris Edmonds, who not only expect much from themselves but are not shy of setting high the bar of potential achievement for their teammates.
Coming back from a season-ending ACL tear a year ago, Matus describes the recovery as “like riding a bike again. When you take a year-and-a-half off, you gotta get back into the swing of things and get your rhythm back. My main goal heading into fall camp was to have no limitations on my knee… I want to go into fall camp and not have to worry about it.”
With first-year head coach Kenny Dillingham now at the helm in Tempe and a staff that has but only one lone holdover from 2022, running backs coach Shaun Aguano, a significant change such as this one may be quite a bit for returning players to adjust to. Nonetheless, Matus feels as if this change, both in personnel and a novel scheme, has been well accepted by the team.
“Everybody who’s here is here to win,” Matus commented, “and I think that’s from the coaching level all the way down to the player level. They’re great coaches that bring a lot of great advice.”
Edmonds has also enjoyed playing under the new defensive scheme employed by coordinator Brian Ward. “It’s been great,” Edmonds remarked. “We’re still getting used to the speed (of the scheme), but today was better than yesterday. I wanted to get better from the spring, not only knowing my position better but also knowing the other positions too. I want to know the whole scheme and know why we are doing those things. I was cleaning up my footwork in coverage.
“We’re getting better every day, and we have an aggressive defense. You guys have seen today that we’re having fun communicating as a defense, and I’m working on being a better communicator.”
The new system is defined by dynamic players who are called upon to create chaos near the line of scrimmage and cause hesitation and inducement of errors by opposing offenses. The defensive staff requires its players to be comfortable moving across the formation and be ready to adapt to various assignments and create matchup advantages.
We’ve already seen junior B.J. Green transition from defensive tackle to an EDGE rusher, and fellow junior Anthonie Cooper make the exact opposite move. Matus believes that this duo is more than capable of playing effectively with this change, and if needed, would welcome any change of assignment that may be required of him. “I’ll play anywhere on the d-line,” Matus noted. “Wherever they tell me to go, I’ll go.”
No one is more excited to return to the gridiron than Matus, who has set lofty goals and expectations for himself and his fellow defensive linemen.
“Top of the PAC-12 and not anything short of that,” Matus stated. “You can go ask anybody in the Pac-12 that same question, and they would all say the same thing; everybody wants to be the best, but I think we can do it.”
Edmonds echoed those state sentiments for the secondary.
“We expect to be the number one secondary in the country this year,” Edmonds said. “We have all the talent we need and all the guys here. All the new guys that came in have been amazing and fit right in. They picked up the family culture, doing their job, and they are all having fun. They bring the same energy that we already have here. That makes us better as a team.”
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