Saturday night at Mountain America Stadium offered a balanced preseason session. The ASU offense put together five scoring drives consisting of three touchdowns and two field goals. On the other hand, the defense forced multiple turnovers and plenty of tackles in the backfield. Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham was pleased with the equalized effort he had witnessed.

“It was a pretty back-and-forth day,” Dillingham said. “It was good to actually tackle and get out here. We did our full pregame; I thought It was a good mental day for these guys just as much as it was physically.”

Dillingham feels as if his depth is formidable, with many of his players having a high preparedness level for seeing significant minutes on gamedays. The scrimmage allowed the Sun Devils’ first and second-team players to go head-to-head without experiencing dips in quality of play.

“We have a starting almost 22 players on defense,” Dillingham said. “That's the reality; I don’t know who the guy is; we have a bunch of guys who we want to play.”

And the improved offensive performance came down to one simple aspect.

“We didn’t have many penalties with the ones,” Dillingham noted, “and when you don’t have penalty with the [first team], you don’t have bad snaps when you don’t do all the things that make you a bad football team it’s not that hard to move the ball.”

The cerebral learning wasn’t just for the players, however, as the coaching staff got to test out the newly approved NCAA tablet rule, allowing coaches and players to use live reviews on technological devices to adjust schemes and read plays from different angles.

Dillingham feels this novel process will drastically change the way college football is played, as the replay system allows for timely in-game learning on the sideline that can quickly implement teachings during games.

“This tablet deal, watching the full video live… for most people, it is very difficult to see the game live and adjust; the ability for both sides of the ball to watch every play changes the game,” Dillingham emphasized. “You’re going to have to change what you do more than you ever have. It just makes it so much easier to make adjustments than it was prior, so you better have a variety of things to change up your calls with this new technology, and that's what we were practicing today.”

The scrimmage review will provide some added assuredness in the depth chart as Dillingham claims he’ll expect to have his starters picked at quarterback and placekicker by the beginning of the ASU fall semester, which takes on Thursday the 22nd.

“We’ll be coming out with news on that here in the next week or so,” Dillingham remarked. “It could happen in the next three to four days; I would like to have it happen right around before school starts.”

Saturday night’s scrimmage allowed players to stand out in their respective roles. Offensively, wide receiver Jake Smith and running back Jason Brown used their agility and quickness to create explosive plays throughout the night, leaving Dillingham impressed with their performances.

“He has gotten a lot of carries live; he was hard to tackle,” Dillingham said of Jason Brown. “The goal at running back is to not go down; today, we really just got to see him not go down. A powerful guy, and he had to have elite balance, and you could see that elite balance today on the field.

“Smith just looks great out there; he looks like Jake Smith, who was the Gatorade Player of the Year in the state of Arizona, the freshman all-American. He looks like Jake Smith. It's awesome for me, through all the turmoil (being ruled ineligible by the NCAA last year)he went through, to see him back and to see his confidence back.”

The defensive side of the ball earned praise from its head coach as well as Dillingham highlighted seniors safety Xavion Alford and defensive end Elijah O’Neal. Through their quality of play and mental fortitude, both players made their presence felt.

“Alford is playing some post-safety now, and he’s the 100-yard landlord or whatever his Instagram handle is,” Dillingham said jokingly. “Him in the post I’d definitely be very fitting for him he has a really good knack for the football, and he’s had a really good transition into being able to play multiple roles.”

“He could be the most improved player on the team since spring,” Dillingham said about O’Neal. “Point blank, when we got him last year, he was as raw as you could get, and he has gotten better and better and better. Every single cycle I think he’s been one of our most improved [Players], now you look at him, he’s really embraced it he could be our most improved player of fall camp.”