What to do when nothing’s working Likens’ stressful night ends with emotion
EAST LANSING, Mich. -- Rob Likens reported to the media room a few minutes after Danny Gonzales. While Arizona State’s defensive coordinator found an empty chair in the bowels of Spartan Stadium to watch Herm Edwards’ press conference, its offensive coordinator showered.
For four hours, his emotions were drained. Perched in the coaches’ booth, his psyche was in a stock-market-like flux. All he wanted was something to work. Anything. He sat two hundred feet above his players with an anxiety-inducing perplexity.
He questioned everything he called. Not if it was the right call but rather if it would work. Would the defense roll into coverage and take away his deep shot? Would his freshman quarterback make the correct read? Would his patch-work offensive line, which included two freshmen, hold on long enough to afford Jayden Daniels time to make the correct read?
He had to consider his offense’s weaknesses, its bruises that any good opposing fighter would want to keep beating. Only on this night, there were a lot of bruises, a lot of places Likens didn’t want to get hit -- places he knew he couldn’t get hit.
Most of all, Likens had to hold on. If he was wincing every play -- clenching his mouth and core in unison -- one wouldn’t blame him.
One also couldn’t blame him for the speedy shower. He wanted to rinse himself of the emotional toll ASU’s 10-7 victory over Michigan State ran him through, to become refreshed physically even if it may take some time to land there mentally.
Likens sat down in the first row of chairs. Two people, separated by one chair each, plopped on either side of him, one leaned forward in their chair behind him and a hoard stood in front of him. He was away from the field, out of the shower and ready for the trip back to Phoenix.
An untucked light blue button-down shirt was covered up by a dark blue sports coat. He wore dark blue jeans, dark sneakers, held a yellow wristband around his right wrist and had a necklace peeked through his two untucked buttons. His light hair was spiked up and housed a pair of black sunglasses.
Most of what one could glean from Likens, physically, could be picked up in a couple of seconds. But, nine minutes through his media scrum, the dozens of eyes around Likens began to peer into his, which had begun to well up. The ASU offensive coordinator offered silence as he caught himself on the verge of crying. Choked up, his words weren’t coming out with the usual ease.
He acknowledged his emotion, then let out a sniffle before continuing answering questions.
To Likens, this wasn’t another victory. This wasn’t just a road victory, or an unranked team beating a ranked one. This was “David vs. Goliath,” he said. Likens compared Saturday’s contest to one he coached through in 1998. Then the wide receivers coach at Temple, the Owls beat No. 14 Virginia Tech on the road despite going in as 35-point underdogs.
It was the first time Temple won a Big East road game and the first time it defeated a ranked opponent. In other words, it was the epitome of a David vs. Goliath football game. And yet...
“What we did today,” Likens declared Saturday, “was a far greater upset than that game ever was.”
ASU is a Pac-12 program that defeated the Spartans a year ago. ASU has above-average talent, an undefeated record and was a far smaller, 13.5-point, underdog compared to his Tempe team from over two decades ago. Saturday was surely a surprise. But coaches don’t often become teary-eyed over a Week 3 upset.
This meant more to Likens.
All week, he watched the film and game-planned for 18th-ranked Michigan State. They had what he described as “the best front seven, I think, in all of college football.” That meant, ASU’s shuffled offensive line -- which moved senior Cohl Cabral to center, freshman LaDarius Henderson to left tackle and freshman Dohnovan West to right guard -- was going to face an onslaught.
It forced Likens to use his offensive weapon, Eno Benjamin, as mainly a decoy.
Facing a Michigan State defense that had allowed an average negative-three rushing yards through two games, Benjamin didn’t carry the ball at all in the first quarter, eventually finishing the night with 11 carries and 42 yards but adding the Devils’ lone touchdown.
“If we would have tried to run the ball on these guys I would have been sitting up here and you would have asked me, ‘Coach, why did you do that?’” Edwards said. “We felt that we had to do something a little different.”
It, too, demanded that Likens throw all of his trust in Daniels. He wasn’t going to have much time. He’d be knocked down, chased around and bombarded with Michigan State’s hungry arsenal.
There was a lot to worry Likens. A lot that wasn’t going to go smooth.
During the game, he kept his phone on the table in the coach’s booth. On it was the Bible chapter Psalm 18, which, in its sixth verse, reads, “In my distress, I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.”
Likens often peered at his phone. When he was “drawing plays in the sand,” or calling max protection and still watching his young quarterback run for his life. It stabilized his mind to the point where he could refrain from panicking -- even as the Spartans’ nearly doubled ASU’s offensive output in every category. But, indeed, there were times he could have panicked.
One, in particular, sticks out. It was 4th and 13, Arizona State was down four points, had 1:23 on the clock and were stationed just outside the red zone. The play was initially 4th and 8, but then there was an ASU timeout, a false start and two, back-to-back Michigan State timeouts. In essence, Likens had time to think about the game’s most important play, and then re-think about it three more times.
On the initial try, Likens saw that the Devils’ offense hadn’t picked up on Michigan State’s “cat corner” blitz, which led to the timeout. He then had ASU line up in a trips formation in the boundary so the Spartans’ would keep their blitz before motioning over to their original play. Daniels took the snap and surveyed for a moment -- he had time but no open options.
“I just knew if we send everybody deep, and they were going to drop at least seven, possibly eight, that I knew that he would get around and scramble a bit,” Likens said. “And that was our bet.”
On a night where ASU’s offense had to scratch and claw for every small gain, Daniels’ 15-yard scamper felt like a practice in both its simplicity and execution. There was no scrambling, or diving or thought of producing a miracle. He just ran toward open space. Twice more on ASU’s final drive, the freshman quarterback worked in the same manner, setting up, mostly with his legs, Benjamin’s go-ahead score.
“The kid did good, boy,” Edwards said. “The kid did good.”
Last week, Likens stood against a white wall inside ASU’s Student-Athlete Facility. With feelings of both confusion and anger after the Sun Devils close win over Sacramento State, his tone was somber. He stayed adamant he would go watch the film and fix things. At one point, he even noted how excited he was to go to work and change things for Michigan State.
On Saturday night, there was no talk of anything past Saturday night. For one night, he could stay in the moment, could think about what ASU did and not what ASU needs to do. In the coming days, Likens will game plan for a scenario that doesn’t include the need for a do-or-die 4th and 13. For now, though, he only needs to figure out how the Sun Devils pulled it off.
“The predicament that we were in with our offensive line, our quarterback and who we were going against,” Likens said. “I can’t even, like, I’m just trying to wrap (my mind around it).”
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