Arizona State set itself up for the exact situation head coach Herm Edwards’ team was built to execute upon. With a 21-7 halftime advantage over Pac-12 South foe Utah and an offense averaging 6.6 yards per carry, offensive coordinator Zak Hill’s group was in a comfortable spot.
Maybe the Sun Devils were too comfortable. With an apoplectic second half showing, an ASU squad which has dictated terms on the line of scrimmage for most of 2021 was no longer able to do so in the second half.
“They got some momentum, and they took advantage of it,” said Hill of Utah’s shift in production coming out of the halftime break. “They played us physical.”
The Sun Devils are offensively built upon the run. Entering Saturday night, the Devils were 11-1 in the Edwards era when running the ball for over 200 yards in a contest. That stat is one the head coach frequently cites to the media when his offense is clicking the way it is supposed to. Through the first 30 minutes at Rice-Eccles Stadium, Arizona State was on its way to adding to that statistic. ASU ran the ball 20 times in the first half for 131 yards. The duo of redshirt senior Rachaad White and sophomore DeaMonte Trayanum were impactful carrying the ball early, and even redshirt freshman Daniyel Ngata added a 16-yard carry of his own.
“We were in a situation where we were hoping to be able to run the football and control the game a little bit,” Hill explained following a second half which saw the Sun Devils accumulate just 97 yards of total offense. “But then it got out of hand a little bit, and it started slipping from us.”
None of the first half success carried over to the second half, as the ASU rushing attack was bottled up and solved. With the ground game held to a total of 148 yards rushing – including just 17 yards rushing in the second half – and more asked of the passing game, the aerial attack also came up short.
“Offensively, I thought we missed on a few things on third down and had some drops -- and that’s the difference in the game sometimes,” Hill remarked following the 18th-ranked Sun Devils’ 35-21 loss to Utah. “You either convert, and you hit your shots, or you don’t, and it creates a momentum or a lack of momentum.”
After Utah exploded out of the halftime break with a decisive nine-play, 75-yard touchdown drive, Arizona State failed to respond. Faced with a third-and-3 on the first offensive drive of the second half, junior quarterback Jayden Daniels found freshman tight end Jalin Conyers open over the middle of the field. The Oklahoma transfer – who caught his first career touchdown from seven yards out on ASU’s opening series of the night – failed to secure a should-be catch, leading to a three-and-out.
“I thought we got a little tight,” said Hill, who called his third straight game from the coaches’ booth. “Us not being able to convert on third downs – that’s tough. They are a good defense and great pressures, and we had to stay ahead of the chains, and we didn’t at times.”
There were no second half answers from Edwards, Hill, or anyone else in maroon and gold. An ASU offense which was shut out in the second half of last week’s 28-10 victory over Stanford was once again stifled coming out of the break.
“Even in the first half, the whole game, we had big plays on drives to keep the momentum going, and then we would shoot ourselves in the foot,” said Daniels. The third-year starting quarterback completed 20 of his 31 pass attempts for 237 yards and two touchdowns through the air to go along with a rushing touchdown. “It just came down to execution.
“I feel like the coaches did a great job of preparing us. It just came down to executing. It wasn’t really X’s and O’s. That’s on us. That’s on the players. Coaches prepared us all week to not go through the same thing as BYU.”
In two trips to the state of Utah, Arizona State has committed 29 penalties. Of the 13 Sun Devil infractions Saturday against the Utes, nine came on offense, as Edwards was left unable to explain the dumbfounding numbers.
“I have no idea. I wish I could tell you,” the fourth-year Sun Devil head coach said of the reasoning for the frequency of penalties. “It just rears its head, man. We went backward at times, and we overcame a few of them, but you can’t do that. We overcame a couple of them, but we didn’t overcome enough of them.”
For the most part, ASU was able to manage those first half penalties, committing seven of the nine offensive mistakes in the first 30 minutes as the offense clicked. But a play after Daniels found super senior tight end Curtis Hodges for a 32-yard gain to set up ASU at the Utah 20-yard line, left tackle Kellen Diesch committed a holding penalty and the Sun Devils turned a red zone trip into an inauspicious 51-yard field goal attempt. There, ASU tried unsuccessfully to utilize kickoff specialist Logan Tyler, who had his go-ahead kick attempt tipped on its way to missing wide left.
“It’s like déjà vu, really,” Daniels said of the early success and disastrous end to both of ASU’s trips to Utah in 2021. “We start off the first half hot, and we just couldn’t get nothing going in the second half on both sides of the ball. It’s just very frustrating. Not just for me but for the whole team.”
As Arizona State’s lead dwindled and the noise swelled in Salt Lake City, the aggressive nature and shot plays disappeared from the ASU playbook. Daniels only completed one pass that traveled more than 15 yards through the air in the second half as the Devils relied upon run-after-catch capabilities to create anything in the passing game.
Arizona State’s effective rushing attack disappeared in the second half as the Utes defensive line and swarming crew of linebackers held the Sun Devils to 1.1 yards per carry. A banged-up White was unable to manufacture the same success on second-and-10 runs against Utah as he did against other ASU opponents. As the game wound down and Ute defensive ends were able to pass rush with conviction, the déjà vu of weeks earlier became déjà vu to Daniels’ first trip to Utah – with the fleet-footed signal-caller scrambling for safety.
“You’re always going to go back and second guess when things don’t work,” Hill said. “We’ll do that. We’ve gotta be honest with ourselves and honest with the plan moving forward and challenge ourselves to be better and execute better because ultimately we took us out of that game.”
Utah’s second half prowess allowed the Utes to close the game on a 28-0 scoring run to take control of the drivers’ seat in the Pac-12 South. As the Sun Devils lost control of their grip on the contest, so too did they lose their grip on the division title race.
“We didn’t match them on either side of the ball,” Edwards said as the 5-2 Sun Devils sit at 3-1 in conference play heading into a bye week. “Offensively, we struggled. We didn’t move the ball hardly at all.
“We have five games left, and we don’t control our destiny. The only thing we control is winning, and we have to find a way to win again.”
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