In talking to some of Arizona State’s key players on the offensive side of the ball, it seems clear guys have come to terms with their preseason aspirations of playing for a Pac-12 championship being all but gone.
However, the Sun Devils enter the season’s final month at 5-3 overall- albeit with a 2-3 conference record- a spot that many in the preseason couldn’t even foresee for the program. These same players still know that a lot can be accomplished this season, which is why guys like junior receiver Frank Darby, aka the “energy guy,” are continuing to push their teammates for their best efforts.
“I feel like that’s my role on this team, to try to push everybody up, get everybody up,” Darby said. “We just got our butt kicked, maybe that was just one of those butt-whoopings out of the blue, like your mother’s called- your teacher called from school and we didn’t even know it was going to happen.
“I feel like we didn’t go out there with the right mindset, so right now my whole thing is to try to get into some of the players, try to tell them ‘let’s keep going, let’s finish it,’ you know, and I know some of them are probably looking at it like ‘oh the Pac-12 championship, the Rose Bowl,’ I mean I know that was like a goal for everybody. But we can go 9-3, you know, that’s a solid season, so I try to get that in their head…anything can happen, it’s the Pac-12.”
ASU has embodied this ‘anything can happen’ mantra as well as any team in the conference, with several come-from-behind wins prior to the debacle that has been the past two games.
“We know we can do better; we know what we’re capable of,” redshirt freshman receiver Geordon Porter said. “We’ve shown we could put up points. The Washington State game, we’ve seen we could do that.
“We’ve got a lot of comeback wins this year. We know when it’s time, we could come back and put up points, we just have to come out hot early. If we do that, we’ll be fine.”
Of course, as Porter hints at here, arguably the most persistent problem for ASU’s offense throughout this season has been an inability to start games off on the right foot.
Since the start of their power-five schedule, which accounts for the last six games, the Sun Devils have combined to score 83 second-half points, compared to only 55 first-half points in that same span. There’s even a stark difference in comparing the first and second quarters, as ASU has scored 14 first-quarter points during that stretch but 41 points in quarter two.
This is an urgent matter to address with the USC Trojans (5-4, 4-2 Pac-12) coming to town Saturday fresh off a 32-point loss; an always fierce opponent who has everything to play for, being down but not out in the race for the Pac-12 title.
“That’s the main thing, we’ve got to come out hot,” Porter stated. “You don’t ever want a team to get a jump on you. For example, this game coming up, USC’s kind of like a front-runner team. When they get up, they just try to keep going, so I feel like if we can get up on them, then I feel like the momentum’s just going to keep going from there.”
Although ASU’s last two offensive performances have been very forgettable, the unit does hope it can build on the momentum they finished with at UCLA, even if the 22-point fourth quarter effort always was too little, too late in that particular contest.
“The last couple drives of the UCLA game, we kind of found our rhythm, but at that point, it was too late,” senior center Cohl Cabral said. “Continuing to build on what we had at the end of that game, into the bye week last week, into the start of this game week, continuing to get better at it.”
A big factor that could help the offense find its mojo again would be cutting down on the sloppy, careless penalties that have abounded in those consecutive road losses. While it’s an issue for which the offense and defense share the blame, if not more so the defense, there’s been plenty of cases where such self-inflicted penalties caused the offense to stall at key points in these games.
Even though ASU has fallen victim to poor officiating arguably as much as any team in college football over that time frame, Cabral believes as a leader it’s important to focus on practicing the right way if they want to cut down on the game day gaffes.
“Keeping everybody accountable, stuff that’s happening in practice- making sure that they understand they can’t do that in practice because practice correlates to a game,” Cabral said on how he’s tried to help the team fix this issue. “So, if you’re going to go out and have personal fouls during practice, it’s going to carry over at some point during a game. If you’re going to have a holding call, or not be focused in one practice, that can dictate an entire quarter on Saturday.
“So, making sure everyone stays accountable to everything they’re doing all week, so that when we go in on Saturday everyone’s on the right page…making sure everyone- it’s not just the coaches being on top of it- it’s all the players being on top of it as well. If someone’s got to be called out, someone’s got to be called out. Making sure everyone is on the right page and everyone understands what we need to fix to keep moving forward.”
The Sun Devils hope that returning home, where they’ve been 3-1 this season, will help that much more in righting the ship, as ASU plays three of these final four regular-season games at Sun Devil stadium.
“I feel like it’s going to be a different energy,” Darby said. “We play way better when we’re around our home crowd. Like the fans just give us more energy, and we always just ball, like we don’t give up, we ball. Being back is going to be great for us.”
When USC last came to Tempe in 2017, the likes of quarterback Sam Darnold and running back Ronald Jones led the Trojans to a 48-17 victory that took the life out of the stadium. There’s no question that the defense is better now than it was then, but if the offense can do its part in helping ASU keep up with such a talented squad on both sides of the ball remains to be seen.
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