“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The words of philosopher George Santayana resonate plenty in the modern sports world. For Arizona State’s head football coach, Kenny Dillingham, they might as well be gospel. Repeating the same procedures that put him or his team in a negative place is unacceptable to the first-year head coach and always has been. What is allowed, though, is to make the initial mistake before correcting it, or as Dillingham calls it, the “favorite mistake.” While there were some to choose from regarding Thursday’s opener, Dillingham specifically highlighted one of his own.

“My favorite mistake was the end of the first half,” Dillingham noted. “We let the clock run down to about 18 seconds because we knew we wanted it to be the last possession. We had two timeouts, so we knew we could run two more plays and kick a field goal on 4th down. If we didn’t score, kick a field goal, and there’s no more time on the clock.”

Foiling Dillingham’s plan was a penalty called on the Southern Utah defense, which advanced the ball for a first down but took precious time off the clock. This forced Dillingham and Beau Baldwin into a playcalling corner with just five seconds remaining and, realistically, one play to get themselves in the end zone before halftime.

“There was only five seconds left in the half, so we had to throw a fade with five seconds left,” Dillingham recalled. “That’s a little bit dicey. Hindsight, I would play into the penalty. I would’ve called a timeout with 21-22 seconds left, so if they did get a penalty, there would’ve been eight to nine seconds left on the clock on that first down. So we could’ve gotten one, potentially two, plays off before we had to kick the final field goal while still not giving them time. Having a plan for if there is a penalty, continuing to give yourself more plays to score. I would’ve called a timeout 2-3 seconds faster.”

Regardless of Dillingham’s clock management, that play ended in a touchdown, the one that would ultimately be the difference between winning and losing last Thursday. While most of the college football world will see it as the most embarrassing win possible, Dillingham isn’t concerned with that. The only thing he’s worried about is the team’s progression throughout the long season.

“Every time you play football, you should get better,” Dillingham preached. “If you don’t, there’s a problem. So, if we should make the same jump that we made from (week) one and two, then I hope we do (week) two and three based on the mistakes we made. The key is you don’t make the same mistake multiple times. That’s the challenge. Can we learn from day one, fix those mistakes, and apply them to game two?”

“Everybody, myself, every coach, every player, should be improving each week,” offensive coordinator Beau Baldwin added. “It doesn’t mean that you won’t still have setbacks. Not everything goes like that, but you gotta be able to snap out of those quickly when you have those.”

What helps that week-to-week improvement, though, is mistakes. You can’t get better if you don’t know what you need to improve at, individually and collectively. With a nearly brand new roster and coaching staff, Dillingham knows to expect more roadblocks than usual. But that hasn’t lowered his expectations, nor his own motivation as a coach, in helping to clear them.

“We’re gonna have a ton of problems this year,” Dillingham stated. “We’re year one with 50 new players. We run complicated schemes on both sides of the ball. Aggressive schemes on both sides of the ball. We’re going to make mistakes. But we’re going to get better from those mistakes if we coach them and stop allowing them to happen. So when we see it, we have to stop it, we have to make an emphasis that it’s not okay, fix the problem, and carry on.”

How Dillingham plans to help in accelerating the process of those mistakes comes in film study. Having made their preparation against Southern Utah based on last year’s film, Dillingham noted that they wouldn’t be facing the team they watched, which makes it far more challenging. Now, having such an advantage for every game the rest of this season, both Dillingham and Baldwin expect mistakes to fix themselves quicker with the aid of film.

“It’s huge,” Dillingham said of the film aspect. “You get to see what guys respond in what ways on the field. “When you face a team that you have months to prepare for (Southern Utah), we had no film of them this year. You chase a lot of ghosts. This week is similar, but at least you have less time to prepare, and you don’t chase as many ghosts by default. It’s a little bit different from the preparation standpoint. Most weeks, we’ll go back, and we’ll dig for everything anybody has ever done, and we make sure we’re ready for it.”

“I already saw some things today, but there will be a ton to correct going into tomorrow, Thursday, Friday, all the way into Saturday night,” Baldwin put in. “It definitely helps to have some game film of ourselves, to have an opponent’s film of this year. Going into the last game, we had neither. Every team’s in the same boat at the start of the year.”

When correcting football mistakes, it’s most common to start at the most important position on the field, obviously being the quarterback. Having a true freshman as a day-one signal caller will almost always come with growing pains, and Jaden Rashada is no exception. Despite turning in a solid performance in throwing for over 200 yards and two touchdowns in his collegiate debut, there were still aspects of his performance to pick at, even with the extreme conditions that came with it.

“There’s something you can take out of every game,” Rashada said. “You just always gotta stay ready. Gotta keep your rhythm no matter what. Whether that’s two hours, five hours, a week, learning how to keep your rhythm. We got a good dose of getting off track a little bit. You gotta go through things like that to learn. It was pretty hard, but they had to deal with the same thing as us. That’s just something we gotta learn how to handle. Next time that happens, we’ll be prepared.”

Just getting his first collegiate game out of the way, though, will be part of the process to rid the mistakes both in practices and games.

“Getting the experience was definitely fun, seeing how college speed is,” Rashada pointed out. “Just definitely looking forward to next week. It was really just the intensity from practice to games, carrying that over. I don’t know how to explain it. It was a great feeling. Doing what we practiced out here and mastering it. Take advantage of our opportunities and being a tough football team.”

Part of being a tough football player comes with the mental edge, fending off adversity and challenges that aren’t on the football field. For Baldwin and Dillingham, they both see a great starting point for Rashada in that department.

“Jaden will learn to go through highs and lows, moments that aren’t perfect, and be able to respond to them,” Baldwin said. “When he came to the sidelines and talked to me, he always seemed calm. Even in the second half, when things weren’t perfect, he seemed calm.

“He learned from a few things,” Dillingham added. “He’s out here working; that’s what he knows how to do. Same Jaden.”

Where Rashada’s sharpness is already built in, there’s still an entire roster to instill it into. Critical to avoiding mistakes, Dillingham hopes the team can follow suit from Rashada’s mindset.

“If we continue to do that, we’re gonna continue to be better every single week that we take the field,” Dillingham said. “That’s the goal. Who knows what year three and four look like if we get better every single day for the next 24-36 months.”

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