Sun Devils face chasm of uncertainty after Baylor loss

(Photo: Jakob Brooks/WCSN)

TEMPE – As Baylor first-year running back Ryelan Morris took the handoff on the Bears’ second drive of the game, the left side of his offensive line displaced their Arizona State counterparts, creating a gaping hole for the first-year to run through.

Morris hit the second level, with sixth-year safety Lyrik Rawls standing as his only defender to beat. Rawls — the Sun Devils’ highest-graded defender on Pro Football Focus this year — miscalculated his pursuit angle and was forced to dive for Morris’ shoelaces. Morris hop-stepped over Rawls’ and third-year cornerback Rodney Bimage’s lunging tackle attempt.

The Honey Grove, Texas native hit midfield with nothing but green grass ahead of him, gliding his way to a 63-yard touchdown run — the first of his collegiate career.

The Sun Devils’ feeble tackling attempts served as a microcosm for the game as a whole.

The hole Baylor’s offensive line was able to create against ASU’s seemingly strong defensive front was a part of a game that created a chasm of uncertainty for how ASU could look for the rest of the year.

Baylor’s (4-1, 2-0 Big 12) quartet of running backs – Morris, second-year Caden Knighten, second-year Michael Turner and fourth-year Dawson Pendergrass — gashed the Sun Devil defense play after play. ASU (2-2, 1-1 Big 12) relinquished 244 yards on the ground en route to a 55-19 loss.

“We just gotta play better football,” ASU head coach Kenny Dillingham said. “We’re just not doing the fundamentals as good as we need to. We’re not blocking, tackling, we’re not substituting good enough. I am not doing a good enough job coaching the football team.”

The game was projected by many to be a defensive showdown with little scoring. ASU defensive coordinator Brian Ward’s unit was looked at as the team’s strength, a squad that might keep ASU’s offense in tight games.

But in their return to Mountain America Stadium after almost a month on the road, the Sun Devil defense crumbled in front of their home crowd.

No matter who third-year Baylor quarterback DJ Lagway handed the ball to, odds are they were going to make a Sun Devil miss.

The running backs’ performance Saturday heavily contrasted what Baylor head coach Dave Aranda had seen from his unit earlier this season.

“The first guy got us down too often,” Aranda said. “The key with that was the start, not really the finish. The faster we hit the line of scrimmage, then the faster we could break a tackle later in the down.”

Aranda and offensive coordinator Jake Spavital’s system mixes up the bodies in the backfield at a high rate, but typically Pendergrass will end up with more carries and yards than the rest.

Their outing in Tempe was the complete opposite.

Pendergrass finished the night with eight carries for 29 yards. His teammates were the ones running away with the show.

Knighten and Morris both carried for 84 yards and a touchdown, aiding the Big 12’s fifth-worst rushing attack entering the game to outshine the Sun Devils.

Not only did the Bears dwarf ASU’s total rushing yards 244 to 99, but they also more than doubled the Sun Devils average yards per carry, 6.8 to 3.3.

Even after enduring Dillingham’s first year under the helm — a 2023 season that saw the Sun Devils go 3-9 — Saturday night was the first time the coach felt truly uncertain about how his team projected for the remainder of the season.

“I don’t feel like we’re overachieving,” Dillingham said. “I feel like we’ve honestly overachieved in most of my time here, and I do not feel that right now. And so I got to figure out why.”

Baylor was meant to be the Sun Devils’ appetizer in conference play, not a disastrous main course.

The Sun Devils next Big 12 bout comes in two weeks, when they head to Lubbock, Texas to face No. 12 Texas Tech.

The Red Raiders sit atop the Big 12 and have a bye week before they play ASU.

Facing a well-rested, undefeated Texas Tech squad is not the Big 12 rebound the Sun Devils envisioned after Saturday.

Instead, ASU will look to Week 6, when it hosts Hawai’i, as a game to find its footing.

The Rainbow Warriors currently sit at 1-4 and at the bottom of the Mountain West.

Much like its Week 1 victory over Morgan State, ASU will look for on-field improvements instead of the numbers on the scoreboard. A win is almost certain, but it’s how it wins that matters moving forward.

After ASU’s win in London against Kansas, Dillingham said, “That’s a great sign for a program, if people are frustrated with winning.”

An ugly win is a win after all, but the Sun Devils are in desperate need of a solid win against a Power 4 team.

That game was meant to be Baylor, a matchup in which the Sun Devils were favored by 3.5 points. Now, the loss has sent the program to a new low.

Dillingham says that after uncharacteristic losses, his teams almost always rebound.

“We’ve lost games poorly before and we bounced back from those games,” Dillingham said. “I think the last two times we’ve had losses like this we’ve responded in a really really positive way and found a way to win the next game. And so, this was a game where they just whooped our butt across the board. And like I said, I think our guys are going to respond great.”