(Photo: Spencer Barnes/ WCSN)
Arizona State football has gone to war this season.
Fighting through close games and losing critical players on the gridiron, the Sun Devils entered their Week 11 bye battered and bruised, physically and emotionally, yet still trending upward after grinding out a gutsy road victory over Iowa State.
With the finish line still weeks away and after bearing witness to how difficult the year has been on all fronts, ASU head coach Kenny Dillingham decided to give his team a week off from practice. That doesn’t mean that he and his squad went on vacation, though.
“Week off is a relative term,” Dillingham said. “I think sometimes when people use the word ‘week off’ they think that I went over to Disneyland for five days or something.”
Dillingham stayed glued to his work on the recruiting trail and in the film room, and while his players didn’t touch the grass of the Bill Kajikawa Practice Fields, they continued to work out in Tempe. Now, with the bye in the rearview mirror, it was back to the grind of practice, and when Dillingham sat down for his Monday press conference, he was fully focused on the rolling West Virginia squad he’ll be facing – and needs to beat – Saturday.
“For us, for me, this is a really good challenge,” Dillingham said. “(WVU head coach Rich Rodriguez’s) team plays really, really hard. They’re on a two-game win streak. They could very well be on a three-game win streak. This is a team that’s getting better and better and better.”
Rodriguez is in his first year at the helm of WVU, but his head coaching experience goes back to the 1980s. Over that period, Rodriguez earned the respect of many around the game, including Dillingham, who was a coach at Chaparral High School in Scottsdale, Arizona, when Rodriguez was heading up Arizona.
Rodriguez’s spread option offense and utilization of quarterbacks in the run game became a staple of his programs for decades.
With ASU’s starting redshirt sophomore quarterback Sam Leavitt out for the remainder of the year after undergoing season-ending surgery, Dillingham has to shuffle up the offensive scheme and is looking to take a page out of Rodriguez’s book.
“He’s dedicated to the plus-one run,” Dillingham said. “And he’s won a lot of games doing it. We’re trying to take a little bit of that element here toward the end of the year and add that for us. How much of that? I think that’s going to change game by game, game plan by game plan, what defenses are doing.”
Dillingham and backup redshirt senior quarterback Jeff Sims – who figures to be the starter down the stretch – utilized the quarterback run often in the Sun Devils’ 24-19 win against Iowa State. Sims rushed 29 times for a total of 228 yards and two touchdowns, breaking the single-game school record for rushing yards by a QB, previously held by Mark Malone, who ran for 178 yards in 1978.
Sims has always been deadly with his legs and makes for a dynamic duo alongside redshirt junior running back Raleek Brown, who’s averaging 85.6 rushing yards per game.
There could be one slight issue with a rush-heavy attack, though. The Mountaineers have played stout run defense over their past three games, allowing a combined 229 yards to Texas Christian, Houston and Colorado.
“If you can successfully run it and you can successfully stop it, you’re going to win more games than not,” Dillingham said. “You can’t do that at the detriment of being balanced and the detriment of running your head against the wall. If a team doesn’t want you to run it, they should be able to do whatever is necessary to stop it, and then vice versa, you’ve got to counter it.”
To counter what could be another stout WVU run defense performance and create balance, Sims will need to throw the ball when necessary.
Sims has struggled some as a passer in a Sun Devil uniform, completing just 51% of his 98 passing attempts for 527 yards, but Dillingham liked what he saw from his veteran playmaker in the wet conditions of Ames, Iowa.
“He controlled the perimeter versus some pressures, throwing screens, whatever we asked him to do,” Dillingham said of Sims, who completed 54.2% of his passing attempts for 177 yards and a touchdown. “He did a really, really good job taking what the defense gave him in that football game.”
While Sims fills in for Leavitt on offense, the defense can expect reinforcements in the form of redshirt senior defensive lineman Prince Dorbah – who’s tied for the team lead in tackles for loss (7.5) and sacks (4) despite not playing since Week 8 against Texas Tech – and potentially redshirt junior linebacker Tate Romney as well.
Star redshirt junior wide receiver Jordyn Tyson – the team leader in receptions (57), receiving yards (628) and touchdowns (11) – also hasn’t suited up since facing the Red Raiders and remains doubtful.
The worst injury news of the press conference came when Dillingham announced that redshirt senior defensive back Xavion Alford will be out for the year. Alford only appeared in two games this season before reaggravating an injury he suffered in the offseason.
“That’s a kid who’s been a staple of this program since we got here as a staff,” Dillingham said. “He’s one of the heartbeats of the program. It just pains me that he’s not going to be able to make it back.
“It pains me to even talk about.”
Dillingham didn’t go into any specifics or announce whether Alford plans to return to college or turn pro.
The loss of Alford for the season is just another hurdle that Dillingham’s group, which has its back against the wall, will need to clear. ASU needs to play perfect football and string together a three-game winning streak to end the season to even have a chance of appearing in the Big 12 Championship game in back-to-back seasons.
The Sun Devils have only strung together two wins in a row once this season, let alone three.
ASU has bounced back from losses, both in the scorebook and on the depth chart, to keep itself afloat, but sustained success – a necessity for prosperous teams – has been elusive. With the lights getting brighter, it’ll soon be revealed what type of team the 2025 Sun Devils truly are.
“We’ve been really good at responding to failure,” Dillingham said. “We have not responded to playing a good football game or beating a good team well. We need to do that. We need to show this season that we can play a good football game and come back and play another one and stack them. … I’m excited to see if our guys can go out there, play with the same passion and energy back-to-back weeks, and stack good football games.”
