ASU Football: Sun Devils trying to focus to avoid trap game

(Photo: Allyson Cummings/WCSN)

After a day of preparing for Oregon State on Wednesday, Arizona State running back D.J. Foster admitted that he and the other players paid attention to the newest College Football Playoff rankings that were released on Tuesday and liked what they saw.

While coaches and players alike have been adamant that they haven’t accomplished their team goals, and a win over Notre Dame didn’t change the pursuit of those goals, the team couldn’t help but enjoy the positive attention some.

“You definitely can’t avoid it and I think we enjoy it for a little bit. It’s nice to see that we’re getting recognition like that,” Foster said. “But at the end of the day, when we come out to practice, we’ve got to put that behind us and we’ve got to keep moving forward.”

To keep moving forward, the Sun Devils will have to get through a road trip against Oregon State that has all the tell-tale signs of a college football trap.

1. ASU is coming off the emotional high of one of the biggest wins in school history
2. Corvallis, Ore. is not an easy place to play, particularly on a cold night.
3. A giant Territorial Cup game against Arizona and potential Pac-12 Championship against Oregon are looming. Oregon State is just a bad team that ASU has to play on the way.

There’s plenty of reason why ASU would lack the intensity that the Beavers will likely bring as the team tries to snap a losing streak and spoil the postseason hopes for others.

“We know that to get to our goals, we’ve got three more games to go through,” Foster said. “We know how tough it is to go up to Corvallis and play a team like this. As leaders, it’s our job that we have our team focused, let them know that it is a tough place to play, and we’ve got to keep that intensity throughout the week.”

Senior quarterback and team captain Taylor Kelly echoed that sentiment and said he isn’t worried about the team coming out flat following the team’s big victory over Notre Dame:

“As long as we keep getting better each week, preparing, focusing on the job that’s at hand, we’ll execute and handle our business,” Kelly said.

Bringing the blitz

Fighting Irish quarterback Everett Golson was a longshot Heisman Trophy contender when the team traveled to Tempe on Saturday. By the team he left, he was being publicly criticized by his head coach and no longer has any chance at all at the most coveted individual accolade in college football.

Much of that had to do with Golson’s inability to properly handle the blitz-heavy defense of the Sun Devils, which forced several mistakes and turnovers. It was a second consecutive week of inordinate amounts of pressure called by defensive coordinator Keith Patterson.

“This group really feeds off the pressure for whatever reason,” Patterson said. “We’ve pressured always, but never to the extent that we are right now.”

According to Patterson, the team sent an extra rusher on 62 of Notre Dame’s 79 offensive plays and 64-of-74 in the week before that against Utah. He also believes that the increased amount of pressure on opposing quarterbacks has boosted the confidence of the ASU secondary.

“It plays off of one another,” Patterson said. “[The secondary] started gaining confidence in the pressure and then the pressure started gaining confidence in the coverage. It all goes hand-in-hand.”

Practice notes

With the attrition of a weekly grind beginning to take its toll some on the defensive lineup of the Sun Devils, the team worked without much contact drills on Wednesday. Instead it was a relatively light day of work that really isn’t atypical for this time of the season.

As such, there wasn’t a whole lot to make out of the defense’s performance during the media segment, although interceptions were aplenty with Kweishi Brown, Damarious Randall and Jordan Simone all snagging some against the scout team offense.

• Simone and Laiu Moeakiola each wore gold, limited-contact jerseys on Wednesday that are typically reserved for quarterbacks and scout team players. It would be a surprise if either wasn’t ready to go for the game on Saturday and both worked through the day’s drills with everyone else without any visible limitations.
• Coaches have praised Marcus Hardison’s maturation between 2013 and 2014, and his role as an emerging leader is becoming more and more visible. He could be heard on Wednesday helping out Edmond Boateng with a pass rushing and even lined up Paul Crawford for the drill to provide Boateng with an example.
• Jaxon Hood still hasn’t returned to practice for ASU after missing practice all of last week as well as the game on Saturday against Notre Dame.
• Scouts from the Chicago Bears and Oakland Raiders were in attendance.

You can reach Adam Stites on Twitter @AdamStitesASU or by email arstites@asu.edu

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