(Photo: Scotty Bara/WCSN)
For weeks, the narrative around ASU was a team that hadn’t fully played up to its potential, but if it could put things together, the Sun Devils could compete with anybody.
Well, its 38-24 loss to Washington State proved a clear change to that narrative: This isn’t a team that is able to put it together.
The game was littered with the same mistakes, big and small, that have plagued ASU all season: missed opportunities in the red zone, sloppy coverage in the secondary and inconsistency on offense.
But what broke ASU’s back more than anything in this game wasn’t the “fifth down” that led to a Cougar touchdown, nor was it redshirt senior wide receiver Devin Lucien’s fumble in the first half. It was WSU’s ability to keep drives alive for extended periods of time, which led to an exhausted defense and offense left without rhythm to close the game.
The Cougars had drives of 99, 94 and 92 yards that consisted of seven, nine and 17 plays respectively. While a 10-for-20 third-down conversion rate isn’t eye-popping, the Sun Devil secondary seemed to wear down as WSU continued to run slant after slant in the second half.
All but two of WSU’s passing plays of 15 or more yards came in the second half, and a good handful of those plays saw WSU wide receivers with more than enough room to operate in the open field, including a dagger 75-yard touchdown from Falk to redshirt senior wide receiver Dom Williams.
ASU’s offense was a stark contrast from WSU as all but two drives ended in points for the Sun Devils. Even a drive that started on the WSU 35-yard line following a shanked Cougar punt ended in only three points for ASU.
To fault the offense for a lack of flow and consistency in the second half would be misleading. While the Sun Devils had success on the ground once again – sophomores Demario Richard and Kalen Ballage combined for 195 yards on 32 carries – ASU was forced to air it out after WSU took a two-possession lead in the fourth quarter.
It wasn’t an issue of tempo either. The Sun Devils actually ran 15 more plays than WSU on offense, but the Cougars did have the two-play drive that ended in the aforementioned 75-yard touchdown.
With that in mind, the focus lands back on the defense that held WSU to 156 total yards in the first 30 minutes of play. The Sun Devils were flying, denying and forcing Falk to go through progressions in much more chaotic circumstances than he was maybe used to in the season. He was limited to just one touchdown and one interception in the first two frames of play, and it seemed as ASU had his number on the day.
WSU found space to operate outside of the hashmarks but underneath ASU’s safeties, and it resulted in the Cougars averaging 11.1 yards per play in the final two quarters of the game.
Particularly, Orr was exposed in the wrong position pre and post snap on a handful of occasions, and his failure to breakdown and tackle resulted in even bigger gains for WSU. While the young safety has seemed athletic enough to play the position and make the correct reads, similar errors were seen against Oregon that also led to wide-open touchdowns for the Ducks last weekend.
And now, the Sun Devils sit below .500 on the season – a fact that few would have believed in mid-August. Bowl eligibility is the priority, and with games against Washington, Arizona and California left on the Sun Devils’ docket, the errors seen during this loss to WSU need to be corrected.
However, a decent majority of those issues and bad habits have stayed true for the better part of the season, so assuming that those will be fixed in a week may seem slim but is very much possible.
The Sun Devils are in the midst an unfamiliarly poor stretch of play under Todd Graham, but the track record of the last three years would suggest some sort of improvement should rear its head soon. That same track record had people picking ASU in championship contention, but alas, here the Sun Devils are.
You can reach Zac Pacleb on Twitter @ZacPacleb or via email at zacpacleb@gmail.com
