(Photo: Joey Plishka/WCSN)
After Arizona State Football fell to UCLA 25-18 in Week 2 of the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season, the Sun Devils found themselves reeling.
The loss to the Bruins was the Sun Devils’ second in a row that came down to the wire. Against USC in Week 1 – which came prior to a COVID-19 outbreak that halted the team’s season for a month – ASU blew a 14-point lead in 4:28 to lose 28-27. While the rustiness could have been to blame, the Sun Devils once again gave up a late score – a rushing touchdown by UCLA senior running back Demetric Felton with 1:09 left and a successful two-point conversion – and then followed it up with a failed game-winning drive.
The losses – particularly in Week 1 – were arguably embarrassing and unexplainable. The question for ASU head coach Herm Edwards at the time was simple: What did he, the coaching staff or the players need to do in order to ensure the same problems wouldn’t plague the Sun Devils going forward?
After Week 2, Edwards had a reasonable answer.
“It’s understanding the situation and not letting your guard down,” he said on Dec. 7. “Sometimes games ebb and flow – they go up, and then they go down. I think there comes a point in the game, especially in the fourth quarter in a tight game, where every snap becomes more magnified. [It comes down to] what team is going to gain momentum. We have lost momentum. We had some momentum and we had the game right in our hands and we lost the momentum.”
About one year later, Edwards is facing different questions, but the answers had been just as hard to find or probe out of the face of the Sun Devils. On Monday, the fourth-year head coach seemed to get more candid.
“I think [when it comes to how the players] go about their business in the meeting rooms and in practice, we need to do some things structurally in practice that are a little different,” Edwards said. “I think it can be more competitive in practice. We need to become more competitive in the things we do. We need to put [the players] in a position where they compete.”
The idea from Edwards seems to be a product of ASU’s vivid inability to handle pressure or negative situations thus far in 2021.
“[Five turnovers] happened to us [against Washington State on Saturday], and we didn’t react in a way that gave us a chance,” Edwards said. “It’s about the reaction. How do you handle adversity?
“We didn’t respond.”
The coaching staff may be inputting more than just competition for the final month of the season ahead. Edwards said that schematically, the Sun Devils made need to simply things a bit.
“We’ve got to be consistent in how we’re teaching,” Edwards said. “Sometimes less is more. [We need] to let them play free, and not have a lot of thinking there.”
But changing the way he coaches or leads is not on the table, according to Edwards. He doesn’t want anything he or the staff does – from a football or human perspective – to spark any alarm or create any worry.
“You cannot change your personality all of the sudden,” Edwards said. “That becomes a red flag. I’ve been a certain way around this place going on my fourth season. There’s certain things I can see and do, and these guys are going to react to that behind closed doors. But I can’t change my personality, it doesn’t work for me and it sends a bad signal to the players. They’d be like, ‘why is coach doing that?’”
However, it’s clear there’s urgency with Edwards and the Sun Devils heading into this weekend’s matchup with USC. Two losses in a row against Utah and Washington State, bisected by a bye week, is not anything to be proud of, and ASU is wearing that.
“When you don’t win it becomes depressing for everybody,” Edwards said. “No one likes to lose.”
“You’ve got to have a pit in your stomach, and you have to walk around with that pit everyday.”
Edwards said that the frustration of the Sun Devils’ pregame effort not paying off is “disappointing” for him and the veterans on the team.
“There’s so much put into this, and what you get out of it is the joy of winning a game,” he said. ”We haven’t felt that in two weeks.
“We just want to get the feeling back of what’s it’s like to win again.”
