(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)
During Tuesday afternoon’s practice, Arizona State senior running back Demario Richard was taking his time walking to the sidelines after a drill.
That’s when he heard a recognizable Texas-accented voice ring out from behind him. It was his head coach, Todd Graham, yelling:
“Get yourself off the field!”
A yell towards Richard is nothing new in Tempe. The reason for it is.
For four years, the bruising senior tail back needed the push from his coaches to get over the hump, both with his play and his maturity.
But with his college career winding down, Richard has a new role to play. Of all the seniors who will be honored during this weekend’s Territorial Cup, few have grown as much as ASU’s leading rusher.
“Really he just really matured this year, just really poured into his teammates,” Graham said of Richard on Monday. “That’s what I love about football, it just creates a unique relationship when you go through the grind and what these kids go through, it’s hard man.”
The hardest moments for Richard came last season. He suffered a core injury early in the year, making every carry a painful battle for even small gains. The emergence of fellow tail back Kalen Ballage also cut into his workload, as he finished the season with just 155 carries for 593 yards.
So, entering his final year on campus, Richard and the coaching staff devised a plan, one they hoped would keep him focused on bouncing back and earn him a bigger role among the roster’s leadership group: Richard said he wanted to enter preseason training camp with a “keep your mouth shut attitude.” It was a new approach for brashly affable personality.
Four months later, Richard is reaping the benefits, becoming a leader on both the stat sheet – his 812 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns are both team highs – as well as in the locker room. He credits his mentality adjustment with helping him rediscover his potential on the field and settle into a more prominent role off of it.
“Instead of just doing it for the fall camp, I did it the whole season,” he said. “Obviously, that turned out great for me and it turned out great for the team. It shows that I am capable of being a leader and I feel like I’m the leader of the team and everybody can look up to me, including guys on the defense.”
It is exactly the type of senior year statement he had been planning on making.
“Just wanted everybody to know that I’m back healthy,” he said. “I put a lot of time in in the offseason getting my health back right and getting my weight right. Just wanted to show everybody that I’m not done yet. It’s not over till the fat lady sings and she’s just humming.”
Graham too knows the challenges Richard faced. He watched the former 3-star recruit turn heads with a productive true freshman season before becoming a focal point of the offense thanks to a 1,000-yard sophomore campaign. Witnessing Richard rediscover that caliber of success this year has been the most impressive accomplishment of them all to the head coach.
“It’s just impressive to watch those kids do that, grow into leaders and young men,” Graham said. “When you see that in them, you know they get it, that’s the great gift you get from playing the sport. At the end you understand it’s not about you, it’s about your teammates and being a giver is the greatest thing you’ll ever learn in your life. He’s gotten that.”
That’s why on Tuesday, with the Sun Devils preparing for not just a rivalry game but one of the most high-important contests in Graham’s tenure, the sixth-year head coach got on his newfound leader. He expects more from Richard now. Richard expects more from himself too.
“Every coach will come up to me at practice to set the tempo, set the stage for how practice is going to be today,” Richard said. “I feel like if we have a bad practice it’s on me. So I take full credit for everything.”
As Richard’s approach has changed, so too has his bond with Graham.
“It’s always been a great relationship, but he knows he can depend on so he didn’t really have to say nothing to me,” Richard said. “He could just look at me in my eyes and be like, ‘I know he’s ready. I don’t got to worry about him.’ But now he’s more loose with me. He’ll come up and joke with me [and say], ‘You good? You ready? I know you’re ready, I don’t even know why I’m asking.”
Graham also reflected on the relationship earlier this week, saying Richard has “earned a different level of respect from me.”
Those words didn’t fall on deaf ears.
“I’m not going to lie, when I read the article [where he said that], it touched me deep down inside,” Richard said. “Him feeling some type of way like that, I don’t really talk that much so now I get to see him express his feelings and actually get to see another side of him besides the coaching side. I wouldn’t have choose no other place and I wouldn’t have wanted to play for nobody else.”
Richard knows the special place a senior day send-off has within the program.
“I’ve seen a lot of tears. I’ve seen a lot of great games [on senior day],” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of hard fought battles. I’ve seen a lot of work be put in on the field. I was blessed to be in it for four years, to see everybody play for four years.”
But he said emotions can’t be part of this year’s edition. There is too much on the line for the coach he has grown so close to: Graham might need a win over Arizona on Saturday to save his job.
The last thing Richard wants is for him and his coach to say goodbye to the school on the same day.
“I just want to see him out with a bang and I know he wants to see me out too,” Richard said. “I don’t want to let him down at all.”
