ASU Football: Norvell, Patterson excelled on sidelines against UCLA

(Photo: Mauricio Casillas/WCSN)

Three of ASU’s first five opponents have at one point this season been in the top 25. With Colorado coming to town this weekend, the Sun Devils will face the only one of their first five Pac-12 opponents that has yet to be ranked.

Colorado is still 3-2, and hung with Oregon for most of their game last Saturday. Though this shouldn’t be treated like an easy game, ASU still has a tougher two week stretch ahead of them with Utah and Oregon following the Colorado game.

A good sign for ASU leading into those big games was seeing sophomore safety Armand Perry in cleats today. Perry has been out with an ankle injury since the Cal Poly game and yesterday was without his walking boot, and today was in full pads and both feet were taped in cleats.

Tempo
In what seems to be the theme on Wednesdays, the tempo session was set up in a 52 second, no timeout situation for the offense. The defense was set up in their nickel package, with Carrington, Means, Orr, Simone, and Brown in the secondary, and Longino, Moeakiola, and Calhoun as the linebackers.

The defense had a two-point lead, and certainly held their own against the offense. Redshirt senior quarterback Mike Bercovici didn’t gain a single yard, and threw three incompletions to sophomore running back Demario Richard.

What’s Different?

Something clicked in the UCLA game for this Arizona State team on both sides of the ball. Whatever that something is, everyone would like to see more of it.

One of those differences may have been offensive coordinator Mike Norvell calling plays on the sideline as opposed to up in the coaches’ box, where he has been for the first five games this year.

“There is a different perspective being up in the box,” Norvell said. “Being able to see the full field there are certain things that are probably a little quicker to see or to have a sense of.”

The Sun Devils’ offensive surge against UCLA may have had nothing to do with Norvell being on the field at all, but if one thing is for sure Norvell loves being out on the sideline with his team.

“Nothing matches the intensity and motion of being down on the field and when the guys,” Norvell said.”(To) be able to look them in the eye and just get a sense of where they’re at… I love it, it was getting back to having some fun down there on game day.”

Defensive coordinator Keith Patterson was also on the sidelines for the UCLA game, and the Sun Devil defense had their best performance of the year against maybe the best offensive unit they have faced so far.

“Just wanted to try to bring a positive energy to the sideline and the kids responded very hard,” Patterson said.

Patterson also mentioned that it was his first time running the defense from the sidelines since 2010.

“Every situation, team, and year is different,” Patterson said. “Sometimes being down on the field is better, sometimes being in the box is better.”

Whether or not the coordinators will be on the sideline this week will be something to watch for, but whatever decision they decide to make it has nothing to do with who they are up against.

“Last week my concern was not UCLA, my concern the week before was not USC, my number one concern is us. As long as we can keep focusing on ourselves and keep getting better each and every day, I think this offense will continue to grow,” Norvell said.

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