(Photo: Rebecca Striffler/WCSN)
TEMPE — For a while, it just didn’t seem like Arizona State Football was doing quite enough.
The threat Stanford presented was clear – the Cardinal’s vertical passing attack was the exact type of scheme that the Sun Devils struggled with so dearly against BYU in the Week 3 loss to the Cougars.
On Friday night, Stanford let it rip. Sophomore quarterback Tanner McKee found junior wide receiver Elijah Higgins for a six-yard score to tie the game at seven with 4:09 left in the first quarter to cap an explosive Cardinal drive – one that made it look as if the Sun Devils’ defense was in for a long night. McKee threw a dime to sophomore tight end Benjamin Yurosek up in the air for 23 yards on 3rd and 10 early in the march down the field, and dotted up the rest of ASU’s defense before the score.
“You got to put face-mask to face-mask,” ASU head coach Herm Edwards said about covering vertical passing. “In the era of today’s football, the back-shoulder fade comes into play. If you turn the opposite way from the receiver, you can’t get back to the ball. But you have to have the ability to turn your head to the receiver and play the ball.”
In a seemingly cruel twist of fate considering their start to the game, the Cardinal ended up scoring only three more points the rest of the night, and the Sun Devils, with their own mix of explosive offense and defensive prowess, got the job done with a 28-10 win over Stanford in Tempe.
“We did some good things in the game,” Edwards said. “As far as running the ball, that was kind of our emphasis.
“We made some first downs. When you play Stanford, they’re a very methodical football team. They take a lot of time off the clock. The defense doesn’t usually give up a lot of plays. Going into this, we didn’t want to turn the ball over. We didn’t want to get into foul trouble. We showed up at the end. For the most part, I thought we played a pretty good football game.”
ASU ran for 255 yards against the Cardinal – a group that gave up 212.8 yards coming into the matchup. ASU junior quarterback Jayden Daniels accounted for 76 of those yards, while completing 14 of his 23 passes for 175 yards. Redshirt senior running back Rachaad White had 96 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The Sun Devils effectively the put game away with 2:38 left in the third quarter, as McKee threw an interception to ASU senior cornerback Jack Jones, who then lateraled the ball to senior defensive back DeAndre Pierce and took it into the end zone for a 25-yard touchdown to put the Sun Devils up 28-10.
“That’s just instinctive,” Edwards said. “I’m glad it worked, because if we would have fumbled it, you would have seen a mad head coach. It’s all pretty when it happens and works.
“It was a great play.”
Defensive coordinator Antonio Pierce, who coached Jones in high school at Long Beach Polytechnic High School in California, wasn’t surprised.
“I’ve seen that before at [Poly],” Pierce said. “That dude is crazy. At the end of the day, it was a hell of a play by Jack.”
Jones added: “Pitching the ball is something that the defensive backs have been talking about for awhile now, probably since Fall Camp. We just never had an opportunity to do it.”
After its hot start, ASU put the Stanford offense to rest for almost the entire remaining portion of the game, and answered with its own points. Prior to Stanford’s impressive game-tying drive, Daniels scampered 51 yards for a touchdown to give the Sun Devils a 7-0 lead at the 7:12 mark of the first quarter.
The drive after Stanford’s impressive, high-flying trek, ASU found a similar spark as the Cardinal. Daniels hit redshirt sophomore wide receiver Andre Johnson for a 20-yard pass in the middle of the field, then running back Rachaad White took an option pitch from Daniels 29 yards before leaping over a Stanford defender and out of bounds. White then finished the drive off with a six-yard touchdown run to give the Sun Devils a 14-7 lead with 1:05 left in the quarter.
“The run was just a great design,” White said of his leap. “It was a new play we put in this week. I can’t explain jumping over the guy. It’s just instinct. It’s just having fun.”
A Stanford punt – its first since the first drive of the game – put ASU’s offense into extra gear as it sensed the opportunity at hand. With two trick plays, the Sun Devils went 80 yards down the field in 2:14 to go up 21-7 on Stanford with 10:24 left in the second quarter. Offensive coordinator Zak Hill enacted schemes that included a end-around which was tossed back to Daniels – who found senior tight end Curtis Hodges for 32 yards on the right sideline – and then a reverse that ended up in redshirt freshman wide receiver Elijhah Badger’s hands, who ran it in 22 yards for the score.
Hill said that the flea-flicker end-around was a play that BYU ran against ASU in Week 3 that resulted in a score.
“We felt like some of the misdirection stuff was going to be good for us to try and get them moving and get them out of direction,” Hill said. “And Badger put it in the end zone again, so that was fun to see.”
While unleashing its offensive attack, ASU managed a couple key stops against the Cardinal in the first half. After sophomore running back DeaMonte Trayanum fumbled inside ASU territory with 4:11 left in the second quarter, the Sun Devils’ defense held firm for the third straight time to maintain its 21-7 lead heading into halftime. The next Stanford drive, which began with 39 seconds left in the second quarter, saw downfield passes of 19 and 11 yards be completed by McKee before a pass was bobbled by a Stanford pass catcher, then by ASU senior defensive back Timarcus Davis and finally ended up the hands of redshirt sophomore defensive back Keon Markham for the perhaps score-preventing interception.
“I thought the [secondary] played pretty well,” Edwards said. “We gave up one touchdown pass. These are some big receivers. They’re very scary. They’re gifted players, too.”
Stanford found its explosive offense again out of the half after another big pass play from McKee set up a 32-yard field goal, which the Cardinal connected on to shrink ASU’s lead to 21-10 with 7:32 left in the third quarter, but it ultimately proved to be short of what was needed.
ASU was without senior cornerback Chase Lucas for most of the game after the defensive back took a hard hit in the first quarter. While the Sun Devils experienced trouble against McKee and his pass catchers with Lucas on the field early, the loss of ASU’s No. 1 player in the secondary was clear as Stanford hung around.
Jones didn’t seem concerned about Lucas being out, however.
“Next man up,” he said.
A loss against Stanford on Friday night would have likely brought doubts about ASU’s hot start to the 2021 season. Instead, the Sun Devils are the only undefeated team left within Pac-12 Conference play, and are hoping to continue that streak next week against Utah.
“When we play a Pac-12 team, it’s hard,” Edwards said. “It’s hard to win a football game. It’s hard to win a game in the Pac-12. Doesn’t matter what side you’re on – the south or the north – it’s just competitive football.”
