(Photo via Evan Barcanic/WCSN)
Arizona State football head coach Kenny Dillingham has not been known to give succinct answers when speaking to the media. Many times, he’ll rattle off a lengthy monologue, breaking down the X’s and O’s of his game plan or providing in-depth analysis of an opponent.
But Dillingham stopped short of the same Saturday. No. 6 Oregon made sure of it.
The final result was a 49-13 drubbing of the Sun Devils at a green-covered Mountain America Stadium. In past weeks when ASU was outmatched by its opponent, Dillingham’s creative schemes gave the Sun Devils opportunities to win games. But Oregon was an exception to the rule, leaving the first-year head coach with a simpler answer this time.
“I said (to the team in the locker room that) we played a lot of games this year, that I don’t care (about) our situation at the O-line and the guys hurt and what’s happened in year one, that we could’ve won,” Dillingham said. “Played a lot. We were in it and we could’ve won football games.
“That (Oregon) team right there — that team was better than us. Point blank. Significantly better than us. And we’ve got to get better in the offseason.”
Dillingham outlined it plainly: The Sun Devils have to be “bigger, stronger (and) faster” to beat an opponent like Oregon. The more talented team was simultaneously the more physical team Saturday, as the Ducks sent ASU would-be tacklers to the ground with stiff-arms, spin moves and sheer will.
This was seen with the hard running of junior running back Bucky Irving, who only had 11 carries for 63 yards but was bruising in the process. The Ducks’ dominance was also highlighted in open space on redshirt sophomore wide receiver Gary Bryant Jr.’s 71-yard touchdown, in which he stiff-armed and spun away from redshirt senior safety Shamari Simmons and broke three more tackles along the way to the end zone.
Once again, Dillingham could hardly provide a full explanation for the lack of consistent tackling.
“There was definitely a tackling problem,” Dillingham said. “We didn’t tackle them well. We’ve been good tacklers all year to be honest. They’re just hard to tackle. I know you wish there was a coaching answer — there’s not.”
“The running backs, they have a good lower center of gravity,” graduate defensive tackle Dashaun Mallory said. “There were a lot of times where you felt like they were going down to the ground with you and you look up and they’re still getting yards after the carry. The defense didn’t execute gang tackling and we definitely spoke about that all week.”
By halftime, Oregon led 42-0. The effort was spearheaded by senior quarterback Bo Nix, who delivered a Heisman-worthy performance with 381 yards, six touchdowns and only five incompletions by the break.
The signal caller forced Dillingham to play “a game of mental gymnastics,” one in which Nix constantly audibled at the line of scrimmage and called his own plays.
“It didn’t seem like he was necessarily looking toward the sideline, I think it was just more so his ability to truly be a mastermind out there,” Mallory said. “Get his O-line … keeping (what) they need to pay attention to, get the running back to what side he needs to be on, and then ultimately get the wide receivers the same play call as well. So I think that alone, about who Bo Nix is — he’s a field general out there. [I] got nothing but respect for the guy.”
With the unstoppable nature of Oregon’s offense, Dillingham faced two options: play zone defense and let Nix kill the Sun Devils slowly, or play man-to-man coverage and challenge Nix’s arm as well as Oregon’s ability to win its one-on-one matchups. Dillingham chose the latter, displaying his consistent “no risk it, no biscuit” mindset.
“If you flip those one-on-ones and you turn them and those don’t happen, well maybe [the deficit] is three touchdowns less in the first half,” Dillingham said. “But they won them, so you got to give those guys credit. They made plays, they’re good players, but we’re always going to develop a plan that gives us the best chance to win, not the best chance to keep it close. I can give a rat’s ass about keeping games close. You’re either going to win or you’re going to lose.”
And Nix made his former offensive coordinator pay, leaving Dillingham to say the senior “threw the deep ball as good as I’ve ever seen him throw the deep ball today.”
“I’m obviously probably a little bit biased, but he should win the Heisman Trophy,” Dillingham said.
Nix went 24-of-29 passing for the game, along with 404 yards and the six first-half touchdowns, which tied a program record.
ASU is now tasked with flushing Saturday’s loss to prepare for rival No. 19 Arizona. At this point, the Sun Devils are no strangers to rebounding after blowout losses, as they lost 55-3 at Utah — their worst loss differential in a game since 1946 — only to upset UCLA 17-7 the next week in Pasadena.
In ASU’s week of preparation after the Utah loss, Mallory said that the Sun Devils’ were honest with themselves about their performance. It helped them reset their mentality for the Bruins, and it’s something they can use once more to get ready for the Wildcats.
“We got to sit there and be real with ourselves,” Mallory said. “We can’t be BS-ing and trying to find a shortcut way. People played terrible today, let’s just call it what it is. But we got to be able to sit in the meeting rooms and watch that. We got to be able to sit in the meeting rooms and hear [the] coach yell at us. I think it’s just a thing about maturity. We understand that we got to get back to work. The season isn’t over. We have one more game left, so we can’t roll over.”
Dillingham is not concerned about his team’s ability to respond mid-week in practice. They’ve already met that challenge. Doing so when the plan goes awry in-game is his next goal.
“We’re not responding well when somebody punches us,” Dillingham said. “We can’t regather ourselves yet. And I faced the same thing to be honest when I was at Florida State. We just couldn’t figure out when it started to rain, it always poured. And that’s a part of growth. That’s going to take time, to just be brutally honest.
“Good football teams are years of culture. That’s years of culture building [at Oregon] of big, physical football. The best football teams in the country have established cultures of offensive line, defensive line, physicality and toughness. And this is another team that had that and we got to be able to match that moving forward.”
