(Photo: Brady Klain/WCSN)
Few, if any, college football programs are more willing to play freshmen than head coach Herm Edwards and the Sun Devils are. In the Power 5 conferences, you’d be hard-pressed to find a school which will play more freshmen in the opening two weeks of college football than Arizona State.
Last season, only three Pac-12 true freshmen played at least 700 defensive snaps. Each of them wore maroon and gold, as linebackers Merlin Robertson and Darien Butler, as well as safety Aashari Crosswell made their impact on ASU’s defense early in their careers. In ASU’s opening-week win over Kent State, 25 of the 61 Sun Devils – 15 true, 10 redshirt – who took the field were freshmen, a fact heavily celebrated by the program.
ASU continued that trend on Friday night against Sacramento State in a game that was sloppy at times, and ugly at others. But with such a young set of contributors, this should be expected.
The Arizona State coaching staff will continue to preach that the best players will play, even if they happen to be younger. That’s more than OK. But on nights like Friday, where the youthfulness along the offensive line manifests itself in freshman quarterback Jayden Daniels having the pocket collapse on him against an FCS opponent, wide receiver’s dropping open passes, and the defense missing tackles, it’s also OK to point out why most programs don’t elect to go so young, so willingly.
Growing pains. They happen more often with inexperience and lead to an inconsistency which can be exhilarating in one moment, and downright dumbfounding in another.
“I think as we look at ourselves and we look at the film, some things that are very glaring,” Edwards said following the Sun Devil’s 19-7 win over Sacramento State. “No consistency on our offense at all. It seems to be a big play or nothing.”
Even those who aren’t young looked to be it on Friday night. When redshirt junior wide receiver Frank Darby burnt a Sacramento State defender deep for what would’ve been a 68-yard touchdown, senior Brandon Aiyuk helped out the Hornets defense with a bailout blindside block away from the play.
“That’s just bad football,” Aiyuk, who finished with a game-leading 98 yards receiving said of the third-quarter penalty, said. “Play was going away and I was just in the emotions of the game and let it get to me… Just bad football on my part.”
Even when things went well, the inconsistency so often associated with youthfulness came back. Early in the second quarter, after Aiyuk set the Sun Devils up with a punt-return to the Hornets 9-yard line, sophomore running back A.J. Carter opened the drive by dropping a pass. On the next play, Carter caught a dump-off from Daniels and fumbled the ball at the half-yard line into the end zone for a touchback.
Other ASU drives stalled inside the red zone as offensive coordinator Rob Likens attempted to determine what works with his personnel.
“One of the things we have to do is find out what this team can do good,” Likens said. “We are finding out some things we can’t do and… now we have to adjust as coaches and players.”
The recruiting success Arizona State has experienced under linebackers coach and recruiting coordinator Antonio Pierce should be celebrated. In this past year’s class, the coaching staff was able to convince three 4-star quarterbacks to come to Tempe, enroll early, and compete for the starting job. The addition of Pierce has helped them make recruiting strides in California like never before. On Monday, Edwards told reporters he expects players like Crosswell, Robertson and Butler to be able to run the defense in a few years.
So while it might be painful at times now, it’s important to remember that the benefit to playing youth is the experience fostered for the future. And on nights like these — where the Sun Devils struggled with an FCS program — it’s important to remember that this is still just year two for the Edwards era, and that the basis of the program is being built through this youth. The Sun Devils are trying to pull off a difficult task. Win while they are young and dominate once they are older. That process won’t always be pretty, but it’s the one they’ve chosen.
