ASU Football: Sun Devils look for season’s first win in Territorial Cup

(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)

If there was any week for Arizona State Football to come out, make a statement and secure its first win of the season, then this would be it.

The Sun Devils travel to Tuscon to take on Arizona in the 94th Territorial Cup Friday night. In a season that’s been dominated by COVID-19 issues and an overall lack of success, ASU’s rivalry game represents the opportunity to receive some validation, and make all the efforts put into the at-times faulty season truly worthwhile.

“When you haven’t won a game, you want to win a game,” head coach Herm Edwards said. “You don’t want to keep going through this – the treachery of almost winning. They want to win one and we want to win one.”

While games between ASU and Arizona are usually hotly contested and competitive, the Wildcats offer the Sun Devils perhaps their best chance to win a game this season. Like ASU, Arizona is winless on the year. It’s 0-4 start is a continuation of a losing streak that began last season, and a loss to the Sun Devils would extend the Wildcats’ losing streak to 12.

Despite having played double the amount of games, Arizona’s struggles mirror ASU’s this season. It fell in a close game to USC to open the year, and the Wildcats have had issues getting its offense going against the likes of UCLA and Colorado. COVID-19 issues also affected the Wildcats’ schedule, as they were forced to cancel their initial season-opener against Utah due to positive cases within the Utes program.

Not everything is Arizona’s fault, though. Sophomore quarterback Grant Gunnell didn’t play in the Wildcats’ last game against Colorado due to a shoulder injury sustained early against UCLA on Nov. 28. Backup freshman quarterback Will Plummer has been Gunnell’s replacement and has struggled, failing to top 154 yards in either of his two games while throwing three interceptions between them. With Gunnell under center, Arizona scored 30 and 27 points in its first two games, only for both totals not being enough. A starter for Friday night’s game has yet to be named for the Wildcats.

Arizona might be a tale of two teams depending on who’s under center, but senior running back Gary Brightwell has demonstrated the ability to carry some of the load off whoever the Wildcats’ quarterback is. Against Colorado last weekend, the Pennsylvania-native rushed for 117 yards and a touchdown. While facing the Trojans in Week 1, he turned in an almost identical performance.

“He runs mad, he runs angry, he runs aggressive, he runs downhill, he’s fast and he’s elusive,” co-defensive coordinator Antonio Pierce said of Brightwell. “We thought the back last week from UCLA was pretty good – you turn on the tape and damn, this guy is pretty good too. We’ll have our hands full. We’re going to have to tackle. He’s a big back – 6-foot-1, 200-plus pounds and he runs with an attitude. I like him.”

A struggling offense without its best player in Gunnell hasn’t been the Wildcats’ only downfall. The defense has given the other side of the ball little help – Arizona ranks 91st out of 130 eligible teams in Football Outsiders’ Defensive FEI metric. Facing explosive offenses like Washington and USC won’t help, but Arizona did have Gunnell under center for both outings and still couldn’t keep up.

Though it is late in the season, the Wildcats defense could offer ASU’s offense a chance to get right. Edwards and offensive coordinator Zak Hill have mentioned the necessity of just getting games and snaps under players’ belts when learning the new offensive scheme.

“There’s a lot of areas in this offense that we got to get better at and we’re striving hard this week on a short week to get after it, push those guys and keep the morale,” Hill said. “It’s tough. You go two games and now, luckily, we get to play the next one and dive right into it.”

If the ASU offense still has its training wheels on Friday night, it may not be the pitfall it was against a team like UCLA, who took an early 17-3 on the Sun Devils. Pierce knows that stopping Arizona’s potentially limited offense is the key to the game. A good performance on that side of the ball could result in ASU gaining its first win of the season against its biggest rival.

“For us to be successful upfront we’re going to have to stop the run, have 11 guys on the ball and the front seven is going to have to play well,” Pierce said. “The [linebackers] are going to have to play downhill and knock them back.”