ASU Football: Graham fired, unable to raise program to Anderson’s standards

(Photo: Brett Deckert/WCSN)

Todd Graham made no bones about it when speaking to the media on Sunday.

He hadn’t expected he was going to get fired.

Not after six seasons that produced 46 wins (the third-most in program history), a division title, and four wins over in-state rivals Arizona.

Graham’s dismissal comes as little surprise to most around the program after almost two years of speculation surrounding his job. But in an impromptu press conference on Sunday, one that began minutes after vice president of university athletics Ray Anderson concluded a 30-minute presser of his own explaining the decision, Graham was still in slight disbelief.

He was asked if he knew his firing was coming: “No.”

Was he surprised to be let go: “Yes.”

Though he must have felt the pressure from his bosses this year, Graham walked off the field on Saturday night, Territorial Cup in hand, thinking his accomplishments — both this year and in the first three years of his tenure — were enough to warrant a seventh go-around in Tempe.

In Anderson’s eyes, they weren’t.

“We have been average,” he said. “7-5 and second place in a riddled Pac-12 South is not our aspiration. We deserve more. We have the capacity and the university and the community that deserves more and I very frankly should demand more.”

Graham couldn’t undo the pitfalls of the last two years, both of which ended in disappointing fashion and with losing records. Recent results have been far from Anderson’s vision of what the program should be.

“We should be top-3 in the Pac-12, in my opinion, every season,” Anderson said. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be, every year, top-15 nationally if we do what we’re supposed to do.”

Graham had the program at those lofty levels in 2013 and 2014, but that historic spurt of success is a distant memory in Tempe.

His termination has been a long time coming.

Anderson was publicly frustrated with his adopted football coach two summers ago. He went public with his criticism, telling local sports talk radio station Fox Sports 910 AM in July 2016, “One of the things, very frankly, that we’re trying to do better around here is to talk less and deliver more. We’ll be minimum on the bravado and all the predictions about greatness and just let our play speak for us.”

Those comments preceded Graham’s worst season at ASU, last year’s 5-7 debacle – a year marred by an ugly blowout loss in Tucson to seal the program’s first postseason-less season in the Graham era.

“There were folks after the Arizona game last year who thought I was absolutely out of my mind to not make a move then,” Anderson said.

There was an army of voices on social media on Sunday that thought ASU’s fourth-year athletic director was crazy to make a move now, with the football team far exceeding preseason expectations.

But exceeding low expectations isn’t what Anderson wants. Achieving unprecedentedly lofty ones is what is required of Sun Devil head coaches now.

“I don’t judge it on emotion, I judge it on a body of work,” Anderson said. “We were all excited last night. Yes, there have been some major wins, but at the end of the day we are still a middle of the pack, average, going to a low bowl game program. After my four years, that’s just very frankly not what we aspire to be.”

Despite the rumors around his fate, Graham never really opened up publicly about his job security this year. Asked last week about whether he might be staying or not, Graham said: “I don’t have anything to say about that.”

There was speculation this move would happen back in the early stages of the season, when the Sun Devils stumbled out of the starting gates with a 1-2 non-conference slate. But surprise wins over then-ranked conference foes in Oregon (No. 24) and Washington (No. 5) quelled the mid-season firing rumors temporarily.

ASU had a chance to move into sole possession of first place in the Pac-12 South in October before getting freight-trained by USC. Two weeks later, the Sun Devils gave away a 14-point lead ar the Rose Bowl, allowing UCLA (who have since fired their now ex-coach, Jim Mora) to steal a come-from-behind victory.

Those losses to the Los Angeles schools might have been the straws the broke the camel’s back. Working under clearly-frustrated bosses, Graham needed near-perfection this year to extend his stay in Tempe for a seventh season.

He didn’t get it.

The messy finish to Graham’s tenure was a complete reversal from the auspicious start it got off to.

When he arrived six years ago, the Texas-native inherited a program in turmoil: ASU had just one winning season during the Dennis Erickson’s five-year reign from 2007-2011. Grades among the roster’s student-athletes were in the toilet, Sun Devil Stadium was quickly becoming an inadequate facility and the program had finished with a winning conference record just once in the prior seven seasons.

But Graham went to work, replacing graduated NFL-bound quarterback Brock Osweiler with sophomore Taylor Kelly. The team started that season 5-1, earned an emphatic 41-34 victory over Arizona to end the regular season, and then demolished Navy in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl – the school’s first bowl win since 2005.

His debut season set the stage for a transcendent two-year run of program success: Between 2013-14, ASU had back-to-back 10-win seasons (a feat only previously accomplished by Frank Kush), finished ranked in both seasons and won the Pac-12 South in 2013.

But Graham couldn’t complete his goal of winning a conference championship, suffering major slip-ups late in both seasons: a 38-14 loss to Stanford in the 2013 Pac-12 Championship Game and a stunning 35-27 at last-placed Oregon State the next November.

Kelly graduated after the 2014 season, a year ASU ended ranked No. 12 in the AP poll.

The Sun Devils were ranked No. 15 to begin 2015, but were flattened by Texas A&M in a season-opening neutral site loss in Houston. They haven’t returned to the rankings since.

As wins began to decline in recent years, so did stability amongst the program’s coaching staff. Former offensive coordinator Mike Norvell – whom Graham claimed is the executor to his will – left ASU following the 2015 season to become head coach at Memphis. His replacement, Chip Lindsay, lasted just one season with the Sun Devils before jumping ship last year to take the same job at Auburn. Ex-Alabama receivers coach Billy Napier was hired to take over the role this year, the third different Sun Devils offensive coordinator in three years.

Keith Patterson had been defensive coordinator since 2014, but was demoted to linebackers’ coach after last season. Veteran defensive mastermind Phil Bennett, a personal friend of Graham’s, was introduced as defensive coordinator this year.

The musical chairs pattern of his staffs was something Anderson cited as a reason for moving on from Graham.

“We’ve had a lot of turnover,” Anderson said of the staff changes. “There’s all kind of reasons why that is, but at the end of the day the head coach is responsible for developing and then retaining his coaches so you can have continuity.”

Graham’s roster of players suffered the same story. Finding a replacement for Kelly has proven to be futile, even after an improved junior season from quarterback Manny Wilkins this year. Several of the team’s top defensive players over the last several years have left the program, either through transfer or medical retirement. Those who have played on the back end have struggled to recreate the dominant defense of Graham’s early years at the school.

When Anderson boiled it down, Graham wasn’t producing enough elite-caliber talents.

“We have to get to the point where we are recruiting 4- and 5-star football players who want to come and play here because they know the development for the player and the development from the coaching and the retention of the coaching is not going to potentially get in their way if they want to go play in the NFL,” Anderson said. “…That’s where we need to make up ground because we don’t have that here now. They have it at USC. Always have been, always will. They have it at Stanford, they have it at Washington, at times they have it in UCLA, they have it at Washington State.

“We don’t have that here. You cannot have a year where none of our [non-specialists] players get drafted into the NFL and only one player, a kicker, is [in] the combine.”

Amid so many changes throughout all levels of his program, Graham couldn’t recreate the magic of its spectacular beginnings.

In the end, Graham raised expectations around the demanding program with his success and with his words.

“We all understand what you sign up for. I love that I’m in an industry that it is about being a champion,” Graham said. “I embrace that and that’s one of the things I’m proud of. I’ll tell you one thing I’ve done since I’ve been here: We’ve raised the expectations.”

When he couldn’t match those self-set lofty goals, the new regime – one that he did not hire – was unforgiving.

Graham made his own bed. Now he is lying in it, being forced out of the program he dedicated the last six years of career to building.

When he looks back at his time at the school, it will be with smile. He had a chance to take shots at the school on Sunday, but instead gave a voluntarily courteous exit. Even after receiving the first pink slip of his head coaching career, he wanted to be clear on what what he felt:

“I’m a Sun Devil. I think I always will be. A couple of my kids graduated from here and I didn’t build this place to tear it down.”