(Photo via Joey Plishka/WCSN)
Arizona State Football head coach Herm Edwards has been removed from his position, as first reported Sunday by Chris Karpman of Sun Devil Source.
According to Doug Haller of The Athletic, Edwards is “relinquishing his role” as head coach. Running backs coach Shaun Aguano will replace Edwards in an interim role.
“We have made the decision to make a change in the leadership of our football program, effective immediately,” Vice President of University Athletics Ray Anderson said in an official statement. “By mutual agreement, Coach Edwards and I have determined that he will relinquish duties as our head coach. At the core of this is doing what is best for our current team, staff and university. I understand the frustrations out there. We must do better and that starts with our decision today.”
The news comes after the Sun Devils’ embarrassing 30-21 loss to Eastern Michigan Saturday night, the Sun Devils’ first home defeat to a non-power conference school since 2008 against UNLV.
Edwards’ abrupt termination comes in his fifth season at the helm of the Sun Devils, who are currently 1-2 to start the 2022 season. The 68-year-old was 26-20 during his career with ASU.
Much speculation about Edwards’ future first swirled in 2021, as ASU’s underperformance relative to expectations became more apparent each week.
Controversy has also surrounded Edwards, as the NCAA continues its ongoing investigation into the program for alleged recruiting violations. The accusations – as first reported in June 2021 by Yahoo! Sports and The Athletic – consisted of ASU hosting high school players during the NCAA’s “dead period,” when schools were not permitted to have face-to-face contact with potential recruits due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s wide-reaching impact. Edwards was accused of having illegal meetings with recruits during the time as well.
ASU went through 2021 with three assistants – tight ends coach Adam Breneman, defensive backs coach Chris Hawkins and wide receivers coach Prentice Gill – on administrative leave due to the investigation into the program. All three are among those who lost their jobs following the conclusion of the season, in addition to former defensive/recruiting coordinator and associate head coach Antonio Pierce and offensive coordinator Zak Hill, who both resigned.
Despite public criticism, Anderson told the team following ASU’s 38-15 regular season finale win over Arizona that Edwards would return as the head coach.
Edwards was brought to Tempe in 2017 by Anderson to elevate ASU’s football program to heights it hadn’t reached in decades. The goal, according to the duo, was top-15 poll finishes and “major” bowl games.
In five years, not much changed for the Sun Devils under Edwards.
They went 7-6 in his rookie season in college, losing in the Las Vegas Bowl to Fresno State. Freshman quarterback Jayden Daniels brought unprecedented hype to Tempe in 2019, only for ASU to finish 8-5 and win the Sun Bowl in El Paso against Florida State. In 2020, a vicious COVID-19 outbreak ripped through the Sun Devils’ program, forcing the team to only play four games and struggle to install a new offensive scheme led by Hill. Last season, the still freshness of Hill’s scheme seemed to show, with Daniels struggling to the tune of 10 passing touchdowns and 10 interceptions.
However, Edwards, known as a defensive coach throughout his career in the NFL, saw some success with the Sun Devils on that side of the ball throughout his tenure. In 2021, ASU touted the 13th-best defense in the country based on the metric of yards per game. The Sun Devils’ high-ranking number was the only notable one of Edwards’ career at the helm.
The disastrous downfall reached a new low for Edwards this past offseason, as the head man lost 18 scholarship players to the transfer portal primarily due to the investigation and the program’s lack of commitment in the name, image and likeness wave that has taken over the NCAA.
The Sun Devils’ 2022 recruiting class ranked 105th in the country and last in the Pac-12 Conference. This ranked below schools from non-Power 5 programs like Georgia State, South Alabama, Wyoming and Old Dominion and was second-to-last overall among Power 5 schools. Its 17-man recruiting class, inked on the same day Pierce resigned, totaled just five high school recruits – the rest all being transfers from various college programs across the country.
ASU will now look for a new head coach amid the disappointing start to the season – the 25th in program history.
WCSN’s Hunter Hippel also contributed to this story.
