How The Sun Devils Maximized Improvement Opportunities In Week Off

(Photo: Spencer Barnes/WCSN)

After getting off to a 3-1 start — its best since 2019 — ASU Football ‘celebrated’ with a week off. The Sun Devils’ first bye week came on the heels of their Big 12 Conference debut, a 30-22 loss on the road to Texas Tech.

With the loss hanging over their heads for the whole week, head coach Kenny Dillingham and company spent the week rejuvenating and reigniting their competitive spirit ahead of Saturday’s Big 12 home opener against Kansas.

“I think at times, the last few weeks, we’ve been a lot more bark than we have bite,” Dillingham said Monday. “We’ve been a lot, ‘Oh, have you seen our tape? We play really, really hard and physical,’ and we’ve talked about that more than we’ve actually played like that. And I think we got to get back to being that team that just plays extremely, extremely hard, that coaches talk about it.”

Getting back to playing hard has been one of ASU’s main focuses during the break. While a bye week often brings concerns about a team’s focus with the lack of a game day, Dillingham doesn’t think his team had that problem.

With the loss going into the bye week, the Sun Devils were motivated to get after it and get better to come back out and get a win the following week.

“I don’t think when you lose you have to refocus,” Dillingham said. “I think it’s like, let’s go. Like, we’ve been sitting on this ‘L’ for a week now. We couldn’t play this week. We had to watch other teams play. Let’s play the game. Let’s get back to this. We got to get this right. We have to right the ship here. And I think that’s kind of the guy’s mentality.”

Dillingham said that throughout the bye week, the coaching staff was able to self-scout ASU and tweak their approach from a schematic standpoint. The reset allowed the Sun Devils to get back to working on their aggressive identity as a team, something Dillingham believes got away from them against Texas Tech.

The break also provided the Sun Devils enough time to get healthy at a multitude of positions. This is especially important for the defensive backs and linebackers who can now include junior defensive back Laterrence Welch and redshirt sophomore linebacker Tate Romney in their respective rotations.

With the depth returning, Dillingham wants to get deeper into his rotations and provide more of the younger players an opportunity for live game reps. This is something they haven’t been able to do with the multitude of injuries.

“I think getting [Welch] back will be really good for us at corner. Getting him back, getting [Romney] back at linebacker for some rotational depth will also help us,” Dillingham said. “And then I think we need to play guys more. … We got to get some of those younger safeties in the game a little bit more. [Redhsirt sophomore defensive back] Kamari [Wilson], [redshirt freshman defensive back] Montana [Warren], we just got to get them in a little bit more, to get their feet wet, get them comfortable, and then also take some pressure off of our back end. And same with [Welch] with the corners. We got to make them not play 80 snaps.”

On offense, Dillingham also worked with redshirt freshman quarterback Sam Leavitt. They honed in on some of his footwork and mechanics, but Dillingham also praised the young signal-caller, taking note of how his age can skew opinions of his early performances

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Dillingham said. “And I think that’s the definition when you’re a young quarterback, is people get to pick if you’re playing really well or playing poorly a lot when you’re young because they either lean in on you’re young or they lean in on your mistake.”

The one thing Dillingham made clear that needed to be fixed on both sides of the ball was the Sun Devils’ performance in the red zone. Offensively, ASU is 10-for-19 on touchdowns in red zone situations. On defense, the Sun Devils have let opponents find the end zone in nine of 11 red zone chances.

Against Texas Tech, the Sun Devils were 4-for-5 on red zone opportunities with three touchdowns. Conversely, Texas Tech went 4-for-4 with three touchdowns.

“That’s our number one category of improvement that we got to get better at is our red zone stuff, both sides of the ball,” Dillingham said. “You got to win the margins in this league. Anybody can beat any team any week. You got to be more efficient in the red zone, holding them to three points, and we got to be more efficient scoring touchdowns and not settling for field goals.”

The bye week was an opportunity for ASU to evaluate its progress to this point in the season and make the necessary adjustments. Only time will tell if the week off was truly as productive as Dillingham believes it was, and the Jayhawks will be ASU’s first test with their renewed energy.

“If everybody plays at an average level, which is the definition of average, then you have to do things better to not play at an average level, and that right there is difficult,” Dillingham said. “And everybody thinks they can just flip the switch. ‘Oh, why does this team play so hard? Well, we’ll just play hard and match it.’ That’s not how it works. It’s a habit, and we got to get back to being the habit that we were in week one and two this week in practice.”