(Photo: Colgin Hirschel/WCSN)
Saturday night’s lopsided 55-19 loss to Baylor left Arizona State football head coach Kenny Dillingham puzzled in his postgame press conference. Dillingham repeatedly took accountability for his team’s performance, stating he believes this is the first time the Sun Devils have underachieved in his tenure as head coach.
“A coach’s job is to get people to overachieve, not achieve where they can alone,” Dillingham said. “I am not helping them achieve their own level, let alone overachieving. We are going to do everything in our power to become overachievers by the end of the season.”
Monday afternoon, Dillingham spoke again, after having the chance to watch the tape, reconvene with coaches and set a plan for his team to get back to overachieving in the buildup to hosting Hawaii.
“The teams that I have coached, we have been the hammer more than the nail,” Dillingham said. “We’ve got to become the hammer [again] and that’s my fault.”
A Venn diagram of Dillingham’s words from Saturday’s postgame to Monday’s press conference would be a lone circle full of quotes from the head coach taking accountability for his team’s lackluster performance.
“I can’t sleep at night when it’s mistakes and passion,” Dillingham said. “There’s been games we’ve lost really badly, and it sucked, and I still slept a little bit. Can’t sleep when we lose games in a manner I believe falls on the head football coach.”
While some programs and coaches would see a performance like Saturday’s against Baylor and move on quickly, Dillingham does not want ASU to forget this loss.
“I want us to dwell on it,” Dillingham said. “I want our guys to feel that, if you don’t feel that one, you don’t feel anything. That should hit you in the face and you should dwell on that.”
Dillingham mentioned he believed the entire team was at Sunday’s voluntary workout, hours after the loss.
“Everybody’s got to point their finger at themselves, everybody’s got to figure out what they individually can improve on,” Dillingham said. “If everybody individually improves and fixes their problems, it’s usually not big problems – it’s usually a bunch of little problems.”
One problem Dillingham recognized from Saturday’s loss was that he didn’t get his team ready to perform against Baylor.
“It is my responsibility to get them to play good football, and they did not play good football,” Dillingham said. “Regardless of whose fault it is, it’s my fault because they didn’t play good football. It all starts and ends with me. Every bad thing that happens in the program starts and ends with me.”
This theme continued when Dillingham broke down his defense’s performance, which surrendered 55 points and a season-high 564 yards to Baylor. Third-year quarterback DJ Lagway had a breakout performance in his third game with Baylor, posting 306 passing yards and a career-high four touchdown passes.
“We weren’t on the same page,” Dillingham said. “We thought one guy was covering one guy. The other guy thought the other guy was covering the other guy.
“Ten-to-eleven times there was a bust with a guy wide open.”
ASU’s defense allowed 244 rushing yards, the most it has allowed since last season’s 42-10 loss to Utah, where it gave up 276 yards on the ground. Baylor entered Mountain America Stadium with a putrid ground-game resume, averaging 128 yards against FBS opponents.
“That was definitely shocking,” Dillingham said. “That’s been something that’s been a core value, an elite trait for the last three years.”
Since Dillingham took over the head coaching reins in 2023, Baylor’s 244 rushing yards are tied for the third-most the Sun Devils have allowed in a single game. A 55-3 loss to Utah in 2023 holds the top spot, when ASU gave up 352 rushing yards, then the 2025 loss to Utah sits in second.
Before Saturday’s game against Baylor, there was a lot of outside chatter surrounding the Sun Devils’ offensive production. In London against Kansas, ASU produced 228 total yards of offense in a 24-17 win.
Despite leaving the Baylor game with only 19 points and a single touchdown, the Sun Devils produced 408 yards.
“Our offense had a lot of growth,” Dillingham said. “We were not stale, we moved the ball down the field, we hit explosive plays. We’ve just got to finish those drives when we get into the red zone.”
Third-year quarterback Cutter Boley got more receivers involved than fourth-year Reed Harris, who leads ASU in all receiving categories. Fourth-year wide receiver Omarion Miller had his most productive game of the season, finishing the night with five receptions, 85 yards and a touchdown on seven targets.
Second-year wideout Raiden Vines-Bright saw his No. 7 called more, as Boley targeted him eight times. Though Vines-Bright finished with only four grabs for 16 yards, it is much-welcomed progress compared to the opening three games of the season, where he caught two balls for 14 yards.
“There was growth, but it’s still not to our standard,” Dillingham said. “We have better players than what’s happening. I take it very personally to get these guys playing better, and we will.”
The wheels came off the bus for the offense in Baylor’s half of the field. Twice, the Sun Devils had to settle for three inside the red zone, and twice more inside the 30-yardline.
“It’s a combination of things,” Dillingham said. “It wasn’t like we were dysfunctional. It was like ‘man, this time it was this, this time it was this.’ It’s the coach’s adage, ‘we’re very, very close.’”
Now, ASU enters the Hawaii game week in a unique position. Dillingham’s team finds itself needing to quickly learn the lessons from the loss to Baylor and apply those to another home game.
“Every week it’s about you first, opponent second,” Dillingham said. “You worry about us first, once we clean up the things we’ve got to clean up internally to get fixed, we then go to the opponent.
“Opponents, opponents, opponents, I don’t care. We’ve got to play our best game”
This Saturday’s home game against Hawaii is the Sun Devils’ last non-conference game of the season. Afterward, they enter one of the season’s most difficult stretches.
Next week, ASU travels to Lubbock, Texas, to face off against No. 11 Texas Tech. The week after, the Sun Devils host to 3-1 Kansas State, then round out October in Provo, Utah, against No. 8 BYU.
With such a difficult stretch on the horizon, it would be easy to be concerned about ASU’s prospects after its performance against Baylor. Yet, for Dillingham, that isn’t the case.
“My confidence has zero wavering,” Dillingham said. “Regardless of outside perception, there is zero wavering in the confidence in this football team, nor should there be, because everything we did was self-inflicted.”
Heading into the Hawaii game and the difficult ensuing schedule
“You’re going to see significant improvement. You will see significant improvement.”
