Categories: Football

Speaking Victory

(Photo: ASU Athletics)

Every week Todd Graham holds a press conference to discuss the previous week and Arizona State’s upcoming opponent. We’ll try to decipher what exactly the second-year Sun Devil’s head coach is saying during his often long-winded, sometimes funny, and always entertaining and informative media sessions.

Graham: I know one thing. When I usually sit on the planes, I don’t pay attention when they do their little safety deal…you probably want to pay attention to that.

Translation: Oxygen masks on an airplane…something nobody should ever have to experience.

Graham: We’re not anywhere close to being in the condition we want to be in.

Translation: When am I ever anywhere near happy with what we are doing?

Graham: I think 75 percent of the fact that we’re healthy is our training…I think a lot of it has to do with technique, our training…it’s a big deal for us.

Translation: We teach players not to get hurt. We are good at teaching.

Graham: When I was hired, he was very gracious. I asked him for the opportunity to visit with me and he visited with me…I’m also very grateful for the job that he did here bringing young men like Taylor Kelly and (Evan) Fink(enberg), Will Sutton and Alden Darby.

Translation: Dennis Erickson is just the nicest man. I can’t thank him enough for dropping four all-conference players, an All-American and potentially the most prolific quarterback in school history right into my lap.

Graham: You can’t just do whatever you want on offense because than you won’t be able to ever play great defense…If you’re going to be a no-huddle team you have to be an attack-oriented defense.

Translation: Discipline. Attack the football. No critical errors. No penalties.

Graham: To win a championship you have to have a quarterback…they used to not say that, they’d say ‘one person doesn’t matter that much.’ Yes they do. You have to have a quarterback, period. If you don’t have one, than it’s pretty hard to win a championship.

Translation: This is why Michael Eubank doesn’t play…eh, I mean, Taylor Kelly is developing into a great college quarterback right in front of us every week.

Graham: I think that this day and age too, the component that is a little bit overlooked is the special teams part.

Translation: I got my weekly ‘special teams are important’ plug in!

You can reach Jason Galvin on Twitter @Jason_Galvin or by email jgalvi1@asu.edu