Arizona State football injuries continue to pile up

Arizona State football lost to Utah 55-3 Saturday, and yet again had multiple players go down with injuries.

This seems to be the theme of the season, as soon as one player gets healthy, another goes down. The number just continues to pile up for the Sun Devils.

Arizona State football continues to battle injuries

“It’s unfortunate but it is what it is, and you know our guys are battling through it and they’re tough and they’re fighting,” head coach Kenny Dillingham said. “They want the guys who want to fight with them and alongside of them when we take the field on Saturdays.”

The position group hit hardest with the injury bug has been the offensive line. Nine different offensive linemen have gone down with injuries this season missing a total of 42 games.

Many teams struggle to pass protect or have a productive run game when they can’t consistently send the same five-player unit onto the field. But the Sun Devils are struggling to even get five guys onto the field.

“When it rains it pours,” Dillingham said. “When you have so many guys lost at one position, now the other guys at that position are getting more work than they would normally have to or should by default, and then that slowly wears on them.”

Minor injuries snowballing for Arizona State football

Dillingham went on to explain that in the course of the season, you get many guys that twist ankles or tweak something from the wear and tear of the sport. But normally, those players can grit it out and give the coach the ability to put those players on snap counts and rotations in and out of the game. ASU is so beat up that they don’t have enough healthy players to do this, so players that should only be on the field for a limited sample size of snaps are playing twice or triple the amount which never allows the minor injuries to heal themselves.

“That then slowly wears on them,” Dillingham said. “And unless you get people back, there’s just not really a solution to the problem.”

Quarterback injuries

The quarterback position, which is the other most important offensive position, also took yet another hit Saturday. True freshman quarterback Jaden Rashada started the season at quarterback but went down with an injury in the second game of the season. Then it was a combination of redshirt sophomore Drew Pyne, a transfer from Notre Dame, and redshirt junior Trenton Bourget for a couple of weeks before Pyne was injured against USC. Bourget has started the last five games, but left Saturday with a leg injury, leaving it to redshirt sophomore Jacob Conover. Bourget is day-to-day, but Dillingham said if there was a game today, Bourget would not be playing in it. Conover was the fourth quarterback on the depth chart for ASU coming into the season.

“If you think about the highest paid guys in the NFL, it’s defensive ends, offensive linemen, and quarterback,” Dillingham said. “Why? Because that’s the number one correlation to winning.”

Defensive line injuries

The defensive line position heading into the week was probably one of the least injured position groups on the team, hence why the defense had been performing so well lately. But Saturday, graduate student defensive end Michael Matus left the game injured, later to find out he tore his ACL. In addition to Matus, redshirt junior defensive lineman Prince Dorbah was also injured against Utah. Both players are leaders on the defense and Dorbah co-leads the team with six sacks and is second on the team with 9.5 TFL.

Dorbah is getting an MRI this week, and will not practice. However, he does have a chance to play on gameday, according to Dillingham. Matus is out for the season, which will end his college career.

“[Matus] sent an unbelievable text to the guys Saturday night after the game just about leaving it all out on the field and you never know when your last play is,” Dillingham said. “He’s just an unbelievable not just player, but person, he’s going to be successful in life, so really sad to see his career come to an end here.”

Moving forward

The Sun Devils are now majorly depleted in arguably the three most important position groups in football. That makes it difficult to win. ASU’s schedule does not get any easier either as it travels to the Rose Bowl to face UCLA on Saturday. After that are home games against Oregon and in-state rival Arizona. ASU will have to figure out how to best utilize the players they have healthy, to play the best brand of football they can.

“We’ve definitely got to be unique and creative with how to utilize guys,” Dillingham said. “It’s a challenge, but we’re going to adapt and change and continue to adapt and change.”

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