ASU football: Kenny Dillingham’s thoughts following ASU’s first loss

TEMPE, Ariz. – ASU football went on the road this past weekend to face Texas Tech for its first Big 12 game in history. To the surprise of many, ASU left Tempe with a 3-0 record.

The Sun Devils had already accomplished their first win over an SEC team in history in their second game of the season. However, the first Big 12 conference win will have to wait. Arizona State football could not get out of its own way Saturday, falling 30-22 to Texas Tech.

Kenny Dillingham speaks following first loss of season for ASU football

Now, ASU heads into its bye-week following its worst performance of the season with a lot to learn from and adjust to. Here are some of the thoughts of head coach Kenny Dillingham following his team’s first-season loss.

Play simple and focus on the details

ASU had an eight-day break between its win over Texas State and its game against Texas Tech. Following the Texas State game, which came on a short week, Dillingham felt he and his staff put too much into the game plan. His players did not have enough time to fully understand the concepts and adjust to execute them in time for the Thursday game.

However, in this past week’s eight-day break, Dillingham thought, once again, he and his staff overstuffed the game plan. With more time, he felt they could add more schemes and more complexity.

“Shrinking what we’re doing…last week, having more time, sometimes is a curse,” Dillingham said. “We probably had too many things in and I didn’t feel like our guys played fast enough. So, we have to be able to shrink what we’re doing to make sure our guys can play fast and know where their fits are, and know how we’re blocking things.”

Dillingham harped on the importance of execution. How good or bad or impressive a scheme is doesn’t matter if you can’t execute it. The focus going forward is to minimize the plays and schemes the players need to learn and focus on playing to their strengths and paying attention to detail.

“It’s not the player’s fault because I don’t think we coached that detail specific enough, and we didn’t teach the ‘why’ that detail makes the difference. When you’re talking fourth and shorts, you’re talking really tight coverages,” Dillingham said. “That game exposed little details, that we weren’t the most detailed team, and that’s why I was frustrated after the game.”

The young head coach took responsibility for those mishaps and emphasized the need to not put too much on his player’s plates and focus on the small details in future preparation.

Penalties, penalties, penalties

ASU football didn’t play its best game by any stretch of the imagination Saturday, but right at the heart of it was its lack of discipline with penalties. Unnecessary penalties haven’t been something we’ve talked about much since Dillingham arrived at ASU, but Saturday was something to learn from.

The first three drives of the game all had ridiculous penalties committed by the Sun Devils. The opening kickoff was out of bounds, giving Texas Tech the ball at their 35-yard line. On the ensuing kickoff, ASU committed an unnecessary roughness penalty that backed it up for its first drive. Then on the Red Raiders’ second drive, the Sun Devils forced a three and out, nullified by a face mask penalty, giving Texas Tech an automatic first down.

Dillingham noted the unnecessary roughness penalty was due to his player not seeing the signal on the sideline for no return. Therefore, he continued blocking, thinking ASU was bringing the ball out of the endzone.

In the second quarter, junior defensive back Myles “Ghost” Rowser came up with a huge sack on third down but was called for taunting after standing over and yelling at the quarterback, resulting in an automatic first down.

Responding to penalties

However, Dillingham made a point that those types of penalties can’t happen but he was proud of the way those players responded.

“At the end of the day, if you’ve got a competitor, he knows he messed up. If your guy isn’t harder on himself for making a mistake that hurts the team then he shouldn’t be on the field to begin with,” Dillingham said. “If it doesn’t eat at him that he just did something catastrophically bad, what are you doing playing him to begin with? The better question is, don’t do it again, and can you respond from the situation? Hopefully, those guys that had some uncharacteristic kind of silly penalties don’t happen again, and they were learning experience because we haven’t had those since I’ve been here.”

Dillingham still confident in Sam Leavitt

Redshirt freshman quarterback Sam Leavitt threw an interception on ASU’s first drive of the game. Throughout the rest of the game, Leavitt struggled with his accuracy. This was the first game we saw Leavitt struggle consistently, and the offense stalling when it needed to produce.

However, Dillingham reiterated his confidence in his young quarterback and gave his thoughts on the interception.

“So you make the right read as a freshman on your first drive. You throw the ball, you get hit in the chest and the ball sails on you a little bit and it’s an interception, like that’s going to happen, that’s football,” Dillingham said. “When I can’t sleep is when we just throw the ball to the opponent for no apparent reason. That’s not something that Sam’s shown to do. He has taken care of the football at a fairly high level and given us a chance to extend drives.”

That was only Leavitt’s second turnover of the season. He’s accounted for seven touchdowns through the air and on the ground.

What’s next after the bye week

ASU enters its bye week boasting a 3-1 record. Despite going 3-0 in non-conference and losing the lone conference game so far, the Sun Devils have looked very impressive.

Senior running back Cam Skattebo said after the loss to Texas Tech that there are three seasons within the season, and ASU just finished that first season going 3-1. If the Sun Devils can keep that up, they’d finish the season 9-3 and blow away all expectations for this season.

The Sun Devils begin the second third of their season on Saturday, October 5, at 5 p.m. against Kansas at Mountain America Stadium.

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