ASU Football: How Sun Devils Match Up With the Cardinal

This Saturday’s Match Up with Stanford is an interesting one for ASU.

First, Stanford is really good on defense.  Tops nationally in a couple of categories, but #1 overall.  They are allowing less than 10 points per game and have only allowed one passing touchdown.  They are solid up front and extremely talented in the secondary.

Trying to pit that Stanford defense against the ASU offense is intriguing.  Part of that depends on who is playing quarterback for ASU:  Mike Bercovici, the gun-slinging pocket passer or Taylor Kelly, the dual threat game manager.  It appears that Bercovici will get the start, mostly because Kelly is not at 100% yet.  But you never know.  Coach Graham, as predicted here, is going to make everybody (including Stanfor0d) wait to find out.

Nevertheless, ASU’s offense has not been the problem for this team.  They’ve scored lots of points and racked up a ton of yards no matter who was playing quarterback.  If Bercovici starts and/or plays a lot, his ability to stress that defensive secondary by spinning the football into tight windows and hitting his receivers in stride could create problems for that Stanford defense.

Likewise, if Kelly starts, his running ability might open up the running game for ASU’s DJ Foster.  The absence of that running game lately could be a problem for ASU.  They need to get more production from their running attack in order to win this game.

On the other hand, the weakness for ASU so far has been their defense.  They’ve given up a lot of rushing yards and haven’t gotten the necessary pressure on opposing quarterbacks.  Normally, that would be the kiss of death when playing Stanford.  (and it still might be).  The only problem is that Stanford’s offense has not been as effective this season as they were last year or in recent seasons.  It’s probably a stretch to say that the Cardinal are in an offensive slump.  They’ve just had more turnovers than usual and can’t seem to punch the ball in for touchdowns when in the red zone.

So, where does that leave us?  Probably a game that features two teams racking up a lot of yards.  ASU doing it quickly and Stanford doing it methodically.  The winner of this game presumably, then, would be the team that wins the red zone.

The defense that bends, but doesn’t break by allowing field goals instead of touchdowns, combined with an offense that can punch it in, rather than settling for a field goal comes away with a win.  And it may come down to just one of those red zone possessions.  And of course, special teams and turnovers always affect a possession game like this.

Whoever wins will require a complete team effort to do so–and they’re going to earn it.