ASU Football: Looking at the Past to Predict the Future

Nov 28, 2015; Berkeley, CA, USA; Arizona State Sun Devils head coach Todd Graham signals from the sideline against the California Golden Bears during the second quarter at Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
Nov 28, 2015; Berkeley, CA, USA; Arizona State Sun Devils head coach Todd Graham signals from the sideline against the California Golden Bears during the second quarter at Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

ASU football’s upcoming season can be predicted based off of it’s past.

Who knows what to expect from this football team? At times this teams looks to be a top-10 caliber team and then there are times that this team looks worse than U of A, which we all know is pretty hard to do. But here are some realistic expectations for this upcoming season based off of ASU in the past.

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Expect there to be an over-reliance on the run game

Since Todd Graham arrived at Arizona State back in 2012, the football program has been run heavy. Even when Taylor Kelly was the quarterback for ASU he was known as a dual-threat quarterback who had just as many designed running plays as he did passing plays. Last season, when Graham didn’t have a very mobile quarterback in Mike Bercovici, Graham relied heavily on the running back position to be the offensive workhorse. This is something that people hope will change under new offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey, but it won’t happen. Graham loves the run game too much to bring in an offensive coordinator who isn’t on the same wavelength as him.

Expect there to be at least one game that ASU gets destroyed

ASU has always had one game a season where nothing goes right, this past season it was the USC game. The year before that it was UCLA and back in 2013 it was Stanford. It seems that ASU has to have that one game so that they can call it a successful season. It makes no sense but it is something that ASU fans have had to deal with forever and they will continue having to deal with it for the foreseeable future. Keep Saturday October 8, 2016 in the back of your mind as that is when ASU hosts UCLA. The Bruins will have a great quarterback in a more developed Josh Rosen and they will be bringing back a lot of the pieces that made their defense solid this year. Toss in the 12th best recruiting class in the nation and UCLA has everything they need to come into Tempe, AZ and demolish the Sun Devils.