ASU Football: There’s No Place Like Home
After their second loss of the season, it is becoming apparent that ASU is a completely different team on the road, but why?
The Sun Devils are undefeated at home this season, a perfect 4-0, but are a disappointing 1-2 on the road with their only win coming against UTSA in a 32-28 victory. So why have the Sun Devils been such a dominant team at home but such a poor team on the road? It all starts with the coaching.
Under Todd Graham, ASU has a 13-15 record for games that weren’t played at Sun Devil Stadium. Compare that to the Sun Devils 25-7 record for games that were played at Sun Devils Stadium. That is a huge difference, and a difference that should be concerning to fans.
While on the surface a 13-15 record doesn’t look that bad, it is right around the .500 mark, the fashion in which these losses happened is what is should give some fans concern.
Take the USC game for example, ASU was coming into USC with all the momentum in their favor. They were 4-0, they had started off the conference season with a convincing victory, and they were facing a USC team that was one loss away from hitting the panic button.
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Now instead of taking this momentum and using it to their advantage, they left it in Tempe. The team looked like a complete mess and they gave USC exactly what they needed, a convincing win over a team that was considered one of the better Pac-12 teams at the time.
Losing on the road by a large margin is okay if it is a one-time occurrence in a season, the problem for ASU is that it never happens only once.
In 2012 they were embarrassed at Oregon State and at USC. In 2013 they were embarrassed at Stanford and by Texas Tech in the Holiday Bowl. In 2014 they were embarrassed at Oregon State and at Arizona. Last season they were embarrassed at Texas A&M and at Utah. This season they have been embarrassed at USC and at Colorado.
While you can go back and look at the scores of those games and see that some of them weren’t that bad, the score doesn’t tell the whole story. Just like both the USC game and the Colorado game from this season, the on-field product looked awful. There was no team chemistry and ASU couldn’t catch a break.
There is no one person at fault here, but all the blame has to be put on Todd Graham. In his fifth season as the ASU head coach, his teams have primarily looked the same from year-to-year.
Next: ASU Football: Sun Devils get Trampled in Colorado
While there have been new quarterbacks, new coordinators, and new expectations from season-to-season one thing has remained the same under Graham, the team lives and dies by the phrase “home-field advantage.”