ASU Football: The offense needs to be more efficient

While the defense gets the large portion of criticism from ASU football fans, the offense needs to improve its efficiency heading into the 2017 season.

ASU football is coming into the 2017 season with a ton of pressure.

Coming off a 5-7 season in Tempe Graham has been listed by USA Today as one of 10 college coaches on the hot seat.

We all know the struggles of the Sun Devils on defense. It has been well documented that the defense has to get better. But, I dug down on the numbers and found that the offense didn’t fare much better.

Arizona State ranked 85th in 3rd down conversion percentage (.381), 75th in yards per pass attempt (12.11), 112th in rush offense (131.5 yards per game), 114th in tackles allowed for loss (7.5 per game) and 82nd in turnovers (21).

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When you look at those numbers, it’s easy to see why Arizona State struggled to win games. When teams are unable to stay on the field on third down, and giving up the ball to the other team, is it a surprise that the defense can’t hold up?

The offense needs to improve in numerous ways.

We know that the defense is an issue, therefore the offense needs to be able to limit the opponents possessions.

They need to run the football more efficiently, stop giving up so many tackles for loss, and put the offense in better positions on third down.

They need to be the ones who help the defense. When you have a bad defense, the answer is not to run a up-tempo style of offense so you put the defense out there with no rest.

You want to run the ball, make sure that the defense’s exposure is limited and therefore keep control of the game.

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If Arizona State’s offense is unable to improve on these numbers, it’s going to be a long season in Tempe.