ASU Football: Sun Devils just scratching the surface of its potential

The train has not only left the station, it’s running at full speed. The scary part? The ASU football team has only scratched the surface of their potential.

After Arizona State’s 16-13 victory against Michigan State last night, the Sun Devils shot up to No. 23 in the AP poll and No. 25 in the coach’s poll.

This of course after ASU received nationwide backlash for hiring head coach Herm Edwards and the dismay was shown as the Devils were picked to finish last in the Pac-12 south.

While the season is still fairly young, you can’t help but wonder what this team’s true potential is. Michigan State had a rough start to the year after barely beating Utah State by a touchdown then falling to ASU last night.

Despite the rough start, MSU is still one of the top teams in the nation as they came into the season with college football playoff aspirations. The Spartans outplayed ASU for much of the game last night until the fourth quarter of play. But who could blame them?

With the kickoff at 7:45 in Tempe, it was already almost 11 o’clock back east. The blazing hot temperatures didn’t help the team’s case either as it was triple digits for the majority of the day. The Spartans were so tired at the end of the first half the team decided to take a timeout after a kneel down in order to have more time to rest and recover.

While being tired is one thing, it’s another to be able to take advantage of this and that’s exactly what the Sun Devils did. After taking shot after shot downfield, quarterback Manny Wilkins finally hit on two back-to-back shots with a 38-yard completion to Kyle Williams and a 27-yard touchdown pass to N’Keal Harry.

These big plays saved the day for ASU as the offense ultimately struggled to sustain drives throughout the night. The Michigan State defense is historically one of the top year after year so this struggle can be understood.

The bottom line is the offense is going to be the key to see how far this can truly go. We’ve seen the potential the defense has after allowing seven points to UTSA and then 13 to MSU. Danny Gonzales has said week after week his defense isn’t that good yet and they still have a lot to improve upon, but the results are there.

It will be up to offensive coordinator Rob Likens to continually put the Sun Devils in successful situations through different personnel looks and using the weapons he has at hand. Alongside Likens it will be Wilkins, who threw the ball 48 times last night, to prove he can take this team to the next level.

Arizona State is ahead of schedule under the first year of direction from Edwards, and there’s no telling how far this train can go after the performance we saw last night.