Arizona State returns a vast majority of their starters from last season's magical run, but one key departure is center Leif Fautanu, who's now with the Detroit Lions. Arizona State is turning to one of their returning players to fill the void, though.
Ben Coleman, who we spotlighted last month in our Countdown to Kickoff series, is moving over from left guard to center. Coleman, who was left off the All-Big 12 lists last year despite not giving up a single sack, has never played the position before.
Early on in spring practices, it showed. Coleman had repeated issues with snapping the ball, and offensive line coach Saga Tuitele was observed laying into him early on. However, Coleman got into a groove before long, and by the end of spring practices he looked like a natural snapping the ball.
At the Big 12 Football Media Days, Coleman spoke about how that process went, and how he moved past his early struggles to get comfortable snapping the ball.
"Just allowing myself to make mistakes and improve from it. I'm a veteran guy and I don't want to feel like I'm taking a step back. You talk about spring ball and making the wrong steps, Coach Saga [Tuitele] getting on me about my steps. The best thing they said is don't worry about the snap, let's talk football. The snap is repetition, so it'll come, and it got so much better. "
Coleman also spoke to the mental aspect of the position swap, as the center is responsible for making pass protection calls at the line of scrimmage. According to Coleman, Tuitele's approach to line calls had him already prepared for that adjustment.
"As far as calls, that's why last year we harped so much on everybody needing to know the calls, not just the center. You should already have the call in your head. As soon as he says one word, oh cool, I was already thinking it. So that made the transition easy for me, because I knew the whole offense. Now you're just the voice that everybody hears. "
Echoing those same thoughts, quarterback Sam Leavitt showered Coleman with praise and highlighted how much trust already exists between the two when it comes to the quarterback-center exchange:
"He's a really cerebral player, and I've been able to talk through protections on the field with him. We go to the film room after and talk about the changing the [protection] here. He'll say "Well this guy's blitzing, if the linebacker blitzes you gotta throw hot off of it." So he trusts me, I trust him."
Thus far in his college career, Coleman has never played center. He's played left tackle and left guard, and played fairly well at both positions. When asked if there was any initial hesitancy when Coleman was first asked to replace Fautanu, Coleman was resolute:
"No, I was ready to jump out there. That was something that I haven't had the chance to do. When I was at Cal, the same situation kind of happened. I played for a coach who's now an assistant at Kansas, Angus McClure, and he always said "I think you'd be a really good center and have a long run in the league doing it. And Dillingham felt the same way, so I was ready to do it. "
Coleman is hardly the first Sun Devil to excel along the offensive line, as there have been many great players to come before him in the trenches. When asked if there were any such players who stick out in his mind as someone he models his game after, Coleman shared an interesting strategy that Tuitele uses to connect the current players to Sun Devils of the past:
"You know, it's funny, we actually have a homework assignment [from Coach Saga Tuitele]. We get assigned a player, we have to know essentially any facts about him; name, high school, hometown, where he's from, was he All-Pac 12? All those different things.
We've been able to hear about different guys, but Jamil Douglas has been pretty close to me. I feel like we're kind of similar, we kind of even look a little similar, low cut, I think we're kind of clean cut guys. I've looked to him for a lot of advice"
It seems that Coleman has a really strong support system in place as he makes this transition to center for Arizona State. While there's no preparation quite like actually playing in a live game, Coleman is definitely confident in his ability to man the spot for the 2025 season.