Here is what the Sun Devils are saying in their bye week.
Arizona State football head coach Kenny Dillingham on the biggest takeaways against TCU: “Our guys never flinched. There was no panic late in the game. I think we’ve progressed really well, to be honest. We’ve just got to finish in the red zone. Two weeks ago, we couldn't finish in the red zone. This week we couldn’t finish inside the five. We just got to get better from the five to the goal line now. If you just fix those areas alone, you have 10 more points per game, but we're still top 10 in the country in time of possession.”
Dillingham on the most impressive part of the team: “We play hard. It wasn't a flash in the pan last year. We still play hard, and when you play hard and you care, you win a lot of close games. But everybody has to appreciate how hard our guys play, and I think that's the one thing that we want to take pride in is how hard we play. I think that's what I'm most excited about. Our guys play really hard, and it matters to them.”
Dillingham on how the team has not played a complete game: “We've yet to play the best football game we can play. We've played really good on offense at times, we've played horrible on offense at times. I just want to put it together. Let's play our best ball at the same exact time for 60 minutes. 30 minutes first, and then 45, and then 60, but we've yet to do that. The good thing is we're finding ways to win; good teams find ways to win. When the offense needs it, the defense picks them up. When the defense needs it, the offense picks them up. That's what good teams do, and great teams they can put it all together. We've yet to really do that, and that's our challenge.”
Dillingham on team competitions: “I said after the game, when you have competitive people, are used to being in competitive moments. If you have people who are on TikTok all day, they're probably not used to being in the biggest competitive moments, having to be (their) best all the time. When you have people who play these weird (games) like Clash of Clans, and all this other stuff now, but they're making decisions in real time in the lunchroom.”
Dillingham on what he needs to improve on: “I think the short red area, I got to give our guys better opportunities to be successful. We can't just force things. We got to be more creative. So, I think it starts with me down there in the little red area. Now we got to clean up the red zone. So I think if we clean up the goal line and short yardage, that's our next step as an offense. So we got to clean up that area.
Offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo on who the goal-line brunning back could be: “I'm not putting any person in any of those roles. It might be a spot where on those short-term situations, maybe it's a different scheme, maybe it's some different stuff that we believe we got to put guys in a different situation for one reason or the other. Any of those backs we call on any of those situations, we hope the prominent guy, whoever's in that role can can get that done. I think it's going to be a together. It's never going to be an independent.”.
Dillingham on the influence that Coach Diron Reynolds has on the D-line: “He’s a phenomenal football coach, professional defensive linemen come to train with him at the pass rush summit. We don't send him on the road to recruit; he doesn't leave here because I want him around our players. I don't want him to go back to the NFL. That's why we don't put him on the road because I want people to know if you come here, it's about being developed by one of the best defensive line coaches in the country, and I want to make sure we keep them here.”
Defensive coordinator Brian Ward on the defensive performance: “There was a lot of miscommunication. There was some things that we could have done much better in coverage. There's things that we can get better at. Third down defense. We got to get better at our red zone execution. We got to be able to get them lined up versus different alignments from the offense. I like our chances on third down in the red zone.”
Dillingham on the new Utah play style under offensive coordinator Jason Beck and quarterback Devin Dampier: “Obviously, they're way more of a triple option. I would say they kind of went back to the Alex Smith era, and that era of Utah football. Dampier has played awesome this year. He's athletic, he can throw the ball downfield, and it creates a plus-one runs. They play with tempo this year, so it's not as much ball control, which is a little different from that perspective. But they definitely put you in hard spots schematically with what they do, the plus-one runs, the zone read game, the boots, the shots, the screens, and the funny formations, so you don't have a chance to prepare for everything they do.”
Dillingham on evaluating the younger players not in the rotation during the bye week: “Two of the days will be kind of lighter days for the vets, helmets on but no physical contact other than touch. But then the younger guys will go, and we'll do some live team periods for the last part of the practice to get good work. Those younger guys will also be very involved in special teams this week. We need some other guys to step up.”