Arizona State University Head Football Coach, Kenny Dillingham
On Kansas:
"They are the same team that was predicted, potentially, to win the league. They’ve had two ends of the first halves where they turned the ball over and the opponent has gotten seven off of it to end the first half. Which has been the difference in two of their games against Illinois and UNLV. Last week, the first play of the fourth quarter, they had a guy wide open, which should've been a touchdown to tie the game in the fourth quarter. They’ve had a lead in every game but the last one going into the fourth quarter, which they were down four. This is a really good football team and they’ve turned the ball over a lot. That’s the only statistic that’s much different from last year is the turnover margin. It’s amazing what turnover margin does."
On self-scouting during the bye week:
"We have to get back to what we are good at. The Texas State game, we chased to many ghosts in terms of trying to make every play perfect and not maximizing saying “hey we are gonna take a 6% risk here, if they call this pressure it’s gonna be a TFL”. I think we scared our guys into playing passive and that starts with me. We have to get our guys playing more aggressive on the O-Line and D-Line again."
On health updates for the team:
Most of our guys are back. Cole's (Martin) out. Other than that the guys that everybody would ask about should be back.
On what the team accomplished during the bye week:
Trying to break up the monotony of a long season and a long camp. I kinda felt that a little bit two weeks ago. So trying to have a little fun and go back to what we wanna be this next 3 game stretch. The different bye weeks are an opportunity to have an identity and restart the season. We can tweak and self scout ourselves for three games and then do that again. We can get people different pictures and make it into 3 seasons from a schematic standpoint in terms of tendencies. I thought it was a productive bye week and told the guys today that we gotta get back to the game really hard. We didn't play the game really hard, or as hard as he had in week’s one and two. The more I watched it on tape the more I see it. We need to play really,really hard. It’s a simple game when you play hard. We have to get back to that being a strength, that can’t be a tie for us, that has to be our advantage."
On Sam Leavitt’s growth throughout the season and what he worked on during the bye:
"Sometimes he gets elongated in his base and he lunges forward. He’s a hop thrower which means he likes to hop to get into rhythm. Sometimes when you do that you get off balance, so we worked on making sure he isn’t hopping or lunging in his throws. Then we toned in on protections. Understanding where his hots are and taking the hots. Sam has played four college football games. Three of those he’s thrown for roughly 250 yards or more. He’s run and escaped a lot of pressure. One of those games we didn't let him throw the ball the entire game. For three games we’ve ran an offense that was balanced and he’s thrown for 250 yards in each as a true freshman with two turnovers. One of those turnovers being the correct read and the other being the correct read and the ball’s a little high. If you look at what Sam’s done in four games started in college football, it depends on how you look at the picture. Some people look at that picture like, “This dude’s the next superstar in the making, he’s throwing for 250 in three of the games they let him do it and he’s only turned it over twice in four games. He evades, he scrambles.” and the other side is “He’s missed that throw, he’s missed that throw.” That’s the beautiful thing about sports is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think that’s the definition of a young quarterback. People get to pick if you are either playing really well or playing poorly when you’re young. People can lean on that you’re young or that you are making mistakes. The narratives are funny to me."
On Kansas, losing double-digit leads and ASU taking advantage:
"Sometimes you're just trying to figure out how to win, and sometime it just doesn't go your way and it just happens. We have to find a way to play good football for all four quarters. This isn’t a team you run away from. They won nine games last year and they returned almost everybody. It’s not like this team forgot how to play football, this is a really good football team. Two plays a game are not going their way. Two plays flip the other direction and they are the 12th ranked team in the country and undefeated and favorites to win the Big12. Two plays don't go their way and it's what happened, change everything. I think the one thing about Coach Leopold is he's had a lot of success in his career. He knows how close they are. I don't expect any drastic change because anybody who watches them play knows if you're one or two plays away from being 5-0 or 4-1, whatever you want to pick that they would be, you're not going to make whole changes. You just have to try to not make those mistakes on those downs and that's what they are. They're that close to still being the team that everybody predicted them to be."
On the Kansas philosophies and style:
"They want to run the ball and they want to stop the run. I mean, that's the identity. I don't think they care if they give up intermediate passing game. I think that's why they're good on defense historically over a long period of time, if you can be that efficient in the intermediate passing game, which most college teams can't be, then do it. I firmly believe that's a philosophy to make people be really, really efficient in an intermediate passing game. Most college teams struggle throwing intermediate passing game consistently. It has to be almost an identity. I don't think they really cared much for that. I think it is what it is and they want to stop the run, runt he football, get the quarterback uncomfortable whether that's four-man rush or whether that's five-man rushes. I think that if you look at them, not just this year, but just historically in terms of what he believes and what he talks about in press conferences, it's stopping the run and impacting the quarterback. I think those two things are the priority. Not, “is this team gonna throw a dig on 2nd-and-6th on us?” I think that's the least of their worries."
On how to stop Kansas' run game:
"Obviously they've got two really good backs. They're good up front. Schematically they shift, they motion, they line up in so many formations to try to create numbers and to try to get your guys to play slower. That's why the running game is so effective. It's the identity of their team, that's who they want to be. They want people to look at them and say we're gonna run the ball at you and everything's gonna be off of the run. We have to be able to stop the run while not giving up big plays at the same time. That's the fun part with playing a team that can run the ball is you got to be able to stop the run, but also not give up play action passes."
On the secondary (specifically Shamari Simmons and Xavian Alford):
"They're both doing a really nice job. I think both of those guys have really bright futures here. I think getting LT (LaTerrance Welch) back would be really good for us, at corner. Getting him back, getting Tate (Romney) back at linebacker for some rotational depth, will also help us and I think we need to play guys more. Last game we didn't play a lot of guys, especially in the back end. I think we just have to get guys reps, get guys in there, not just for this year, but in general, we have to get some of those younger guys reps to play football. You can practice, but you also have to get some game reps. So not just for right now, but for the future of the program and where we're going. We have to get some of those young guys, those safeties in the game a little bit more. The Kamari’s (Kamari Wilson), the Montana’s (Montana Warren), we just have to get in a little bit more to get their feet wet and get them comfortable. And then also to take some pressure off of our back end. The same with LT for our corners. Luckily this week, we can do that based on the style of offense that we're seeing. They'd (Kansas) rather snap it 60 to 58 times. They have a 40 minute time of possession. A little bit of a different philosophy than what we've seen recently."
On his message to the fans this week:
“Right now we're very close to a sellout, so let's sell it out. It's family weekend, which is awesome. Chick-Fil-A is giving out food for the kids in the student section who stay for the entire game, which is something our athletic department has been working on trying to create parts to keep people on the stands, especially our students. So I think we're very close to having an awesome environment and I'll say this: if it's 106 degrees out and we have a sold-out crowd, it's going to be hot. Get comfortable with the person next to you. That's why it keeps hitting me. You have to get comfortable with the person next to you. It'll be fun. That's all I'll say is at the end of the day, sports is entertainment for everybody that's not on the field. It's entertainment for us, it's life or death essentially. But for everybody else you're watching and you're either going to have a lot of fun that Saturday or not and then wake up and complain about it either way. Enjoy it, whether it's hot or it's not hot. If it's sold out and we're loud and we're rocking, embrace it, enjoy it, and have fun with it. First Big 12 game at home. This should be a really fun game to be out here at Mount America Stadium on Saturday.”
On his team's red zone efficiency:
“It's not good. That's one of the categories, to be honest, that's our number one category of improvement and what we have to get better at it is our red zone stuff, both sides of the ball. So whenever both sides of the ball are failing in something, that means we're probably not working on it enough. We're going to these other categories and there's one category, both sides fail and that's probably not a player problem. It's probably a coaching problem. So we worked red zone during the bye week for four different segments, which is more than we normally work at because we have to get better at that category. And when you're trying to win these games that you're winning the margins, you have to win the margins in this league, anybody can beat any team in any league. You have to be more efficient in the red zone. Holding them to three points, you got to be more efficient in scoring touchdowns and not settling for field goals.”
On red zone efficiency with a first-time starting quarterback:
“It's more the fact that we've have got to be able to run the ball when we get in the low red zone. And in the past few weeks we've struggled running the ball in the low red zone. When you're on the minus 30 and you throw a shot on fourth down, everybody thinks you're a little bit crazy. But at the same token, if you convert a fourth-and-1 on the minus 30, teams are going to play even zero and you have a chance to have one play touchdown. Just because you convert your fourth-and-1 on the 30 doesn't mean you're going to march down to score. So you can be more aggressive because if they're going to be max aggressive on the minus 30 you should match it. You should balance it out. But when you get in a plus territory, you have three downs and you get a yard, there's nothing cute about that. You've got to find a way to convert those when you're in the red zone on 2nd, 3rd and 4th down. It's not a cute down, it's a mentality down. I think we haven't played with that mentality good enough to win down there and everything's off the run game in the low red zone.”
On his thoughts of players entering the transfer portal to maintain their redshirt year:
“I think now in the current day of college football, people can call it what they will, but at the end of the day these kids are making money now doing it. That extends their ability to make money. If you're making money doing it, you can extend your year to make money again and if that's what they want to do, then that's their own personal decision to do that. I really don't have much to comment on it other than I think there's so much change in the sport and it's going to continue to change that anybody rushing to judgment on what's right or wrong in any capacity, there's going to be more and your opinion is going to change. That's why I don't like to comment much on it because it's constantly changing. I don't think there is a right or wrong in the current landscape of college football with all the change. Nobody knows.”
On how he uses deep shots when the run game is struggling:
“You have to be able to stretch the field vertically and horizontally, in order to run the football. Then even if you do that, if one defender beats one guy, then you're down ahead of it. Good offense is getting everybody blocked and you're running back on nobody or getting your running back on somebody eight yards away, 10 yards away. When you're scheming them up and you can create a safety or a nickel fitting from nine yards away from the entry of a run and then the guys who schematically can block, then that makes it really difficult to throw the shot. It's really difficult to throw the ball laterally. Then you have to find different ways to still win those one on one blocks or maybe you have to throw the ball more in those scenarios, which you're down at. But I think that's really the key is if you can run the ball when your numbers are right, football is easy. If you can run the ball when your numbers are wrong, football is really easy. If you can't run the ball when your numbers are right to run it, football gets extremely difficult. I think it's really just as simple as that. We can run the ball with our numbers being correct even then everything else is gonna open up and if we can't, then everything else is gonna get much tighter windows. You're going to lean on a quarterback more and you're gonna have to just make more plays and tight window throws.”
On whether playing at home or on the road makes a difference:
"The energy of the crowd does have an effect whether we like it or not. Hopefully we can get used to that the next time we go on the road, so it doesn't have as much of an effect. But, you also forget against Texas State, we have to stop and score, and we scored our first drive. So it wasn't like we started that game completely horribly. We just went into a lull there. It wasn't like the opening series was bad. The opening series was only really bad last week for both sides of the ball. That was our first time that we've really started really poorly in all three phases. So, I just think we have to get back to worrying about keeping the emotions high early in games because you have to play this game with a high level of passion and emotion. It has to be controlled. I think at times the last few weeks, we've been a lot more bark than bite. We've been a lot of, “Oh, have you seen our tape? We play really hard and physical,” and we've talked about that more and we've actually played like that. I think we’ve got to get back to being that team that just plays extremely hard that other coaches talk about it. And I told the team today, the week two and week three opponent's coaches went to their press conference and talked about how hard we played. The last two coaches have not said anything about our hard playing style and that tells us everything we know about how we've let that slip away."
On whether it is hard to get players to refocus after a loss:
"I don't think when you lose, you have to refocus. We've been sitting on this loss for a week now and had to watch other teams play. “Let's get back to this.” “We gotta get this right.” “We have to right the ship here.” And I think that's the guys’ mentality. Now, that’s easy to say. But, it's hard to go out there and work really hard all week. It's hard to go prepare really hard all week and then play the game really hard. It sounds so easy. “Just play hard.” That's such an easy thought process, but the reality is most teams are average because that's the definition of average. If everybody plays at an average level, then you have to do things better."
On defensive leadership playing up to their on-field standards:
"A lot of our leadership council, X (Xavion Alford) and Shamari (Simmons) and CJ Fite play hard every single snap. I don't have his (CJ Fite’s) specific loefs in front of me, but if it's more than two in the entire year, I'd be absolutely shocked, because that dude plays the game. I mean, you're at the end of the game and they're running, they're taking a knee, and he's trying to swipe the ball out. We coach it. Dive and swipe. The game's not over, we're not going to hit you, but we're going to try to do anything we can to get it back, and he's still doing it. I mean, that's the type of kid he is. I think that Leif (Fautanu) is another guy who just plays really, really hard. I think we got a bunch of guys that play like that, and hopefully we can get our team playing like that again.
On the Arizona Diamondbacks playoff scenarios:
"I’m not going to lie, I have no clue that that's happening. I really don’t know. Sometimes, I'll get outside of my bubble, but I know nothing, really. It's bad. I don't know much about what's going on outside of the bubble that I'm in right now. They're right here and I grew up a fan and I went to games last year during a bye week. But this year, I've been so focused on this football team."
On ASU Hall of Famer Will Sutton’s early impact and interactions with the program:
"I don't really have a favorite interaction or memorable interaction with him. I wish I could. I remember watching him when I was the offensive coordinator at Chaparral High School and watching him play at Utah. I remember that game, and I remember how hard he played, how hard the D line played that game. That was the earliest memory I had from him playing football here was that game."