Arizona State Head Coach Kenny Dillingham Weekly Press Conference
Monday, October 13th 2025
On Facing Texas Tech and Week Eight:

On Utah performance:
“I think it was isolated. I would hope it’s isolated. It's the first time something like that's happened to us in a year and a half. Before in year one it would happen to us every week so I would say that’s positive. We've reset an expectation that should never happen and that should never happen. I would hope it’s an isolated incident, they whooped our butt. You got to give them a lot of credit that happens all across college football to some extent, a team comes in and they absolutely whooped our butt.

On His Message to the Team Moving Forward:
“I believe in who we are, we’re a 4-2 football team, we’re 2-1 in conference. I’m pretty happy with where we’re at this time of year. I know external people have their own opinions on where we should be and all that. I have my own opinions as well and I'm happy with where we’re at. We're in a position to achieve everything we wanted to accomplish coming into the year we just got to be the best version of us. I mean last year we started conference play 2-2, we’re 2-1. We’re playing with house money compared to last year. I think you gotta keep things in perspective a lot of the time and the perspective can’t be external it has to be internal, what do we have to get better at? We struggle tackling and we’re still struggling in the low redzone. We had two drives in our first three drives that went 17 plays versus Utah. If you would’ve told me that oh I would’ve been fired up. Wait, we had three drives in the first half that weren't two minutes and two of them went for 17 plays? We’re right where we want to be in a rain game but we obviously weren't. The bad part is the second part, we got our butt kicked.”

On the Importance of Texas Tech Game: 
“It’s just another game. Like I said last year we started 2-2 in conference, so I think if you get focused on this game is this and that game is that you're focused on the wrong stuff. Every game is the most important game every time you play, some days they're going to get you and some days you're going to get them. But I think if you look too much at the big picture and not the singular focus on this is the game at hand… I will say this is a phenomenal football team. Absolutely phenomenal football team and it's a great challenge for us to play them. This is as good of a football team as you’re going to play in the country and I’m excited for the challenge.

Texas Tech’s Improvement Since Last Year:
“We lost to them last year, they were one of our two conference losses like I said early in the year we had those. All of their D-line that started last year is now their two’s or their rotating ones however you want to put that. They're the depth of the team so that tells you how much they've leveled up. They took a team that won eight games and that’s the depth of their roster across the board for a lot of the team up front. Yeah they've just gotten better at almost every position. Even the guys that are returning, they’re returning and they’re healthy so they are a better version of themselves from last year. So how they've leveled up, they’ve leveled up in every way shape or form possible, which is why 24 points is the closest an opponent has got to them so far this season, that’s pretty good.”

On Being Outcoached by Utah:
“To me in college football the word outcoached, every time we lose we get outcoached. We don't have a GM. Personally, every loss that we have I’m responsible for every single person in this organization. It doesn't matter if we miss a tackle or if there's a bad scheme or if they get us schematically, it’s outcoached. That’s how I view it, is the extreme ownership of I have brought every single person into this organization so if we miss a tackle or if we don't make a play or if we have a bad scheme or something like that, that all falls on me. Maybe outcoached isn't always the perfect term but at the end of the day everything always falls on me so when we have failures or we don't hit an expectation for a multitude of reasons it’s my fault. That's what I mean by outcoached, who else do I look at? Everybody is here because of me. Which means everything falls on me and it should. Every bad thing ever said about this program should fall directly on me, not our players. I brought them here. It's our job to put them in the best position to succeed and that 100% is on me so that’s what I mean when I say that.”

On Texas Tech Quarterback Will Hammond:
“He’s really good, he’s a really good young guy. They have him on a two year deal because the resources combined with they believe in him, they knew that this is a guy who’s going to be their future and he 100% is their future there. He's a phenomenal player. He can make all the throws you saw him do that at the end of the Utah game. You can see him scramble and make plays with his legs. He can really do it all. He’s a heck of a player and he’s only getting better.”

On Texas Tech Defense:
“New defensive coordinator, who does a really good job obviously who came over from Houston. They did a really good job on defense at Houston. They're multiple, four down, three down, bear pressure, no pressure, cover one, cover two, cover three, cover four. Sometimes you play teams and you kind of know what you’re going to get, definitely not that type of team. He lets his guys play free. And they have really good personnel that play free and play twitchy. Their defense as a whole they're leading pretty much every statistical category in our league and almost in the top ten in the nation if not top five in almost every statistical category. Their front seven, it all starts in front seven, it’s not a knock on their back end. Their back end is really really good as well, but their front seven is majority draft picks.”

On Injured Players:
“(LB) Zyrus Fiaseu is going to be out for the year he had season-ending surgery unfortunately. (S) Xavien Alford is going to be out for significant more time. Hopefully we’ll find a way to get him back at the end of the season but he’ll be out for a significant amount of time. Unfortunately, (OL) Ben Coleman is going to be out for the year which is unfortunate, so he’ll be out. There's some other guys I don’t want to comment on yet just because it’s Monday so I don't quite have as strong of a grasp on that. Those are the new guys or the guys who have been kind of back and forth so I'll have more of an update here tonight for me, Tuesday/Wednesday for you all.

On a Possible Medical Redshirt for DB Xavien Alford:
“100%, yeah. He had surgery so we’ll file the waiver and we’ll go from there, 100%. That’s a great question, very knowledgeable question.”

On Media Speculation:
“I think what’s funny about sports is there’s an external image and then there’s an internal image. If you are taking the external image and it’s affecting the internal pieces of your program, you've got major problems. For us it's the same thing we always do and I know nobody likes to hear that but consistency is what builds it. From now until forever when you’re building something there’s going to be highs there’s going to be lows. You’re going to fly sky high and win a game like a conference championship by 30 and you’re on top of the world then you’re going to lose a game by what the heck. It’s because you’re still building it, you're still getting there, you’re not there yet and everybody wants it to happen so fast. We’re 4-2, I feel pretty good about that. We
have all of our future ahead of us so I don't think it’s as dramatic of a scenario as people kind of want this to be. There's a lot of teams in the country who wish they were sitting in our position right now with the entire season ahead of them and all of their goals achievable. I just don’t think it’s not quite as dramatic as we want to make it unfortunately for the media.”

On Texas Tech Coach Damon Stoudamire: 
“Yeah he's been phenomenal. He was a guy that we interviewed for the job here because he worked with Sean Paul Brophy, a guy I’m near and dear with and he absolutely hit it out of the park. I just wanted a guy with head coaching experience. He was an absolute stud. He was a stud at Texas State last year. His dad was a stud in this profession, he grew up in this profession. He’s been a stud there at Tech. He’s an absolute superstar, he’s a future head coach 100% for sure. Like I said, he’s done a phenomenal job there.”

On Job Speculation:
“No, I don’t even know… I thought I was talking about being fired. I didn’t know I was talking about that, my brain doesn’t process that.”

On Quarterback Sam Leavitt’s Health Status:
“Status quo, we're going to find out more Tuesday and Wednesday. I know people think there’s games. There’s no gamesmanship here, this is just purely being honest. Sometimes when you’re honest people create fake things because sometimes honesty is just rare. I think the fact that we’re being honest with this situation is making people uncomfortable. The reality is he’s day-to-day. We're going to find out when we move him around on Tuesday and Wednesday’s practice if he’s good enough to play on Saturday. I’ll have more of an update come mid this week.”

On why QB Sam Leavitt did not play after the bye-week and practicing on Tuesday and Wednesday:
“I would ask anybody who came to practice, did he move around at those two practices, did he run? The answer is no. He only threw dropback passes, no scrambles, no nakeds. So did he practice? Yes, but it wasn’t a full practice. Then we made a decision. Because (QB) Jeff (Sims) got all the reps in the bye week (QB) Sam (Leavitt) sat out. Jeff just had all the reps. We wanted Sam to get reps on Tuesday and Wednesday thinking he was going to play. (He) didn't progress like we thought, so we said Jeff is the guy. Obviously without a bye week that decision with Sam is going to have to happen a little bit faster. We're going to have to mix reps more this week to see who's going to go, we’ll have to make a little bit quicker decision. But when you're coming off a bye week, you have to get some reps out of that, like Jeff had. In hindsight, I definitely would have given Jeff 100% of the reps there. But Sam's a competitor. Sam played with broken ribs last year, so everybody thought he was playing until it looked like this thing didn’t really get much better. That sucks. Because it got past TCU, gave him a week off, and then thought it would get better and it really didn't. So we're still kind of in that same holding pattern I would say, unfortunately.”

On how he evaluated the run defense against a good running team in Utah:
“We couldn't tackle him (Utah QB Devon Dampier). It was impressive. It wasn't fun to be on the other side of not being able to tackle somebody, but we couldn't tackle him. He averaged 12 yards per carry. That's not ideal. They do a great job schematically. They put a 350 pounder at tight end and said, ‘we're going to run the ball at you’, and they did that. Like I said going into the game, that game was a culture game. That day, they out-physicaled us. And when somebody does that, there are not many answers you can have when people move people. That's something I always say, when people move people and you don't tackle people, you run out of things.”

On looking at Texas Tech’s run success, how do they re-analyze their run defense going into the game:
“Like I told the guys, we've been one of the best run defenses in the country for a year and a half. That's our culture. If we're going to let one game dictate our culture, I don't know what we're doing. We have to stay true to what we have proven to do in the previous 17 games. In the last 17 games, we have usually won the line of scrimmage the majority of the time. We can't let one game against a team that runs a triple option — and did a phenomenal job with it — affect how we play football. They got us. They beat our butt. Physically, and in all aspects of it, but you can't let that drag over. We know who we are as a team, so let's go back to that. Let's go play good run defense again like we've done for the 17 prior games. So they’re aren’t any drastic changes, absolutely not”

On working through injuries, what their mentality is in terms of filling in those positions:
“Next man up. When you’re injured, it really affects special teams. That's where it probably shows up the most because you get really into your depth on specials. But it's the next man up mentality. You have to be able to make plays. I thought Jeff did a good job with that last week, when you watch the tape with him, Not many MA’s. The ball went to where it was supposed to go for the majority of the reps.But I think across the board for us as a football team, the next man up has to step up and they have to play well because the reality is nobody cares. It's not a world where people care. The reality is you're playing football at Arizona State now. There's expectations at Arizona State that used to not be here and that is great. I would much rather people be pissed off at being 4-2 than people be singing and parading around the city. This is a great expectation that we're creating. With that, it becomes handling expectations because it's nearly impossible to consistently reach expectations. It's very difficult every year to hit the expectations set because they should be set so high if you set them correctly. So for us it is a matter of how you handle it when you don't hit the expectations. I think regardless of who's playing, nobody cares. The goal is to go play our best football. It doesn't matter what the expectations are, how do we play our best football? We didn't do that last week. We have to go do that this week.”

On how they are working through an injured offensive line for the game against Texas Tech:
“Yeah, you just have to go out there, and it's a good challenge. You have to protect your edges. They have five to six defensive linemen that according to people are going to get drafted, which is impressive. That's a positive for them. It's a lot of guys are going to be drafted from a front. Linebackers are top notch. I mean they're just good across the board, but specifically that defensive line. They're really talented and we have to be able to protect our O-line so they're not just isolated. The game of football is not just one-on-ones on the perimeter, it's also the one-on-ones in the box, and we have to be able to shield our guys to create the best matchups there as well.”

On where he feels offensive linemen; Wade Helton, Jimeto Obigbo, Nikko Klemm and others are at in regards to their development:
“I think they're getting better every single week. I think Wade’s (Helton) move to center was because he produced. I think (Nikko) Klemm getting on the field two weeks ago was because he's shown he can produce and he played pretty decent in the game. I was happy with how he played when he went in. Like I said, we moved the ball. We once again the goal is to score, not move the ball. We just aren’t scoring, which is unfortunate when you move the ball and don't score. That sucks. I mean, you have eight possessions, and I think all but two were seven-play drives against a good team — and you don't score points. It's like golly, we have to stay out of our own way and we have hit some explosives. One thing was we had zero explosives in the football game. You can't win a game versus a good team hitting zero explosives.”

On if the offensive line’s injuries have hurt them on drives:
“Obviously, you have a new guy in and the first play, you get a holding call. When it should be 2nd and five and it's 1st and 20. Versus a good team in the red zone, that's not ideal. but at the same token, everything that happens on that field. was somehow associated and affected by me. So our staff has to find a way to find how we put our guys in the best position to be successful in the current state we're in and rock and roll. I've got a lot of confidence in our guys. I’ve got a lot of confidence in our football team. Regardless of who’s hurt or who's out, I think we have a good roster. I think we have a good young roster. I think some young guys are going to have to step up like they are, and you have to grow up fast against, in my opinion, one of my top five teams — a team that can win a national championship this year. We're going to have to grow up fast. We have a great home environment. I think that was our first conference loss in eight losses or something. I think we're breaking the record or we had the most. So we have to get back on track. We have a good home streak. We'll see what happens and go play some good football.”

On this being the first daytime home game, coming off of a loss, what is the message for the team:
“We’ve got to have an advantage. It's a really good football team. This is a top five team in the country. We just played Utah and they beat Utah. I think Utah is one of the top teams in the country, so they're definitely a top team in the country. So we need to be loud, we need to be fiery. I mean this is an absolute game-changing environment that we can create. The last time we had a home game, the opposing team said we created an advantage.We need to create that same advantage this week, and I think the challenge of every home game is that this is a place where people show up — it's loud, it's fun, it's exciting and it's sold out. I'm pretty sure most of our games the rest of the way are close to being sold out which is awesome. Now we have to go play good football and close this thing strong.”

On how the ‘next man up’ phrase comes to fruition in their player-led culture:
“Next man up doesn't mean you're going to get the equal production. Like players are players, they're they're people. Some have better skill sets than others at certain things. So the term next man up is just the term meaning that's the new guy, let's let's rock and roll. In terms of how they go about their business preparing, that's where the leaders can really step up and say ‘Hey, we need you to come up on this day. We need you to come over to our house because we're going to watch pressures on Wednesday’ or whatever. I think that the preparation piece is where the vets can really help the young guys. Now that you're a starter, hopefully they were already preparing like that as a twos, but now that you're the guy, what are the next steps to that in terms of growth and being able to perform at your best? I think that's where the leaders can really step up. Not from a physical play perspective. Our guys want to win. I can promise you that.”

On what it says about their culture that Kenny Dillingham has the confidence to trust his players to call meetings and prepare themselves for games:
“I think we’re in a really good spot as a football program. We’re not in as good of a spot as a football team on a Saturday night, but we’re in a good spot as a football program. It’s my job to keep the program going in the right direction, not the game. Obviously, we want to win every game, but you can’t let one game affect your program. If you take a look, Utah lost by 28 points earlier this year and then they came down and beat us by 30 something. If you get so lost in that over and over again, what happens when we lose by 14? Is there a panic? I don’t know? Now there’s a whole different narrative — and that’s us being two plays, three plays away. That’s the nature of football. So you can’t get lost. It’s definitely a reality check because of the physicality, not the score. The way in which we lost, we have to respond to that. That’s the fix. We have to get back to being that physical football team that tries to win the line of scrimmage and we did not do that, we didn’t even come close.”

On Texas Tech running back Cameron Dickey:
“(He’s a) physical runner, will run you over, will run through you, and has great balance. I think when you have the ability to run through (someone) and have great contact balance, if you’re not square when you take him on, he's going to bounce off you. So you have to be able to tackle him, but he's going to run through you sometimes and he's going to make you miss others. I think the balance of his physicality, his pad level, and his ability to have great contact balance is what makes really good running backs. That's what he is, he has those three things. 

On Dickey’s similarities to former Sun Devil Cam Skattebo:
“There's obviously some similarities. They're both similar type players, 100%. They're similar type players.”

On what he wants this week from the team:
“Just to have good practice. Focus and energy. We don't need to change anything, we've got a proven way to be successful. One game does not change that one way or another. I think it's just, ‘How do we get back to doing what we know is necessary in how to win games?’ Going back to square one with preparation and doing the same things in how you prepare. I wish there's a magic potion. There's not. It's the process. We've got to go back to the process and we've got to thud a little bit more in practice. When you're dinged up, you can't really thud as much in practice. But, we probably need to thud more even though we're dinged up. It's that fine balance of do you practice and tackle and get somebody hurt when you're dinged up or do you not practice tackling and then not tackle well? That's a tough battle. Maybe I, as the head coach, need to have our guys thud more and tackle more, regardless of the (risk). We still have to tackle at times more than we're doing now, so it's more thud, more tackling is a way that I think I can improve our football team.”

On trying to find the balance in practicing tackling:
“You don't know unless you win or lose. You'll figure it out team by team. I don't think there's a magic formula to it when you get some guys dinged up. I don't know if there is a perfect answer. I think it's more (the fact that) we need to do more of it. You'll learn as you go. I know after last week we definitely need to (tackle) more than we did this last week. But I think it's just going to be a week by week thing. The one thing I know is that our guys like football, they're physical. We stopped the run in 17 straight games, so I feel pretty good that we're going to respond and be a physical football team and we play one of the best teams in the country, so that's a great challenge.”

On Kyson Brown’s status:
“He probably should have been on the injury report. We thought he was playing the entire way. He kind of tweaked it and obviously with the rain and having an ankle injury, that's not the best move for him. I don't really have much to say with that because he was cleared, practicing, and ready to roll. I don't know exactly what he should have been listed on because he was available in the game. He could have played in the game. We just didn't play him in the game just because of where he was at. He definitely was available, so maybe he shouldn't have been listed. It's an availability report, so he was available. We're going to address if he's going to be available moving forward.”

On Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire:
“He’s had a lot of success, winning football games at all levels. I have a lot of respect for him. He's a really good person. His program as a whole is all in. He's done a phenomenal job building a roster and building a football team, but they're definitely a program that's all in. They're definitely all in to win now. They're definitely all in to win in the future with the types of investments they're making. I’ve got nothing but respect for him. I think he does a phenomenal job.”

On how the passing game was affected by the rain:
“I mean, rain is rain. Not ideal for a passing team or for a team with your best player being a wide receiver. That's not an ideal scenario, but we still had plays that could have been made out there. We've got to improve that. I thought (QB) Jeff (Sims) threw the ball where it should go. A few times, the ball was probably overthrown or something like that, but for the most part, I thought he played really, really well. He didn't take early down sacks when we were in real offense. When you get down 28 points and you're at the end of the third quarter, you're not in real offense anymore. To his defense, he really only played six real drives and most of those drives were extended drives that he made the play when it was necessary. Even through all the negatives, there are some positives there but I was really pleased with how he played and I got a lot of confidence with Jeff.”

On his conversations with QB Jeff Sims postgame:
“I was proud of how he came in and played. He was definitely not the reason for the result. I can say that with a lot of confidence. The conversation with him was, ‘You threw the ball where it was supposed to go. You were on time for the first three quarters. You didn't take early down sacks. You managed the game. You got us out of negative plays into positive plays.’ We did a lot of positive things… football is a unique game because the score is relative but can be kind of skewed. They whipped our butt in all phases, but one or two plays could have completely changed the narrative that people have on him in the game. I was very pleased with my conversations. I’ve got a lot of faith in him. He’s won a lot of football games.”

On what ‘all in’ means for a team like Texas Tech and how ASU can reach it:
“I think ‘all in’ is constantly changing. ‘All in’ is saying, ‘Wherever the top end is, we're gonna get there. Whatever it takes.’ But that number is constantly changing. So where are we from that? It's a moving target and you have to be willing to adapt to do what's necessary to hit all in. They (Texas Tech) as a program, they're definitely all in from their facilities to Coach McGuire, his staff, and the team they've put together. They've done a phenomenal job and their program is all in and you can see the results. I’m excited. This should be a fun game, fun environment, and I'm ready to rock.”