Arizona State Head Coach Kenny Dillingham Previewing Hawaii and Week Six
Monday, October 5, 2026
On the disconnect on defense:
“We just weren't on the same page. I wish there was a better answer. We thought one guy was covering one guy, the other guy thought the other guy was covering the other guy. They did a good job with formations, mixing it up, putting some pressure on us to get into checks and did it quickly. There was stuff they hadn't put on tape, which was good, but there were still fundamental things that we should know how to do. I would say 10 to 11 times there was just a bus with guys wide open, kudos to them, but we have to be better at knowing who we're on.”
On if the disconnect on defense was coaching or a miscommunication with players:
“I've said this before, but I always believe if players do not execute, it starts with me. If players on either side of the ball are not executing at a high enough level, that is my job. To get them to execute and to get them to communicate. To get them to know who they're on. To get them to see the formation and structural change, that is my job. I told some guys today, we can get mad at you, but it's our job to get you to do it, right, and to get us confident in it. I put all that on myself. Anything that goes wrong with this program. I got texts from people this weekend. ‘Hey, don't always take the blame, push the blame to other places’. Bull crap. I am the head coach of this program, and the person who sent that is one of the people I consider like my biggest mentors, I have so much respect for the guy you have no clue. It is my responsibility to get our guys to play good football. They did not play good football, regardless of whose fault it is. It's my fault because we didn't play good football, and I got to get them to play better football. I take a lot of pride and ownership over that. I'm going to do whatever I can to try to fix it. When you ask the question about if it’s players, is it coaches? It's me. It all starts and ends with me. Every bad thing that happens in the program is me, that's how I view it. That's what I believe in. A lot of coaches don't believe in that messaging. That's different from me. That's what I believe in.”
On the offense’s performance:
“Offensively, there was a lot of growth. We played five bad quarters of offense this year. We moved the ball effectively last night. Four of our first six drives entered inside their 30-yard line, and when four of your first six drives get inside the 30 and you only score 13, that is not very good. Obviously we had a chance on drive two, turning the ball over on drive three, on a converted third-that's either three or six points. That's unfortunate. When you do those things and you cost yourself, between six and three points. I had a bad call, a really bad call there on a motion screen when we were going towards the Tillman Tunnel on a second and 10. Don't like the sequencing of the call. That was one of the calls I would want back in the game. Put us in a third and 10, we missed on a curl route. I would say I thought our offense had a lot of growth. We were not stale. We moved the football down the field. We hit explosive plays. We just have to finish those drives when we get into the red zone. I thought there was growth, but it's not to our standard. It's still not good enough. We have better players than what's happening. The same thing I told our guys is like, we work better than this. This is the first time in my career, I felt like we were outperforming the current situation of where we were playing hard and good and sound. It's the first time I haven't watched the film, and I'm like woah, what happened, I take it very personal to get these guys to play better, we will. My concern level is zero from that perspective. Body of work. That's what I would say. Trust the body of work, and then we got to perform better.”
On if there's an opportunity to make significant corrections this week:
“We just have to play our best game. We have to play our best game. I have to coach my best game. I have to have my best week. I have to focus on the things that matter, which are effort and passion, running to the football, being the team that in a shoving match shoves last. I know it sounds like you want to be the hammer. Right now, the teams that I've coached, I feel like we have been a team that's been more of the hammer than the nail, and we have to become the hammer, and that's my fault. When you look at it, every coach tells their players you are who you are on tape. Well, so are the coaches. We are in an industry where it's ‘what have you done for me now?’ Not what have you done for me lately. That's the world we're in, and what have we done now? You look at the film, it's been bad. That's what we've done now. So let's fix it. We know how to fix it. We know how to coach. We know how to play. Let's just go do it. That's kind of the reset, we're playing an opponent. The reset and let's get our crap right. Let's play with passion, desire, and emotion. People should feel us play the game of football, and I do not feel it right now, and it starts with me. I'm going to do a few different things. I'm not going to get into it, but I'm going to do things a little bit differently to get the passion of our guys back because I can take losing. I can't take losing when we MA at the rate we did and we don't play as hard. Those are two reflections of their head football coach right now. And that starts with me and ends with me.”
On improvements that can be made for Hawaii on offensive line:
“I'll say this has zero wavering, regardless of outside perception. There's zero wavering in the confidence of this football team, and nor should they be, right? Everything that we did was self-inflicted. They made plays. They made a lot of plays. They did a good job, we got to play better, that has to us in terms of the offensive line. Obviously, I thought some of the inside zone stuff we improved on. We had a decent counter. Too many negatives happening, we're trying to improve that, and we're trying to line up with an extra offensive lineman and tight end to create better edges, that helped us throw the ball. Helped our pass protection. Our pass protection was increased, we did some things to prove from that perspective. Some guys played better up there, which was good. That's the challenge: we have to keep getting better every day, and we have to get a mentality of the hammer, like we have to get the mentality that we end plays with a violent passion, and that starts and ends with me.”
On the staff’s biggest challenge dwelling on last game:
“I want them to dwell on it. Are you kidding me? I want our guys to feel that. If you don't feel that one, that should hit you in the face, and you should dwell on that. You should say that's unacceptable. You should say how do I fix it. You should say what are the problems? Where do they stem from? How can I get it? How can I get it better immediately? Because nobody's coming to save us. So you better dwell on it. I guess the word "dwell" may not be the perfect word, right? Embrace what happened, but understand that we're a dang good football team. I believe that, I absolutely believe that, and it didn't show up in any way, shape, or form, and that's why I say that's on me, because if our football team does not perform, not to the level of expectation, but above, a coach's job is to get people to overachieve, not achieve where they can get to alone, and I am not helping them achieve their own level, let alone overachieving. We're going to do everything in our power to become overachievers again by the end of the season, and it starts today. It's going to go tomorrow, and there's no secret sauce. I wish there was. I'm not just going to tell you we're going to do one magical thing and it's going to fix it. We're going to do a bunch of things that are very small by 105 people and 50 staff members, and all of those small little things together, and all those small little things fixed, can make a drastic effect in one week. That is the challenge.”
On if he notices anything when the offense comes up short of the end zone:
“One of the best wide receivers in college football, in my opinion, Reed Harris, has been an absolute stud for us. So we had a missed opportunity and obviously a fumble. We got to take care of the football. The third and fourth drive, we went basically four and out. Then on the fifth drive, we got down to the low red zone and I had a bad call. We tried to throw the screen back inside and it wasn’t clean and it put us in a third and 10. You just got to give guys chances down there. We were getting a little happy with our feet with some of the protection, and I have a lot of confidence that he's going to give those guys chances because I thought he played pretty solid for 85-90% of the snaps, and I told him I thought he played well. It wasn't like we were dysfunctional. It was like ‘man, this time it was this. And this time it was that’."
On (OL) Champ Westbrook’s play at left tackle last game:
“Obviously Champ has been in the program for a long time. Champ is an unbelievable kid in person, and I think he did a nice job getting a start there. I was pleased with how he played. He was one of the bright spots for sure.”
On the assessment on getting more players involved:
“I thought it was good. I thought we moved the ball around more. I thought some guys got touches and they made the most of those touches. There were a lot of positives with that. The guys stayed fresher throughout the game. I was positive and happy with getting more guys involved.”
On accountability from the players:
“We have voluntary workouts on Sunday and we have mandatory workouts on Monday.I don't know for sure if everybody was here because we can't take roll. But I think I saw everybody in this building yesterday, just me working and them coming around. I believe everybody was here, not positive, but I feel like they were, and that's what you want as a team. You want a team, and the messaging was after the game. We got hit in the face. Everybody's got to point their finger at themselves, and everybody's got to figure out what they individually can improve upon. And if everybody individually improves and fixes the problems, it's usually not a big problem. It's usually a bunch of little problems, and everybody wants to make drastic changes. When in reality, it's just showing up to work, and everybody correcting their few mistakes. That's what's beautiful about football it's 11 people on the field at the same time. So we call it perfect play. All 11 ran a play, assignment, alignment, footwork perfectly. Well, it's somewhat challenging to do that 100% of the time. But let's say you only have a 50% perfect play rate. Well, that's atrocious. You're going to lose a crap ton of games. But let's say there was one mistake, out of 40 plays, there weren't eight mistakes. There was one, and 40 plays was half the plays. Let's say those 40 mistakes were done by 18 different people after subbing. That means each person's got to fix two and a half things. That's absolutely doable. We got to coach two and a half things better. Absolutely doable. So you can't look at it as a whole. You want to say oh everything's broken. If I was a fan, I would say burn it down. I would assume that's what they're saying, right? And I don't blame them. That's what I would say because I'm not here every day. I'm not seeing it. I'm just trying to. I want my team to be good, so I'm going to think about things that I can say to be good. The reality is, just everybody doing their job a little bit better, and they will compound to like, where was this team? Where did this come from? I think that the goal here is to make our guys know that the conference, from my perspective."
On how he balances a frustrating loss and an opponent coming to Tempe this weekend:
“It’s always about yourself. Every week, it's about you first and the opponent second. Sometimes we can lose sight of that. It's always about you first. What can we do? What can he do? What should we do? Then we watch the opponent. So how do we balance it? We worry about ourselves first, and once we clean up the things that we have to clean up, we then go to the opponent. If that means we're up here longer, well, we're up here longer. But we got to get it all fixed.”
On changing the ways of practice:
“I thought we practiced well, I think it wasn't necessarily about how we practiced. It was when we got different pictures of things we didn't practice, where the base rules were in place to where everybody was on the same page, and that's where the disconnect happened. It wasn't like there was a copy paste play. There's over 50 plays in the game that we played perfectly on defense. There's 60 players in the game and everybody did their job on offense. So it wasn't the plays that we were walking through. Look at this look. This is what we're gonna do. This is what we're gonna see. Those aren't the problems. It's good teams when it's not exactly the same, and you have to go to a base rule or a base teaching, or a base progression, and we're messing up those. We got to go back to some core stuff and worry about us more. So I would say that's what I would tell you from a practice perspective. I thought our guys practiced well last week. It did not correlate to playing good because there were too many mistakes made on things that maybe we didn't rep as much because from a formation standpoint because they hadn't shown them. So you got to give them credit, and then for us we got to worry about ourselves more. We can't be so obsessed with the opponent, that we lose sight of things that we need to know how to do. If that makes sense, I didn't think it was a lack of effort in practice during the game. I thought our passion and energy was low. I thought that I told the team today, and I told it to them in a very calm manner, and because like it's I can't sleep at night. I can sleep at night, somebody blocking a tight zone in our three techniques, getting moved, and those guys were really good at blocking tight zones. Like their people are blocking our people, and they're doing it really well. And we're giving an extreme effort. That didn't happen. I can't sleep at night when there are mistakes and no passion.There's been games that we've lost really badly, and it sucked. I still slept, right? I can't sleep when we lose games in a manner that I believe falls on that football coach."
On the run and tackle issues last game:
“That was definitely shocking. I'll be honest. It's been something we've been good at. It's usually one game a year. To be honest, it kind of goes haywire for some reason. But that's been something that's been a core value and something an elite trait for the last three years from us. To be honest and so I think part of that is some of our fits, us not being confident in our fits, and some of that. Maybe you've got a gap and a half based on the look, and you're fitting here unless he crosses face, then you fit here, and that hesitation could cause explosives. And then the other piece was obviously, we got to tackle better, maybe tackle more in practice. There's always that fine balance, and it's such a that's a fine balance. But we didn't tackle great early. I thought we tackled better later, so I think early, I haven't played in two weeks. I didn't really practice them the week prior. So maybe it was a little bit of a hangover potentially, and I thought the tackling I thought improved. We gave up the big run, but it wasn't a missed tackle. It was a misfit, which is different. So the tackling improved throughout the game. So I think that's going to be fine. But the fits were a little bit hesitant, and that's what RPO teams do. We can't ever allow our guys to feel hesitant. We got to give them. This is what we want you to do. This is the direct order. It's not middle ground. And I think a little bit of the RPO stuff. Our guys were trying to do too much instead of just trusting the fence, and we got to coach that better.”
On the building of the roster for the season from Sun Bowl performance:
“You always look at your team and you say, 'Okay, this is how our guys performed, this is great.’ We feel really good about A, B, C, D, E, F, whatever that is. We feel like this guy can help us next year based on this performance. So it has a ton of effect. We did play extremely well in that game. We ran the ball at a high level in that game versus a you know a very good football team that was playing all their guys, and so I would say it had a big effect. I'm not gonna compare what I would do, and not do like for our football team. We gotta get where we are good enough to win a lot of football games, and are there things that you'd obviously go back and change? Hindsight, that would be awesome? Go back and change, yeah, four days ago, right? But there's always things you'd go back and change, but yeah, you definitely take those games into account in how you build your roster.”
On players dealing with the mental side of a loss due to social media:
“Me personally, I'm not on social media, so I guess my social media is like me imagining what people would say, if I were this person and liked to post, and I'd probably say some pretty bad things if that was my personality traits, which is fine. To the players, understanding that's just the space we're in. They love you, they hate you, You're the best, you're the worst. Never leave. It was a facade. It was fake. It wasn't real. It was this player. It was that player. It was this coach. It was that coach. It's a reality show that we live in. We're a walking, living reality show, and if you get involved in the show, there's gonna be drama. Don't get involved in the show. Just live your life in our world with real, tangible things, but don't get involved in the reality show of sports. It will drive you nuts because reality shows are watched for a reason and sports are watched for a reason because they're filled with highs and lows and drama. When you're in it, right, and it's actually real, you better not live the drama of the people watching the show. Like that's not healthy, right? So I'll actually have a message to them tonight about that. I haven't looked at social media, but I'm about to Google my name in front of them for the first time and just show them whatever has been said in the last five days. I have no clue, but I know it's not good. So I'll just let them look at all the things that show how bad I am, so they can be like, ‘All right, I feel better about myself,’ so that's probably what I want to do tonight with the guys to let them know we're all in this together, and you can't worry about that stuff.”
On extra pressure because of interest from other schools to coach at:
“No. When I said that, I chose to be here. This is the place I want to be. I choose to be in my alma mater. I didn't mean it as there was another opportunity. That wasn't what I meant by the context of choosing to be here every day, this is what I wanted from when I was 18. Now that you phrase it that way, that makes sense if people twisted it in that manner. That was not, this was it. This is what I chose. I wanted to do this with my career, I chose this, and what to say the other part of doesn't it make it harder? Absolutely, I live here. I want to live here for a long, long time. Who wants to lose? Most coaches get fired. It's what you do. You get hired to get fired? How often do you not get fired? It is very rare. So I chose a route in which, if I want to live somewhere for the rest of my life, I can't get fired. Very challenging. So there is extra pressure because you want to live here. So the only way to live here, you can't live in a place you suck at. So you got to figure it out. So there's a ton of extra pressure than another school because this is where I want to be. This is where I want to live. This is where I want to raise a family. So yeah, one-hundred percent!”