Arizona State Head Coach Kenny Dillingham Previewing Baylor
Monday, September 28, 2026

On Baylor’s offense and QB play:
“They have a starter who is the number one quarterback in the country, and for a reason from that perspective. And when he played in game one, he was productive. He was good. He was running around making big time throws. Then they lost him. They lost to one of their top wideouts, who should be working their way back. So you have to look at them in two separate offenses. The offenses that they've played with him and the offenses they've played without him, and see if there's any differences. It's one week to four, but we're kind of in week two in terms of you got halves, two halves of what you want to do. Your quarterback's usually your identity, we're trying to piece that together. Based on what they've done, it is different.

On Baylor’s Offensive coordinator Jake Spavital:
“He's going to want to throw the football down the field. One thing that's a glaring thing that shows up is all their double moves. If you look at their touchdowns and you look at double moves, it's like double move touchdown tape, and it doesn't matter where he's been. He's been really good at double moves, and that's because they've been really efficient in the quick passing game. So when you're efficient in the quick passing game, it sets up your double moves to be explosive. So we've got to be able to knock out the quick passing game so we do prevent the double move from happening, right? Because that's the setup. We can't allow the explosives, and he changes all the time. I mean that's the one thing that credits Coach Spav (Jake Spavital) is he changes. He has an identity of who he wants to be, but how he releases that identity, I think, changes every single year. He knows what he wants. He wants to create explosives. He wants to get the ball on the field. He wants to have a downhill run game. He wants to be efficient in the passing game and make easy access to those for his quarterback. But how he does that, I think, changes every single season. I think that's why he's lasted a long time, being a very, very, very good offensive coordinator.”

On Baylor’s defense from last season to this season:
“They stoned us last year for most of the game. We were in a dogfight over there, and I think it was big, but I think the biggest change is that their head coach has mentioned it multiple times. Is he made an emphasis on the front,  and when you watch them play, the Power Five teams that they've played, and some of these others, with the Auburn game-and you see them, go toe to toe up front, and in a lot of cases, win a lot of reps up front, and then last week toe to toe, winning winning a lot of reps up front. That was his plan. He went and wanted to get that, it's a good strategy. They're…what four inches away from being four and zero. Literally, they're four inches away from being four and zero. And if they reach the ball four more inches, this is a top 25 team coming to town. Just crazy how perception versus reality of teams, right? We're talking that far from a top 25 team coming to play us at home, and so this will be a good, tough task for us. Like I said, they're really good up front. On the defensive side of the ball, they had a plan and they executed.”

On the team playing back at home:
“We don't usually practice, or I don't even know if you call it a practice today. It was 40 minutes on the field. I mean we're we literally just went out there and ran around a little bit because our Thursday practice got lightninged out, and up to this point we haven't been able to go in the bubble when it's lightning, so we couldn't really practice, we had to get back on the field and get moving around, and I think the energy has been really good. I think our guys keep harping on, so many teams are losing games. I think more teams are losing games right now than teams that are winning games. We lost a game, and so I think for us, we can't beat ourselves. How do we become a football team that is efficient, that doesn't beat ourselves, and then plays to our potential? But the first step is not beating ourselves, and that goes into the detail, and all everything that the coach speaks goes into that part.”

On Baylor’s quarterback DJ Lagway:
“He's in a more free system, so way more open. So it's using I would say more arm talent throws consistently. So he's over there throwing field hitches, field double moves that are the balls travel 50-55 total yards. He's throwing seam routes on dimes and rhythms. I would just say he has more freedom and there's more flexibility. It's a little more quarterback centric in terms of getting the ball out, and if you feel it, you can throw it and that count is driven. I just think he's getting really good looks to throw the football down the field, and I think he's been doing that at a high rate. I think it fits him, he's a big, strong kid who gets to stand high in the pocket and drive the football all over the field now, off really hard run actions, or RPOs, depending on the call. I think that's the biggest difference I've seen. I also see confidence. Like I feel like he's playing really, really confident, and he's throwing the football into tight windows because of that confidence.

On how he executes the game plan regarding similar types of play compared to recent games:
“I think it's a combination, depending on your opponent. You've got to try to figure out what they're going to do versus you. It's not necessarily schematics, it's personnel. Let's say we have a quarterback that's dynamic. Well, what have they done versus dynamic quarterbacks from a running perspective back there? Let's say you have a quarterback who doesn't move well at all. What have they done versus quarterbacks who don't move well? Let's say you're a team who loves throwing blank concepts, or blank is your top run run call. What have they done to stop that top run call? So I think piecing it together would be the best way to describe it. You're piecing together if you were their DC (Defensive Coordinator) and you had their calls, how would they stop you? And then if you were their OC (Offensive Coordinator) and you had their calls, what would you run versus our defense? So just trying to play like you're the opponent is the best way to do it, and you're watching a variety of things to get that accomplished.”

On the key to balance a long stretch of games after a bye week:
“One day at a time, one game at a time. The key is staying focused on right now, and reacting to the now. I think it's got to be right now all the time. Week 10 doesn't matter if you don't take care of week three. Week nine doesn't matter if you don't take care of week four. So the most important game is the game right now, and if you look too far ahead, those games aren't going to make as much of a difference, anyways. If you want to play meaningful football, you have to worry about right now constantly and just figure it out as you go. I have to have a plan for how we're going to figure that out, but there's going to be a lot of tweaking and changing. But we have to have a singular focus on playing our best football every single week and every single day we go out to practice.”

On the excitement level hosting a potential top 25 team this weekend:
“I'm excited. I love playing at home. I love running out of the tunnel and seeing 12,000 students, sometimes 13,000 students in a sold-out crowd at night with the fireworks. There's not many better things than to run out of that tunnel in a night game against a conference opponent with a sold-out crowd, with the fireworks rocking, and the sky lit up. There’s nothing like it. This is our first conference night game at home. This is new for a lot of the guys on the team, so I'm excited to get them to see it.”

On ASU's (P) Nick McLarty’s performance as a punter:
“Phenomenal. We had one where we should have gotten the punt blocked in the game. We had an MA. He recognized it, took over with his rugby background, and punted it faster: 44 yard punt. Holy cow. That's remarkable. His ability to pin punt in situations around midfield is a game changer. Everybody knows I'm an aggressive go-for-it guy, but I mean when you have the ability to pin a team inside there seven-five consistently. How do you not take that? Like how do you take a chance on fourth and two or three? Maybe you do depending on the flow of the game and what it's like. That's a real weapon for us. So I've been I couldn't be more pleased with how he's played up to this point, and hopefully that continues. There is a duel of punters this week. Their (Baylor University) punter is phenomenal. He's probably the best in the country. Nick, I think, is one of the best in the country. He doesn't have enough games. I think one of the hidden things in this game will be the hidden yardage exchanged on punt units, PBR, and on kickoff. I think that one of the underlying things in this football game is the field position battle between two punters who I think are two of the top.”

On finding new vocal leaders to step up after Khamari Anderson and Zyrus Fiaseu suffered injuries:
“Unfortunately, two of the top 10 guys just go down and just sucks to be honest. Both are not muscular things, they're structural injuries that you can't really control, which sucks. I think there's always guys that are stepping up and leading. The leadership council is really guys that make decisions on all the stuff that I think is vital to a team. But I don't think it limits people from leading. Owen Long was leading before he was put on the leadership council. So I think there are some guys who can still lead without being on the council. JT (Jordyn Tyson) is showing leadership skills without being on the council. He has that ability. So I think there's guys that can lead, and they don't have to be on the council to do that.”

On gameplanning for Baylor’s (WR) Gavin Freeman:
“He is willing, he's adapting his system to get their weapons the ball. Did you guys see the play he  made the other day? That was remarkable. He hurdled the dude, fell, but didn't fall. Got up, fell again, yet didn't fall. Scavenger. It was remarkable, and I think what people don't watch with how he plays is watching him block. If you want to see why it all works together, watch him go out and block people in the run game. Watch when the ball is handed off and he is on a route, and goes to block somebody. No plays off for that kid, and that's why, in my opinion, it's showing up in the passing game because he's just one of those guys that are wired to be full speed ahead all the time. Obviously operating out of the slot, you’ve just got to put together a different plan to try to take away what they want to do. Different from having a guy outside, right? Obviously, so it's really just a different plan to take it away. I'm not going to get too much into what I think teams should do to take away the best players in the slot. We'll find out if it's good or not here in a couple days. We'll find out if the plan's worth a crap or if the plan sucks, you'll definitely know that. 

On the fair catch and free kick rule against Kansas in the end of the second half:
“We would not have (kicked) there. It would have been under 10 seconds when they're punting, where we don't feel like we can get an additional play. If we don't feel like we can get an additional play, then that may show up as a free kick. If we're at 15 seconds, at some point you'd rather still get a return if you can, and if they're on their 15, well, do you want a free kick from the 50, or do you want to try to kick a real field goal from the 38 if you can get a return popping? I think it depends on how much time's left combined with where they are located on the field. That was not a situation for us where I think the free kick would have shown up. Maybe if they had 10 seconds left and they were punting from that situation where we're going to get the ball somewhere around the 35 to 40, probably. Then that could have been a potential fair catch kick scenario. “

On what made Cam Skattebo stand out:
“Charlie Ragle obviously played him, and he said, ‘This guy's unreal. We want this kid on our program. He's the right type of guy. He runs physically. He runs by his pads.’ He brought him to me and said, 'Kenny, this is an absolute dude. I promise you.’ Then Shaun Aguano went out and saw him in person, he came out on a visit. The rest is history. Coach Ragle was the guy who brought him up and said, "This is a real guy, and we should take this kid.’ We did, and I'm glad we did because he's pretty good, not just a good player, but a good person, good energy, right? Somebody that you can rally behind. He's all of it.”

On weather conditions affecting the practice schedule: 
“We practiced for about 30 minutes (on Thursday). That's why we went out there and did a little 40 minute practice today. Usually we want to get a 500 workload practice in on Thursday, one high level practice, but you can only control what you can control. It is what it is, right? The lightning kind of knocked us out of that. We figured we would come back this morning and run around a little bit, try to get the weekend out, and then that way, hopefully, come tomorrow we can have a really good day. I challenged everybody on the field today; we're not going to be out there long, but get tired, run full speed. Get yourself tired. That way you can start working your levels back. It went solid. I thought the guys had a good focus, they ran around. We'll find out more tomorrow. It's part of giving guys off, there's that fine balance of you want to be fresh, but you also don't want to lose conditioning levels, which is why we're going to go on Thursday. You can't control that, so hopefully it was a benefit. Maybe the extra day off and the extra not having pounding on their bodies one more day was a positive. Hopefully we knocked out the kinks today, so we can have a good tomorrow (Tuesday) and rock and roll.”

On seeing former Sun Devil (OL) Max Iheanachor making his first start yesterday:
“Awesome. To see him go out and play from the day he got here, I still remember his OV (official visit). It's just crazy how fast time flies. I remember his official visit was with his little brother, who's now a Division One football player, and his little brother shows up. He's new to the sport, we're at this restaurant and they're cooking in front of us, and we're just talking, and he's like, "I'm going to come to Arizona State”, and it was one of the earlier commits in the process, and to see that kid now be starting for the Pittsburgh Steelers as a rookie, I think he allowed the fewest amount of pressures amongst all the O-linemen, and that's just a testament to the kid. Coach Saga did a great job, but the kid put in the work. The kid was dedicated. Max deserves all of that, and hopefully that's only the beginning for him.”

On how big of a week this is for the team’s tackles and tight ends:
“It's critical. Our edges are one of the keys to the game. On both sides of the ball, how do you win on the edge? All throughout college football, I just feel like the sack rates are increasing. It's just a little bit different from a game right now when you watch it. It's not quite as clean as it has been in years past. We just need to be ready to adapt to a different style of the game. Part of that is there's so much moving of people, that it's harder to get going at times. So the edges for both sides of the ball are going to be one of the keys to the football game.”

On (QB) Cutter Boley's process sensing pressure:
“Well, you can't keep your eyes downfield if you're getting hit, so that's something that we've got to do better at. We have got to protect him. I have got to put guys in better positions to protect him so he can keep his eyes downfield. I don't think anybody will keep their eyes downfield if they're getting hit. So we've got to do a better job protecting him and giving him confidence in the pocket. From there, getting guys open. People can look at the last game, but we didn't throw the forward pass in the last half in the last game. I don't know how you can grade a quarterback if he's not tasked with throwing the forward pass for essentially 30 minutes of the game. After his touchdown at the end of the fourth, he threw six more passes the rest of the game. So up to this point, I've been pleased with how he's played. He's extended plays on third down at a nice rate. Knock on wood, he really doesn't have a real interception where he just threw the ball to the opponent. We had the sack pick thing, and then one where we should have been blocking on a bubble screen. We haven't had one down the field, which is a positive. When he's in rhythm, he's located the ball really, really well, and we got to continue to get him in rhythm. He's thrown the deep ball well when he's in rhythm, so we got to get him in a better rhythm than we did last week. Part of that was, if you don't convert third downs and then your coordinator stops calling the forward pass, how is he supposed to be in a rhythm? It's impossible to be in a rhythm. You can't ask a quarterback to play well if you do what I did to him last week, that was to win the football game, which we did, but not conducive to play the quarterback position.”

On tendencies the team has shown coming off a bye week:
“The unique thing for us, or since I've been here, is sometimes we've had one bye week, then we had it in the middle of the season, then last year we had two bye weeks, so that is a little bit different to how you use your bye than this year. Our bye week came after London, so that's a different setup. When people can ask that question like, "Oh, are you good off of a bye, and what's your bye week schedule?”  When you have three almost different types of bye weeks in three consecutive years, you have to be willing to change how you do a bye week. We really don't have a strict bye week system. We kind of just change it based on the schedule. Moving forward with the changes in college football, you're going to be guaranteed two byes. We'll be able to create more of a regimented approach to how we do that with the consistency of the start time. Up to this point, I personally, as a head coach, haven't had that consistent bye. So I don't know, I have nothing to look back at if that makes sense of doing it this way. I've never only had two practices, and one of them was not really a practice on a bye week, that's brand new, but I felt it was necessary for this team. We'll find out if it was good or bad on Saturday.”

On how impressed he has been with the Pat Tillman leadership council:
“Very impressed. For the guys to battle and for us to travel the way we traveled, and for those guys to find a way to win a football game, it's good. Those guys want to win, and they put in a lot of time. I've been very impressed with that group and how they've handled themselves, and just the people they are.”

On how the staff has been working with the punt returners to ensure ball security:
“Just punting the ball over their head, making them run backwards, because when he gets a hold of it, this thing is a Ramadan, a ham slam, right? It's gone, so you have to be ready to get out of there. If you can't field it, let it go. It is what it is. Obviously getting a beat for, we got to be deeper this week because he is a phenomenal punter. Possession is the most important thing on a return unit. Possession of the ball. So, just continuing to preach possession of the ball is the most important thing.”