Arizona State Head Coach Kenny Dillingham Weekly Press Conference
Monday, October 6th 2025
On Facing Utah and Week Seven:

On if (HC) Kenny Dillingham watched any College Football on Saturday:
“I watched a lot. From waking up to going to bed, we pretty much watching football all day. My wife loves football too, she's the one that says we can't go anywhere, and we ended up going somewhere with my family to watch football more. I watch a lot of it, there's tons of parity. Every week you don't know who's gonna win. The biggest difference is somebody said the days of like multiple undefeated teams, it may have been Coach Smart (Kirby) or something, maybe somebody else, maybe multiple people, but it's getting harder and harder. I couldn't agree more with that. You're going to see more losses advance further and a loss or two losses in some cases, sometimes maybe three losses. It's so good your conference championship game is not the end of the world anymore because of the parity. The game is changing from that perspective.”

On how Dillingham talks to his team in light on the parity:
“You lose a game, you got to come back and try to be better. You can't get so caught up in the results and you got to really fall in love with the process, the same thing we always talk about. Last year we started in conference 2-2, maybe 1-2…I don't know, maybe it was 3-1, 3-2, – something like that. I don't know exactly what it was, but 2-2 right there it is. Then we came back to win the league, so for us it's you just got to keep fighting every week and you never know what happens.”

On how the bye week helped prepare the team for Utah:
“We got a lot of really, really fancy stuff coming in, a lot of really tricky things. We have four throwbacks, nine different wildcats, so we just got a ton of it. Lots of you guys are out of practice, I’m surprised you didn't report on it, all the craziness.  We just wanted to get better at what we need to get better at, the areas we need to get better at, hopefully we improve. That was the goal of the bye week, and then also get a jumpstart on Utah because obviously they're a really good football team. Their one loss is to a top ten team in the country and they could have easily won that football game. It was a one possession game in the 4th quarter, and they had a touchdown called back for an illegal man downfield in the 1st quarter. That was an irrelevant penalty, it was a flag, but it was irrelevant to the shot play. It really could have been a tie game in the 4th quarter versus No. 8 and No. 19 in the country. Really good football team, and we tried to fix our mistakes and then get ready for Utah.

On going to Utah after losing to them 55-3 at Utah:
“We definitely pointed out that the last time we played here it was really bad, and it's a tough environment. There's a 50-60 percent chance of thunderstorms, rains, rain. We could hit a delay. We have an 8:15 kickoff that could also get delayed, and we may be playing this game at 10 p.m., 10:30. That's not a far-fetched scenario based off the weather report and it doesn't matter when we play it or where we play it. We're going to play a really good football team with a great crowd, and we've got to be ready to go play a physical brand of football. We've got to be able to do all the little things right.”

On how (QB) Devin Damp is one of the most dynamic QB’s the team has played:
“He's a phenomenal player, I definitely should have recruited him harder, to be honest. He's definitely proved me wrong. I always thought he was a really good player, but how productive he's been in college football, super impressed by him. Completion percentage out the roof, his ability to extend plays, how he runs the offense and operates it. Super definitely a miss by me 100 percent and kudos to them for having him on their team because he's a really, really good football player. He's a tough guy to tackle, he gets the ball fast, and he just does a lot of things well, which is why he won a lot of games at Saguaro High School. So kudos to him, I'm happy for him. I mean my brother-in-law coached him, was his quarterback coach. Jason Mohns was his head coach. Even though we're playing him this week, I got a lot of respect for him, his game, how he plays, how he goes about his business, and how he continues to prove people wrong and has a chip on his shoulder. So I got nothing but respect for him, and I wish him luck the rest of the way.”

On leaning on (TE) Coach Mohns to play against (QB) Devin Damp who he used to coach:
“We're going to stick to what we see on tape. Coach (Jason) Mohns definitely may have some, some stuff. Usually the stuff he says is, oh no, he's a really good competitor, he plays better in big games. I'm like awesome, great, that’s exciting. He's really tough to tackle, he's savvy, great, perfect. He's more telling us things that we don't want to hear. I want to hear him say like, the kid can't do something, but that's not what he says. He says he can do everything, he's just more confirming what we see on tape, which is a really, really good football player.” 

On if he used the Arizona Cardinals (RB) Emari Demercado fumble as an example to not have that happen:
“I don't know. Coach (Johnathan) Gannon does a phenomenal job. I'm from here, so I understand how the city works. They're three plays away from being undefeated, and sometimes you get lost in the result, but  Coach Gannon is phenomenal. They're very close and to have that play, that's just an unfortunate play. For us we had a play similar, (RB) Raleek (Brown) on his long touchdown, he dropped the ball. It was two yards in the end zone though, and I ran over there and grabbed him and tried to coach it up. We show clips every Friday of coachable moments, every Friday we show about 10-15 minutes on situations, 2-minute, 4-minute, and then plays that happen in college football that basically we don't want to happen to us. We show NFL clips too, we try to show those clips so our guys are ready for pretty much everything, whether it's catching the ball when your foot's out of bounds on a kickoff to get the ball on the 35. Whether it's if you muff a kickoff and the ball goes in the end zone, what the rules are. If you muff a kickoff coming out of the end zone, what the rules are, a punt is it your body or the ball? We try to go through every scenario possible so our guys are prepared, but at the end of the day, craziness happens. It's part of it.”

On using the 55-3 loss in last season to transform the team to where they are now:
“I know this sounds weird, we have better crowds and all that, but like the process is the same.  We just want to play our best. If our best back then was losing by 14, I wanted to win, but I wanted to play good. I wanted to play our best football, that night we did not play our best football and they whooped our butt, it was bad. That didn't feel good because you didn't play your best football. You played bad football and they played good football and absolutely destroyed you. For me it's always that. Is it obviously more fun to win, 100 percent, let's not get it wrong. The process is the same process that we did three years ago, and it would be the same process forever here. Through wins, through losses, through highs and lows.”

On keeping belief throughout the program:
“Just work. I don't know if there was like a secret sauce to keep in the belief, but work, works. If you work, eventually good things are probably going to happen for you. If you get competitive people that work, hopefully good things happen for you. It was just a matter of getting back to work, the next week was the swinging gate game. I'm not as smart as some of these guys who can pull games out from 1998 and tell you, I'm not on that level. I'm not that smart, but I believe that next game is UCLA, which we found a way to win in an exotic way, and that definitely gave some belief that we're going to try to find ways to win regardless of if they're, normal or not normal. That helped as well.”

On keeping the belief after tough losses like the one against Utah 55-3 in 2023:
“Just work. I don't know if there’s a secret sauce to keeping the belief, but work works. If you work, eventually good things are probably going to happen for you. If you get competitive people that work, good things happen for you. So, I think it was just a matter of getting back to work. Like I think the next week was UCLA, which we found a way to win in an exotic way, and I think that definitely gave us some belief that we're going to try to find ways to win regardless of if it’s normal or not, so I think that helped as well.”

On who he felt stepped up during the bye week:
“I thought Isaiah (Iosefa) had a really good bye week. I think (Josh Shanklin) is starting to come on as well. There's a few guys that had good bye weeks… I can't get too in depth since it’s not that much of a sample size, but I definitely see a few guys. I like our young guys. I think we have a really good foundation for the next generation of Sun Devils. Last year, sometimes when we did those periods, it was a little bit off. This year, there's protection and there's a pass rush for the real plays, so it's good to have some normalcy when you're running those prep periods with the young bucks.”

On injury updates:
“(WR Jalen) Moss is back. He'll be back for the game. Zac Swanson will more than likely be out. (Xavion Alford) will be out for the game. Other than that, not many other guys have a status change.”

On avoiding a slow start coming off the bye week:
“We’ve just got to start faster. We’ve got to have better plans early. We made an emphasis on it in our team meeting this morning. We’ve got to start practice faster, but we have to have an urgency when we start this thing. So, we're going to change some things up, not a bunch, but make little tweaks to try to create some urgency at the start of practice because it is taking us a while to get into our rhythm and we can't fall behind 17 points and expect to win many games. Luckily, the two games we have fallen behind 17, we've taken a lead, but that's not a recipe to win games.”

On whether there’s anything he can do as a coach to prevent slow starts:
“The game plans. Being more aggressive, potentially. I mean, we’ve got to create better plans early in games to help our guys get going. In-game, especially early drives, that's prep. The hay’s in the barn. As the game progresses, that's when (you make) minor tweaks to the plan. Guys can get comfortable with what they're seeing and get better throughout the game, but early in the game it's more prep.”

On facing a good Utah OL and mobile QB: 
“It’s not the Utah of old from a scheme perspective. This is a triple-option football team. This is a team that uses the quarterback as a plus one. The quarterback will pull runs, and now they have the really good offensive line, the physicality they've always had, and the quarterback can pull it and run off the triple-option, which creates another layer of difficulty to defend these guys. I really think they took another step forward in terms of difficulty to play. Especially schematically with all the triple-option stuff, the quarterback run game, all the motions, all the shifts, and then defensively they've been one of the best for a long time, so there's no need to change much there.”

On Sam Leavitt’s quick rhythm passing game:
“Last week, he was really good. I think it's hard to go back, but I like to go by where people are now. Last week, he was really good, really efficient on early downs, and got the ball out fast. We weren't forcing it on first and second (downs). We weren't scrambling on first and second downs, so I was really impressed by how he's played the last three weeks, but last week I thought he played his best.”

On whether Sam Leavitt is better playing off-script: 
“The last couple of games, he's been really good in structure. I think he's one of the best quarterbacks in the country out of structure, I don't think there's a doubt about that. He's so good out of structure, but he's playing really good in structure these last few weeks. Third down passing is going to be a lot out of structure for every quarterback in the country in college football, especially third-and-medium or long, but if you look at the first and second down passing in the last two weeks, he's been very efficient. So, I've been really, really pleased with how he's been playing.”

On Sam Leavitt’s ability to diagnose a defense pre-snap heading into a hostile environment:
“It's definitely growing. Now, when you play in an environment like this, you can't have as many checks. You’ve just got to play because if you have too many checks, you're going to false start. You're not going to hear them. You're going to be off the same page. I think playing at night makes the environment even (tougher), so it's a really tough environment to be in a world of checks. I definitely think he's been doing really well at it, but I think we've got to tailor that down based on what we play this week, where we play, and what they do on defense. (Utah defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley) does a phenomenal job and we've got to protect ourselves from getting too cute.”

On how important it will be to carry over Leavitt’s success in diagnosing the defense into this week’s matchup:
“It’s going to be huge. They know where they are on defense and they do it really well… they do a really good job mixing it up with their pressures, making it look like man (coverage) and not playing man (coverage), and they do such a good job getting in and out of it that you have to be able to see what (coverage) they’re in post-snap because they do a really good job with their disguises. You're not going to know what they're in. You're not going to know if they're bringing pressure. You're not going to know a lot of things, so you’ve got to do a really good job post-snap, with our eyes this week.”

On whether legacy factors into a game like this:
“We try to keep guys locked in here now. At the end of the day, prior years don't win football games, but the culture that he's established there is elite. Bottom line, that's why I said if we can build something like he has built, here, it starts with the crowd. You always talk about when you go there, the crowd, how hard it is to play there. We're starting to get that. If you talk about their physicality and their toughness, well, we're not there yet, but hopefully we're creeping up on being in that conversation in 56 years. You can't just do it for one or two years. But, hopefully we're getting closer and closer to that style and that style is one and it will win until the end of time. If you can run the ball, stop the run, not turn the ball over, be physical, and win at home, you're going to have a lot of good seasons and that's been their formula of toughness for a long time. So unfortunately we have to go there into that environment and try to play a culture. We're not playing a football team, we're playing a football program. I think that's the biggest deal sometimes. Sometimes you play teams, sometimes you play programs. We're playing a program. We're playing a program that's won for a long time, a system that's won for a long time, a coach that's won for a long time and a place that's won for a long time, and those are the hardest teams to beat.”

On Utah’s front seven on defense:
“They're really good on the defensive front and they bring good twist games. They have a good scheme on top of the players, so it's not just all one on one’s. They know where to bring games and they know how to bring games. The players recognize when guards are pulling, they recognize passing stances. They do all the little things right that make you good, that nobody's going to see, nobody's going to see that they're pointing out pass or they're pulling out guard pull, but that gives you all the advantage in the world. They just do such a great job on the defensive front and in the front seven at doing all the little things right that actually win football games. That is why they can run what they've run on defense for so long is because they focus on the stuff that matters. They're physical, they tackle well, they don't give up big plays, and then if you give them a tilt, they're going to take it and they're going to kill you with it.

On being able to combat Utah’s aggressive run game:
“This is a way different offense than we've been seeing, there's a lot of triple option elements, a lot of quarterback read elements. They use a whole bunch of different personnel groupings, which completely change everything. There's not a scenario where we know we're going to get A, B, C from these formations. This week is like what are they going to run from these formations? What are they going to run from these personnel groupings? So we've just got to be extremely sound this week because they present so many problems schematically on the offensive side of the ball just from how many guys they read, the personnel groupings and the formations. It’s a really good challenge.”

On communication in the pre-snap defense:
“We have to be great pre-snap on defense in finding formations and where our fits are. who's number three, who's number four, who's number two depending on formations. Is the X on, is the X off? Because in college football you can live in a world where the X is basically on, but then he goes in motion and you're like, what the heck? I thought he was on and now you're unbalanced like that and just the nature of the beast. So we got to be leaders at communicating in order to get our fits right. Because that's a stress that they create for you.”

On how much improvement he’s seen in the defensive line and how they will prepare against Utah’s offensive line:
“For us, our guys have put in a lot of work, so it's fun to see when guys work, change their bodies, and then they see the reward. I think for me that's why you coach is to have guys who put in work to see the reward. That's a good step for a program is seeing guys get better, and last year at this time, I don't know how many sacks we had, but it wasn't many. People are asking, how are we going to fix our pass rush? We're not going to fix it by adding people. We're going to fix it by getting our guys getting bigger, stronger, better with each other, and now we've accomplished that. I think we got better at pass rush through development, not acquisition. In terms of the challenge this week is you're facing a phenomenal offensive line. They don't give up sacks partly because of the players at offensive tackle that are potentially two first round draft picks, and then secondly, because of the scheme. It doesn't really allow to create many negative plays. It’s hard to create negative plays versus this type of style because of what they do schematically. They're not going to drop back 45 times and you're not just going to lick your chops and say the tackle's going to pass set and we get to bring games. You have to defend the triple option or the quarterback run. You have to defend the run schemes every single snap on third and everything.”

On Sam Leavitt facing a good defense everyday and how that prepares him for Utah’s defense:
“It's huge, but at the same token, one thing about quarterback is you're never live. When defensive ends get you in practice, it's not real. When you get into games and guys get to you, it's real. They've got to sack you and you've got to prevent being sacked, whether you throw it away, whether you get out of the pocket. I definitely think that by him feeling that in practice is a benefit, him having to move from the pocket and things like that. But gameday is a whole different beast for a quarterback. I think it's the biggest jump of any position in football is practice quarterback to gameday quarterback, because you're never live. It's the only position that is just a drastically different game practice versus gameday.”

On Sam Leavitt is doing in the structure of the offense:
“I think in the last three weeks he's played really well in structure and he's gotten better every single week in the structure. Last week, I don't know what his completion percentage was because I only look at completion drop percentage but I think it was around 70% if I had to guess last week, which is really good football. If you're around 70% completion percentage with 300 pass yards and you're moving the ball efficiently, that's as efficient as you can be in football if you're still hitting explosive plays down the field. You can be at 70% if everything's underneath, right? But if you're also taking shots down the field and hitting turbo on deep balls, hitting guys working down the field, to be at 70% is really productive.”

On the importance of team defensive pass rushing heading into Utah:
“We talked about it a lot in terms of team rush. We've got to stop the run as a team, the best defenses, in my opinion, are the ones where the defensive lines play the best together whether it's twist games, pick games, how they play counters, or how they play the front side of zones. The defensive line is where you can gain a hat. When you're a single high defense, you're short of hat in the run game. If the quarterback runs, you either got to get him down or you got to get out of a single high or you got to get your hat back up front, it's a math problem. I think when you can play team defense, linebackers, and defensive line, and you can get your hat back just by the guys working together, that's how good defenses play. That's what Utah does, they’re elite at getting a hat back in single high defense, and every week somebody has a really good plan to beat them. You may get them once and their ability to see everything in their system and adjust to what you're doing and then eliminate it, that's what they do on defense. I think defenses that can mitigate gaps with less people, and I think our defense has done a good job of that.”

On facing a Utah offense that has performed good on third downs:
“It’s going to be very difficult because they don't let themselves get into third and longs based off their style of play. The efficiency of third downs is based off of the efficiency they have on first and second downs and getting to manageable third downs. The system is about not getting into unmanageable third downs, and they do a good job of that. Then they have a quarterback who can become a plus one, which creates their efficiency. So we've got to be able to get off the field on third and short, third and medium. I don't know how many third and longs they're going to have created because they stay out of that. They don't get a lot of penalties. They don't take negatives and sacks. I think that's why they play good offensive football because they don't get themselves in those tough scenarios and they can convert. So we got to be able to get off the field in those third down scenarios to plug their defense in this week.”

On if they are planning to turn to RB Kanye Udoh to alleviate their redzone problems:
“We're looking at everybody. I was going to see what (LB) Tristan Bacon could do back there. He was a running back in high school, but he got tweaked a little bit last week. So we've thought about a variety of people to get it fixed and we have a plan to hopefully be better in those scenarios. I feel really good about the plan. The plan may not work, and then you guys can say we still suck at it, I'll continue to try to fix it, and then we'll be at the same spot next year or next game. Hopefully that's not the case. Hopefully the plan we practiced last week and what we're doing can be more productive for us.”

On their high-level matchups in the coming weeks and what these couple weeks of practice have meant in regards to setting the team up for success for the rest of the season:
“You could have said that before (the) Baylor (game). I think we asked that question (then) and then (before) TCU that next four game stretch, and now this game. That's the league. This league is anybody can beat (anyone) anytime. Home field advantages in college are real. They change (things). They can completely change the dynamic of games. If somebody is dinged up, do you have injuries? It's football, anybody can beat anybody. So that's why I stay focused. One day, one game. Who knows who's going to be good in three weeks? I don't. I don't know who is going to be good in two weeks. You don't know because so many things can happen in college football between now and then. These are still 18 to 22 year olds. Somebody goes on a two game winning streak, they can (still) go completely out of it and check out. A kid gets a red shirt,  I don't know. There's so many crazy things that can happen in college football now. You better just focus on one game at a time and try to find a way to beat a team. (Utah) That's a really, really good football team this week.”

On if he sees value in implementing emerging technology to college football with regard to officiating technology:
“That's a great question. I don't know. I don't care. If the technology gives us a first down, I want to use it. If it stops the opponent from getting a first down, I want to use it. If they spotted him poorly and we don't have a good review, I don't want that technology. I want to play the spot. So, whatever it is, human error is going to be in every sport. That's part of it. If you can remove human error, great. If you can't, great. Eventually there's going to be human error. Human I make mistakes every single day on the field, so I don't care to be honest.”

On the players supporting other ASU sports around campus and how he feels about seeing them live out their college experience:
“Our guys are Sun Devils. They're proud to be at ASU. They're proud to be Sun Devils. They're happy to be here going to hockey games. They're proud. They're going to come back here to watch games. They're not going to disappear forever, like Cam (Skattebo). I do think that the college experience is awesome. It's what it's about. One of the goals going into the season was to make memories that last a lifetime and I still believe in that. College is a period of time to create memories, hopefully our guys have created some already and continue to create more.”

On when big moments in tough games appear, who they need to step up to be successful:
”Our best players. At the end of the day, when the game is on the line, I want Kobe shooting. Or Michael Jordan, I want those guys shooting the ball. When the game is on the line, I want our big guys to have a chance, our best players to have a chance even if it’s not the best football play. I like to say to our staff all the time, I don’t want to win the game as a coach. I want the players to win the game. It’s our job to let them win the football game. Now if there’s a game where I feel like there’s a huge matchup disparity and we need to get involved, that’s our job as coaches to make a difference. But, I truly believe at the end of the game you have to let your best players win the football game. I can sleep at night if I can lean on our best players in the biggest moments.”