Arizona State Head Coach Kenny Dillingham Previewing Week 10 vs. Colorado
Monday, November 2, 2026
On change of freshmen red-shirting:
“It's changed drastically. It’s much different over the last five years in college football, in terms of that perspective.I think every year has changed because the rules have changed. At multiple spots in terms of when the portal opens. It opens now, and then the next year it opens two times, and the next year it opens one time again, but now they're saying potentially a one-time transfer. With all the changes, they have an effect on how you build your team for the long haul, which is part of the hostility you're seeing in college, the volatility you're seeing across the country right now with teams, I just think the the rules changing make it difficult to create a long term plan because the best plan is based off of the current rules and when they change you got to be able to adapt and that's just you're more like living in the moment than you are like creating a four to five year plan right now you're just like what is best right now what are we trying to do right now? As opposed to saying, this is the best plan moving forward, which is fine. But it's just harder to build a five-year plan because the rules change and you have to tweak what you thought was really good is now not good.”

On recruiting focus for future seasons:
“I think senior evaluations are a priority for us. So watching tape and saying, this guy who's a senior is playing unbelievably well. How do we go get him? We want to go get that guy on our team. Let's go try to get that guy on our team. Or this guy who's committed to school B is under the radar, but his senior tape is unbelievable. How do we go get him? The Keith Abneys, the Montana Warren’s, C.J. Fite’s, right? So I think it's a combination, but it's all based on senior evaluation. We want to make sure that we're a team that is as in-depth as anybody with the senior film of guys.”

On passing game production against BYU:
“(QB) Jake (Fette) did a great job spreading the ball around. They were playing close in the middle of the field. They're playing a lot of single-high man, man-free, and they were just sprinting that free safety over to (ASU WR) Reed (Harris) a lot of the times, which opened up opportunities for other guys to make plays. I think Jake did a good job moving the ball around from that perspective, especially in the second half, we tried to clean up the picture and make it just a little bit cleaner. I think he did that. I think he was very productive doing that. In the first half, we just got into too many bad downs and distances. We had two straight drives with really bad downs and distances in the second quarter, which knocks you completely out of all rhythm offensively, and then we had a two-minute drive, which is a whole different game. So now you're asking a freshman to go out there and operate in a two-minute scenario on the road at BYU, which isn't what you would hope you'd be in. More positive advantage situations for him, so we really put him in a lull there for four straight drives that kind of got him out of a rhythm, and then we got back in half, and I thought he distributed nicely.” 

On who is the starting quarterback for Arizona State:
“I think right now you got to say it's (QB) Jake Fette, and I think he's earned it. Now (ASU QB) Mikey (Keene) is working his way back, from that perspective. But I think Jake played really, really well in the second half, especially for a freshman on the road in that environment, and to really take command, make the checks he made. The way he played in the second half was of a veteran, in my opinion, and so that gave me a lot of hope. I've said multiple times, communicating to him what he saw when he came off the field. That continued in the football game.”

On (ASU QB) Jake Fette’s ability to learn and adapt:
“It's just what he says. Why did you throw this? Why did you throw the bat to Reed out of bounds? What happened there? ‘I saw the corner's eyes and he was bailing, so I tried to back-shoulder him and I missed him.’ All right, solid answer, that makes sense. It looks like you were trying to throw him a jump ball down the field and you missed? No, you didn't. You missed a back shoulder throw, which you didn't miss by as much, right? We just weren't on the same page, so that makes me feel better. So I think there's and there's things where he said, ‘Yeah, I saw it was a man. I saw the safety was cheating towards O (ASU WR Omarion Miller), or I saw he was cheating towards (ASU WR) Reed (Harris), so I threw it to O. The things he was saying were accurate. So I think anytime you have a young buck who can say accurate things, it really just shows you that he sees the game. Some people struggle to see the game out there live. It's one thing to watch it on an iPad. It's another thing to see what's happening. So I think any time that he tells us what's happening, and he is right, he's not right all the time. Nobody's right all the time. I'm not right all the time, right? But for him to be right a large majority of the time as a freshman gives me a lot of hope for his future. He had a lot of energy in the last game. He was flying around running the football, and he got a lot of opportunities last game to make plays down the field. I mean, a ton of targets, a ton of targets down the field, a ton of targets in one-on-one. So I've been really pleased with him. Just pleased with his attitude, his practice habits, and those are getting better and better and better. 

On (WR) Omarion Miller’s character throughout the season:
“He had a lot of energy in the last game. He was flying around running the football, and he got a lot of opportunities last game to make plays down the field. A  ton of targets down the field, a ton of targets in one-on-one. I've been really pleased with him. Just pleased with his attitude, his practice habits, and those are getting better and better.”

On Jake fette lowering his shoulder providing a spark in team 
“His confidence. He's a very confident guy. He walks around confident, just how he managed the football game was confident. There was one time to start a drive when it was a 25 second early lower on the shot clock that I had to burn a timeout. Other than that, procedurally,  he was clean, he motioned, he made checks. He was aware of the clock. All those things give people confidence, which I thought he had in the football game. The way he carries himself in practice, his arm talent, all that stuff. People know he's talented. So you combine that with his composure, and then he's an extreme ownership guy. I try to tell him, hey, it's okay. You saw it. Let's get it next time. “No, I got to get that right.” That's his response to me, and I'm like, I agree. But man, like you're hard on yourself, and that's a good thing. The guys I've coached that have been the best have always been extremely hard on themselves to almost try to be perfect. He has that in him.”

On Fette's potential compared to other Quarterbacks Kenny has coached: 
“As high as anybody’s”

On (Arizona State RB) Cardae Mack’s patience and health:
“Unbelievable patience, and it's super rare from a freshman standpoint. I've been around a lot of good backs at the freshman rate. His patience is as good as I've been around, if not the best I've been around as a true freshman. He's from Houston. He played high level ball in a competitive city. Played for an unbelievable coaching staff. He was asked to do a lot, playing quarterback there, and basically running back, and slinging around. He did so much. The game is slower to him because of how well he was coached in high school. Who he is and his own confidence, and then what he was asked to do in high school, and then the competition he played in high school. He's got a natural feel, and also his high school competition, his high school coaches did a phenomenal job with him.”

On Colorado (Quarterbacks) Issac Wilson and Julian Lewis getting different splits:
“I'm not going to get into the differences because that, in my opinion, could give away some thoughts. Offensively, (Colorado Offensive Coordinator) Brennan Marion does a great job. He's always been one of the best rushing teams in the country. They've always ran the ball at a high clip in his entire career. I actually worked with him at Arizona State back in the day. They've been playing really good football on offense. Specifically, the last three weeks, they're moving the football. They've just had turnover issues. This is a very good football team, like a very good football team that is very dangerous, and I think they've shown that every single week that they've played. They've had the lead in almost every game that they've played.”

On the transfer portal: 
“That's just college football nowadays. Guys are going to move around. I do think this is a great place. When guys come and play here, and they're like, "Holy cow, I could live here." That's real. When you play home games here and the place is sold out and it's loud. You used to be just selling high school kids in the past. The crazy thing in this world is there may be a kid on the other team that is like, “That environment was unbelievable.” It was 75 and perfect out, and it was sold out, and they were loud. Then they go into the portal, and all they remember is the time that they played us, and they were on the road and it's like “Wow, I could see myself playing there.” There's a lot that goes into stuff like that. On that note, we're I think like 600 tickets away from a sellout this weekend, which is awesome. I don't know if it's 600. I don't know if I was supposed to say the exact number. That may or not be accurate. I have no clue about the rules, but I did it. We're gonna get a sellout. We're very close, and that all matters for the reason you just said. Anytime people walk into this environment, It's either an environment people want to play in, or it's an environment they don't. We've done a really good job establishing this as an environment people want to play in. We've been very loud. We've had sold out crowds, and we just have to continue that.”

On the costly penalties during the BYU game:
“You have to look at it, play by play. I thought C.J. (Fite) was rushing, he's running to the quarterback and he's 310 pounds and he gets a little shove from the guard, puts his hand up running forward and then runs into the quarterback on an RPO type concept. I'm not going to punish C.J. at all. I thought that just sucks. You know the other one we got to celebrate. We're celebrating with our teammates. We just made a great tackle. We got five dudes, but their players were right beneath us. Take the celebration and move it over eight yards, and there's no penalty. It's more of a learning experience. I'll say this: That emotion and passion you guys are seeing again is Sun Devil football, and I'm not going to take that out of our players, we just have to be able to harness it differently. Take that same celebration with your six teammates that are all around you, and just do it eight yards away. That simple. That way, it doesn't look like we're taunting the opponent. Those were critical penalties. They sucked. We've been pretty good with penalties this year, which tells you how much penalties affect winning. Certain penalties affect winning, but just looking at penalty statistics, that's not always as cut and dry.”

On (Colorado Head) Coach Deion Sanders development over the years:
“He's created excitement. He's created. They've won a lot of games since he's been there, and they're playing really good football. This football team that we're about to face, they basically had the lead in almost every game that they've played, and they're playing as competitive football as any team in our league right now. So I think he's done a really good job, and I know there's always going to be, no matter who you are, there's going to be critics. There's probably going to be more when you're Coach Prime, right? People are always out for you, but he's done an unbelievable job making it a destination place. They've got multiple NFL guys on this defense, multiple NFL guys on this offense, especially up front at wide receiver. This is a good football team. He's put together a good roster, and I think they're in a better place today than where they were when he took over. That’s the measurement of a head coach. ‘Where are you today as opposed to when you got it?’ I think he has taken that program to a different level than when he took it over.” 

On the tight end room: 
“Obviously I think Ant (ASU TE Anthony Miller) has been playing more physically lately, which has been a positive. We haven't gotten him involved a lot in the passing game, which, that's a combination of a few things. I think it's been solid.”

On the 1996 team being at the game this weekend:
“It's going to be awesome. We're going to let them come into the locker room, hang out with the guys pregame, and have our guys be a part of what that feels like. The cool part is some of the guys that were here two years ago are going to get to do that in 30 years too. So it's going to be cool to see this '96 team come back to our guys and tell them what ASU football means to them, while our guys, the culture and the root of these guys hunt to become a team that gets to do that one day: to leave a legacy and to leave a memory that one day you can come back as a whole unit to be in the locker room because you're that valuable to the history of a program, you're that memorable to a history of a program. So it's awesome to have those guys back to have them around and hopefully our players take a lot of pride in hoping to build a team that gets to that point one day. That way they can come back and do the same thing.”

On if the experience of the team has given a concrete idea of the identity ASU Football wants to represent:
“100%. We're doing that right now in recruiting. We're looking at which guys fit. Every single year we ask ‘what is the recipe?’ I think the way we played the last two games, even though we didn't win, we're playing way closer to the identity I want our teams to have. Now, obviously, I want our identity to also be that we win, we upset teams, and we don't keep it close like that. You don't play to lose by seven. That's why we're still throwing throwbacks, right? That's why we're still getting after a guy to make sure they try to have to throw the ball away. You don't play games to lose. So for us, I think we've definitely learned about things that we need, things that we are non-negotiables from that perspective. But I think this team has those things, and I think we're seeing what it is. I just think there was a three-game lull where it was like, ‘what just happened?’ We got back from London, and it was like, ‘Whoa, what just happened to our football team for three weeks?’ And then we snapped out of it, and we played pretty good football the last two weeks. Not great, but if we just would have picked that up when we got back and played like that when we got back, game in and game out, who knows how good we'd be right now. I didn't do a good job in those three weeks on the return managing it and it fell back but I think these guys have recaptured it and now we just got to get better and better the last four weeks and try to win one game at a time.”

On different personnel schemes: 
“The ability to run the football is definitely something you always want whether that's offensive line play, tight end play, or running back play. ‘What are we doing to guarantee that we have the ability to run the football? Stopping the run on defense,’ which I think we have this year. We just went through a lull of three weeks where I don't know what was happening. We got it fixed. I think we addressed some of those. I think there's just some things that didn't work out how we wanted it, and I think I did a poor job managing the return and some things on my end that caused us to kind of derail. I think the players have done an unbelievable job getting us back on course. We have four games left, and we have to go play our best football.”

On the teams style of play:
“Our style of play to me, we always want to run the ball. We always want to stop the run. The one thing that we're not doing right now that I want to be and we just haven't been able to do, is we haven't impacted the quarterback enough. I want to impact the quarterback, I want to run a play action pass, and we haven't been able to protect to run play action pass enough. Those things are giving us issues because we're struggling in the play-action pro game, so we're struggling in true schemed-up shots. If you can't run, if you're struggling in some of the seven-man pro stuff, you can't scheme. It's harder to scheme up shots, you just can't do it. It's very challenging because then every time you call a schemed-up shot, it could be second and 18 or something that bad could happen. Then you throw the ball three times in a row, and you're like, ‘Crap, what happened in the second quarter?’ Well, you took negative plays. You can't run the ball after you take negative plays. It's over. You want to be able to throw those shots. I'd say throw shots and stop the run, those are two of the issues slash things I’m looking at.” 

On line of scrimmage play:
“The line of scrimmage wins. You can't win games without the line of scrimmage. That's the structure, and I think we're playing better at both sides of the line. I think we played our best the last two weeks on both sides of the line. I think that's been clear. We're running the ball better. We're stopping the run better. I do analytics and I look at metrics, and we went from like one of the worst teams through the first six weeks to now we're middle to above average in those two categories. Where was that? Why could I have not pulled that out? Why did we not start like that? But none of that matters because right now we're here where we're at, and now we're playing a physical, aggressive, run-stopping, run the ball brand of football. Now, if we can just get better with some of the assignment stuff here on out, we're going to be a really tough team to play.” 

On the ending of the BYU game:
“It was copy paste. Their guy actually went down with seven seconds tackled, but the play clock didn't start until 44 seconds left in the game. He got tackled at 47. When I looked at the clock I'm like ‘seven, we had seven’. The play clock is supposed to start right when the last play ends, but there's always that human element of the official actually starting it, it usually takes two seconds. Sometimes one. This time it took three, so it got down to four. I legitimately thought they were going to have to snap the ball with five or six seconds left in the throwaway play. It was like copy paste. Some people have it as a seven second play, some people have it as a six second play, so it was good. It was definitely playing hot in my mind, kind of crazy.”