On how close ASU is to being back to full strength
“We’re confident about playing a game, we’re excited about playing a game. We haven’t played a game in a month, it’s kind of like our first game. But we didn’t practice yesterday, we practiced over the weekend, and we’ll start back again tomorrow. Low and behold it’s an 8:30 (p.m.) game, so it’s like we’re waiting forever to play this game. But I think our players are very excited about playing football again, which is good.”
On this game feeling like the first game of the season vs the second
“It feels like we’re just opening the season again. It’s kind of funny, we opened the season against a Los Angeles team in USC and now we’re waiting for a while and playing another LA team, except we get to play them at home. It’s our first home game, which I think all the guys are excited about, that’ll be a lot of fun. It’s been a long time. So, I think everyone’s excited about having the opportunity to play against a good UCLA football team. I think Chip (Kelly)’s done a nice job of really creating a type of offensive and defensive player that fits his mold of what he wants to do. If you watched them play, (Demetric) Felton, he’s got a chance to maybe be the MVP of the conference. He is having an outstanding season, his ability to run and catch the football. Their defense is very athletic, so this is going to be a good contest.”
On channeling the excitement
“Well, we actually get to play a game again. We played one game, didn’t turn out like we had liked, and now we had to wait all this time to play again. And so I think our players are very excited about playing football. You put so much work into it, you practice all these hours, and this has been something that I don’t think anyone will ever forget… in the world, not only just in Arizona but I think in the whole world. I think everyone’s been affected by this virus one way or another and it’s made us all have to adjust. Life is not normal, hopefully one day it will become normal again.”
On practice energy from the players
“They’re excited, they want to play. They’re excited about the opportunity; this has been a long haul for everybody. And remember, we were stopped in the beginning because we were postponed so you can imagine what we went through. Then we finally got to play and then after that we had another postponement, so this has kind of been up and down, up and down and it’s been challenging for everyone.”
On takeaways from last year’s UCLA game compared to this year’s challenges
“We got off to a bad start (last year), we dug ourselves into a really deep hole. We were down early in that game and then kind of fought our way back, but it was marred with a bunch of fouls. We turned the ball over too many times in that football game, and you look at their team now and like I said this is Chip’s third season. He’s starting to collect the players and trying to fit the system in. They’re very dynamic in their running game, they have two wonderful backs, they do a nice job with their tight ends blocking, they’ve got a big offensive line. Quarterback missed this last week but he’ll be back this week I would assume, he’s very dynamic, can throw from different platforms and he’s fast once he gets outside the pocket. And you saw that early in the games, he can make a lot of plays and extend plays with his legs so that’s a concern for any defense. And the defensively they’re big inside, they have some athletic linebackers that run, they play hard. And so, this is going to be a test for us.”
On conditioning recovery after so many being sick
“Well, I think anytime you’ve been off this long and haven’t played it’s back to getting into football shape and conditioning is a big part of it. You see a lot of these guys that are able to come back, and their football stamina is not like it would be. When you start playing football games, you get into this football mode, you get in shape as you play, and so now all of the sudden, we had a little time off so we got to find our way back into that football shape.”
On if the team will be full strength on game day
“We expect to have our players ready to play, that’s kind of where we’re at right now. We’re doing everything we can do to make sure we’re all available to go. I think that it’s been a cry from everyone from the coaches, players, everyone involved in the building, and it’s a shame we went almost eight months and we were doing a pretty good job and then it affected us. And, we’re glad we’re passed that, now we’ve turned the page and we’d like to continue to play football games.”
On what groove is the team in
“We don’t know because we haven’t played for about almost a month. I just think the timing of the offense is very important, we’ve had some practice time which has been good. Defense did a pretty good job I thought the first game about taking the ball away, but here again this is a team that likes to run the football, so we’re going to have to be very stout in our run defense and they have some explosive players in the passing game as well so, this is a very balanced offense. Defensively, they run through the ball, they’re one of the better sack teams in the Pac-12. They probably lead the Pac-12 in sacks and pressure, so we’ve got to be able to protect our quarterback and we’ve got to do some things in the passing game. We’ve got to be more explosive in the passing game, I think that’s going to be an important piece.”
On making improvements since the last game vs USC
“I think we didn’t have enough plays. When you think about it, we only threw 23 passes. We’re not a team that wants to throw it 60 times, but we want some type of balance. Going into that game, the thing we wanted to do was to kind of control the clock and not allow them possessions. Our run game was very good against USC, we did a lot of good things in the run game, but in the passing game there were not enough explosive plays. Jayden (Daniels) made some plays with his legs, but not enough big plays in the passing game and you need to do that, you’ve got to move the ball and you need big chunks every once in a while, and that was not the case. Now you’ve got to give them credit, their secondary did a pretty good job of things, but we’ve got to improve on that part.”
On overcoming UCLA’s advantage of playing more games
“We just have to go play, we’ve got to go play. We have to prepare and we’ve done a nice job, our coaches have done a pretty nice job so far preparing our players. We have to go play, I mean there’s no doubt about it and that’s what we’re going to do and we’re excited about the opportunity to play.”
On chemistry within the new rookie offense
“I hope so, they’ll probably be a few more that play this week by the way. And that’s okay, that’s kind of where we’re at, it’s not like we have a lot of veteran receivers. Frank (Darby), that’s about it, all the rest of them are pretty young. They’ll get through it, we’ll be okay.”
On players taking advantage of extra year of eligibility
“Yeah, I got a pretty good feel, and I don’t want to mention who they are I don’t want to get into that at this point, we can talk about that when the season ends, and I’ll be more verse on who’s thinking about coming back and who’s not. But there’s been some pretty good conversations thus far.”
On carrying the run game momentum after so much time off
“I think if you’re UCLA, you’re going to load the box up a little bit on us and try to stop us from running, that would be my thinking if I was them. With that being said, we’re going to have to make some plays in the passing game, and that’s where we’re going to have to improve. I thought our run game for the most part was pretty consistent to be quite honest. With three runners, and really the two runners that had never played a Pac-12 game, I thought they played pretty well. Now we have to get more balanced on the other side of it and play better as far as in the passing game, be more consistent there with our offense.”
On the amount of tape ASU’s been watching
“You watch so much tape on your opponent, and the thing about UCLA is every week they have a different game plan offensively about what they’re going to do. Chip does a nice job of every week having a plan about how he wants to attack certain defenses and how he wants to attack the personnel of your team. It will be interesting how they want to attack us, but we’ve had a lot of tape time there’s no doubt about that”
On what Herm was thankful for this year
“The opportunity to actually be with my family, and they were all healthy, we were all healthy actually for Thanksgiving, so that is a good thing. I think when you look at Thanksgiving and you go back to all the family outings you’ve had with grandparents, with parents, with in-laws, that wasn’t the case for us this year, and maybe one of the first times. Because generally wherever I’ve been, if I’ve been coaching generally those families would come visit for Thanksgiving. There was not the opportunity to do that this year because of the virus, so we did a lot of FaceTime. And my mom is an older lady now, she’s 95, and my wife’s parents are getting a little older too, so it was good to see them, to visit with them. and I was thankful that they’re still around, that I could visit with all of them to be quite honest.”